- An intricately layered, kaleidoscopic voyage through different flavours of house, world music and jazz.
- Viken Arman's approach to dance music is about carefully meshing his progressive, collagist approach to dance music with sounds of the past. On his previous five EPs, the French producer-DJ was a sonic shaman of sorts, fusing obscure melodies from his Armenian heritage with lucid, spacey beats. In more recent times, he's been soaking up inspiration from Berlin's underground club scene. In a track-by-track breakdown with DMY, Arman recounted how reconnecting with the rave scene and channelling that energy into his productions helped inspire his debut LP Alone Together. There were times the dance floor would contribute in more direct ways than expected. To wit: all of the vocals on "Last Night" are the recorded and sampled "nonsensical ramblings" of an eccentric stranger turned close friend who crashed at Arman's place after one of those epic nights out. This openness to spontaneity and raw inspiration culminates in a intricately layered, kaleidoscopic voyage through different flavours of house, world music and jazz.
Armed with modular synths and a MPC 2000 XL, Arman sampling's style on Alone Together bridges the already small gap between house and hip-hop. Lush, reversed pads along with finely sliced guitar, keys and vocal samples make opener "You With Me" a bustling collage of rousing, dreamy sounds. The vocal refrain comes together like the reassuring embrace of a loved one. Elsewhere, the richly textured "Night In Tunisia" is underpinned by jazzy elements taken from the Charlie Parker track of the same name. Open hi-hats sizzle as a brass section generates friction, endlessly coiling around itself like a techno rendition of Rimsky Korsakov's "Flight of the Bumblebee."
Arman's tradition of sampling Armenian music returns here, but this time it's not exactly front and centre. Instead it's sprinkled in smaller doses on each track. Take "Lonely Raver"—there's a vintage sample of an Armenian choir tucked into the middle of the track. On "Can't Do Without You," a plucked Armenian instrument warps time in the breakdown, these fleeting nods to his heritage show up like genetic memory encoded into each track's DNA.
Arman covers a vast array of moods and atmospheres on Alone Together. The melodyless "Last Night" is a bone-dry assortment of densely packed micro-percussion and dark, sonorous bass hits. It's an ominous body-to-body sweatbox, where the drums sound like drinks being shaken and heavy sidechaining rattles the ribs. The bustling "Kiki" is all-analogue. Layered tape loops shuffle along at varying time signatures before a staggered piano riff adds to the urgency. It shouldn't work, but it does, and the combination of these unlikely elements ends up providing the most intriguing and distinct moment on the album.
When Alone Together aims heavenward, it hits the mark with molecular precision. The album's centrepiece "Lonely Raver" overflows with all the infectious jubilation and soul of an Avalanches cut. Whistling melodies and keys that chirp like birds flutter joyfully above a crisp, driving beat while the gradual opening of the filter evokes the image of some tentative clubgoer finally immersing themselves in the music and letting loose on the dancefloor. It hones in on the fact that alongside the carefree movement of locked in ravers, there's a warm, fuzzy and more personal party going on within each of their heads.
Moments like "Can't Do Without You" and "You Don’t Hurt Me," with their homages to the French House era, succinctly sum up Alone Together and its intentions. It's a collection of spectrum-scanning rave tunes that pay tribute to the act of raving itself. In the DMY interview Arman described "Can't Do Without You" as "...a special nod to the iconic figure of life, Philippe Zdar, better known as Cassius."
With its sunny strings, rolling bassline and crystalline shine, this is French house through and through, a fitting ode to the late legend. By the time the title track closes out the show with its tender whirrings and cleansing energies, it's easy to understand his story of rave-as-renewal. Arman in turn, comes out of his debut album sounding renewed as a heavyweight of new old-school house music. Talking to Electronic Groove about what he wanted the listeners takeaway from the album to be, he said, "Be free and go rave". If Alone Together isn't enough of an incentive to do exactly that, then I'm not quite sure what else is.
Tracklist01. You With Me
02. Lonely Raver
03. Vibrations
04. A Night In Tunisia
05. Last Night
06. You Don't Hurt Me
07. Kiki
08. Can't Do Without You
09. Alone Together