By It’s our Bandcamp Picks of the Week, featuring Felicity J Lord’s colorful and very online 4 BILLION LIVE FRIENDLY BACTERIA, and Maxime Denuc’s glossy and spiritual dance record CLUB IMPERIALE!
Felicity J Lord – 4 BILLION LIVE FRIENDLY BACTERIA
Genres: Folk, Pop
Favorite Tracks: “Nilo,” “Shaker,” “Vleaned It Extended”
It would feel absurd, it would feel like being in on the joke. It would feel like building out a much less prosaic world than the one we live in. I am trying to grapple with the query that opens 4 BILLION LIVE FRIENDLY BACTERIA, the sophomore offering from London’s Felicity J Lord: “Do you ever feel like a fake staircase in the rave?” The album does a good job at helping you wend your way through the sentiment, dropping solemnity at the door and dignifying the more exhilarating parts of being alive.
The soundscape of 4 BILLION—bitcrushed banjos, wheezing accordions, digital ephemera, sputtering drums—-recalls the excitement and calamity of classroom renditions of Shakespeare; not quite rehearsed enough to be perfect, but also not quite perfect enough to be boring. There’s a sense of immediacy and inventiveness across the songwriting and instrumentation that renders perfectly in the quartet’s digital, loop-oriented sound. Another spectacle to be found beyond their music, off of Bandcamp, is their website, which has a chatroom, a “chat-based adventure,” a Minecraft server, and a HTML-based music video, among other oddities.
The world of Felicity J Lord fills itself out quickly and colorfully. You almost start to feel like you know the faceless, silhouetted band of “misfits, internet lurkers, poets, polka-dotted ballerinas, CEOs, time travellers, and forever-kids,” as biographically described on their first LP. The group’s name is taken from an estate agent in England, in case you thought that might be a hint. It’s possibly this commitment to non-mythologizing that cements the group as fun-havers, folks who are interested in the delight of performance and art-making. Nosing through their web of tunnels is a worthwhile way to spend an afternoon, one you can start on Bandcamp. [Rory Donohue]
Maxime Denuc – CLUB IMPERIALE
Genre: Ambient, Trance
Favorite Tracks: “Hallucinogen,” “Everytime,” “La Paloma,” “Club Imperiale,” “Sueños,” “Plaster Figures,” “Impreza”
When Maxime Denuc released his debut album NACHTORN in 2022, he experimented with the St. Antonius Church’s MIDI-controlled main organ. That experiment directs the instrument to a different space, where the saintly church and universal dancefloor come together. Two years later, he opts for something different. Inspired by a wedding video where the organist was playing one of the songs from his debut, Denuc aims to craft the aftermath of a life-changing event; you can feel the scenery settled within and beyond the ground.
With that thematic essence and another opportunity offered by the church for Denuc to compose, CLUB IMPERIALE was set in stone. It paints Denuc’s organ compositions in a different light, his minimal ventures uplifted to a mystical abode. Across the album, Denuc demonstrates just how much he can maximize the organ’s timbres. The arpeggiated, trance-like melodic spurs of “Everytime” and “Impreza” channel the thrilling spirit that can be attributed to dance music, and the glossy ambience of CLUB IMPERIALE offers a meditation echoing around the walls of St. Antonius Church at large. Despite differing approaches, everything sounds immaculate under Denuc’s control.
The most moving parts are when he allows the melody and texture to modulate into something transcendent. “Hallucinogen” implements a weighty low end, “La Paloma” a crystalline tone shift, their cyclical nature sounding truly divine. Then comes “Sueños,” where layered melodies are submerged, only adding immensity to the soundscape, the tune itself heard through a muffled atmosphere. “Plaster Figures” echoes from its lowest and highest peaks, Denuc playing the organ with a spiritual character—a driving performance that could move the sky and the sea.
What Maxime Denuc accomplishes through CLUB IMPERIALE is not just an expansion of ideas from his debut, but a compelling expression of the MIDI-controlled organ that invites both our grounded humanity and divine spirit to a place that evokes the emotionality of dance music and religious prayers. Listen to this sublime album on Bandcamp. [Louis Pelingen]
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