French Fries / Kepler

次世代Jeff Mills？

このアルバムは、ケプラー62eという惑星に思いをはせて、作られたとのことで、なかなかJeff Millsばりのスペイシー・テクノな世界観を持つ。アルバムを聴くと、なるほど、デトロイト・テクノやアナログシンセ音がとにかく好きそうなのがよくわかる。それくらい、そういう音をふんだんに使っていながらも、イマドキのベースミュージック的なアブストラクトな片鱗も見せている。個人的には90年代前半のSweet Exorcistばりのブリープな音が多用されていたり、Juan AtkinsのInfinitiのようなエレクトロ・ヴォイスがあったりするのが嬉しい。

ただ、たまにメロディ的に中華のようなオリエンタルな面も出て来て、「Explore」という曲は、彼がYMOの「Perspective」とかを聴いて作ったかのような雰囲気。デトロイト・テクノをリスペクトするタイプのニューカマーは、ベースミュージックの分野でも多いと思うが、この人の東洋的エレクトロ感は、ちょっとおもしろい。




Future Jeff Mills de Generation?

It is said that this album is based on the idea of expressing the world of a planet called Kepler 62e. As you may imagine, the album sounds similar to Jeff Mills’ recent albums which seriously features extraterrestrial world. By listening to the album it becomes quite clear that French Fries has had a good influence from Detroit Techno and loves sounds of analogue synthesizers. In most of the tracks, I hear so much of such techno sounds popping out, while at the same time, tints of abstractness emerges from the back bone of Bass Music. I also find bleeps of Sweet Exorcist and electronic voices resembling that of Infiniti　(Juan Atkins), and those are my favorite parts in the album.

However, there is one interesting point in this album. Some melodic tracks sound slightly like Chinese music and reminds me of Japanese electro group, Yellow Magic Orchestra (they played oriental notes that necessarily did not sound like Japanese, but rather like Chinese or Southeast Asian music). I find many new artists creating their music by mixing Detroit Techno aspect into Bass Music, but I feel French Fries’ oriental flavored electro aspect is quite unique.