- Coni's Trilogy Tapes debut, Imaginarium Essai, follows a trio of EPs for ClekClekBoom that charted a familiar route for a lot of rising house and techno producers. Nicolas Olier's 2011 debut, Luz In Pool/Suma/Crush, bore a few fashionable hallmarks of that period: popping 808 percussion, '90s organ keys and clichéd samples from other house records. On two followup EPs for the French label, he sculpted a more distinctive sound that veered away from in-vogue UK bass tropes. (My Secret Diving imagined Dance Mania standards as long-neglected antiques unearthed by Delroy Edwards.) Imaginarium Essai combines Olier's easy sense of rhythm with Trilogy Tapes' predilection for scrappy sound experiments, and the two often come together well.
Before "Into The Silly World"'s squashed MIDI melody joins the mix, there are distant drip-drops and the sound of plastic scraping on ceramic. Later, Olier employs his drum machine to echo those FX, turning a neat piece of sound design into a plausible DJ tool. "Imaginarium Essai" and "Zex Plongeon" tap into something else done really well on this EP. Though much of Imaginarium Essai has the jaundiced shades of an urban twilight—think old bus shelters and rumbling lorries—these two tracks are still engineered with dancing in mind. For all "Zeg Plongeon"'s dystopian swells and the title track's muddy dialogue, Imaginarium Essai seldom feels miserable.
TracklistA1 Into The Silly World
A2 Imaginarium Essai
B1 Zex Plongeon
B2 Louis & Juno