For those of us who have been involved in electronic music for a few years now, Alain Quême, aka Alan Braxe, is a true legend. It could well be said that part of the much loved and revered French House music rests on his shoulders.
The list of merits is endless. He’s the guy who brought us Music Sounds Better With You alongside half of Daft Punk, Thomas Bangalter and Benjamin Diamond as Stardust. Together with Fred Falke he formed an unstoppable duo at the beginning of the 21st century, releasing several EP´s and remixing a handful of artists.
If we are talking about that section, Alain remixed the who’s who of the music of the last 20 years. To give a few examples… Björk, Ian Pooley, Faithless, Goldfrapp, Röyksopp, Jamiroquai, Kylie Minogue, Justice, Beyonce or Cerrone.
He is the author of another hidden gem not as well known as the legendary Music Sounds Better With You called In Love With You, which he made in 2003 under the name The Paradise with Romuald Lauverjon. If anyone is reading this and doesn’t know that track, don’t let it go too long without getting into this journey of indescribable beauty in which it is demonstrated that simplicity is enormously difficult to take to such high places, something that is only reserved for artists with uncommon abilities.
All of this ties in perfectly with this new work he has created together with his cousin Stéphane Quême, better known as DJ Falcon, another historic French House artist (impossible to forget that Together with Thomas Bangalter) who had also been absent from production duties for a long period of time. We say it links in a perfect way because there is something of that apparent but effective simplicity (although in reality things are not so simple) in the cousins’ new work, an EP with two tracks. The title track is Creative Source, which is based on a sample of a track called I’d find you anywhere, by a 70’s Funk / Disco band called ….. Creative Source.
It just has to be said that there isn’t a dancefloor that doesn’t pop with a good French House track, and this one is. Not just good, it’s excellent. Mercilessly filtered, cut and spliced, steady beat and the beauty of the simple, which is always so hard to come by.
To accompany the bright and luminous Creative Source comes Step By Step, a track with a denser midtempo beat and a precious melody that receives vocal support from Noah Lennox, aka Panda Bear of Animal Collective, a self-confessed fan of the French producers. All this as the premiere of Smugglers Way, a sub-label of Domino Records.
Release date, August 26th, pre order available here
