- An album of meticulous and meditative explorations of trance.
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Francis Latreille has something of an encyclopedic knowledge of (and love for) '90s dance music. His last album, On A Nimbus, was a bleepy homage to the period when IDM, breakbeats, and house blurred together. He's also dabbled in everything from dubby tech house to an EP of early Warp-style ambient techno earlier this year. Your Own Power is equally steeped in that decade, but turns its attention to trance—the early stuff. Across nine meticulously arranged tracks, Latreille evokes the deepness of artists like Mixmaster Morris and Sun Electric, tapping into the more meditative qualities of trance on a record that is as understated as it is emotional.
The slower tempos and wandering melodies makes it easy to feel like we are slowly slipping into meditative dreamscapes. The dub techno chords in "Oyl" slowly fade like counting sheep and we approach full REM stage in the ambient collaboration with Ex-Terrestrial, "The Tower." "Shkrub" is hypnotic, as a compressed and buzzing melody lulls us into a near dream state that reminded me of the work of the late, great Pete Namlook under his Air alias.
There are also moments where Latreille pauses the lullaby. On "2-9-1," he douses us with a glass of cold water as he locks into a 140 BPM groove. And on the album's two longest tracks, "Color Me'' and "Your Own Power," Latreeillee deploys kick drums hefty enough to shake you back to life from a chill out room couch, but it's far from a full wake-up call. On "Color Me" each listen unveils some new blooming lead line hung over the quiet wash of the pads while the reverb on the title track makes it feel like the whole track might disappear if you blink.
Your Own Power is a series of variations on a theme. In an interview, Latreille explained his philosophy on production: "Electronic music, as I know it and as I imagine it, is the experience of being able to set up parameters that allow experimentation and that will take us to interesting places." Your Own Power takes early '90s trance as its starting parameter and proceeds to squeeze every ounce of emotion out of these well-worn formulas. These are 9 songs that sparkle with contemporary sound design even as they harken back to the ageless feels of a orbital sunrise.
Tracklist01. Winged
02. Oyl
03. Shkrub
04. Color Me
05. 2-9-1
06. The Tower feat. Ex-Terrestrial
07. The Village
08. Your Own Power
09. Liminal