The Perfect Beat of Møme’s and the Love Story in the “Flashback FM”

Notes on Møme’s and Ricky Ducati’s album “Flashback FM” (2021)

By Elena Vassilieva

Møme, the French enfant terrible in the electronic music world, and the Canadian musician from L.A. Ricky Ducati released their long-awaited collaborative album “Flashback FM” at midnight, February 12, 2021. Møme, known for his vigorous and attractive beat and his creative versatility, is one of the brightest producers on Earth today, ever since his momentous artistic endeavour “Panorama” saw the light in 2016. The terra-australis-inspired “Panorama” was perceived by the musical critics as an overnight success of “petit génie de l’electro” (RTS, la radio du Sud), but even his earlier EPs “Eclipse” (2014) and “Cosmopolitan” (2015) are a splendid body of meticulous work that is equally refreshing. The classically trained Møme (Jérémy Souillart), who seems to have had a very strict and rigorous piano teacher and a very open-minded and encouraging guitar mentor at the school of music in Nice, acquired all the necessary skills to create music according to the rules common in classical music, but as he pleases. And the result speaks for itself. Right from the beginning, he had decided to use only his own samples. He plays piano and his favourite guitar; he records sounds found in natural and social environment, and inserts them into his French Touch-ed and Chillwaved House that is an aromatic bouquet of elements from various musical genres and styles. Just take a look at his last year production of Mr. J. Medeiros’ “No Singles” EP, which is on my list of the best musical projects of 2020, where Møme’s beautifully intense instrumental piece “Japan Mental” complements Medeiros’ work so nicely. Or listen to his very engaging soundtrack to the Alpine movie “Shelter” (2019), and you’ll know right away what I mean. He is a serious competitor and rival to any electronic dance music creator, even the seasoned one.

Their Paris-L.A. collaboration started about 3 years ago, although Møme and Ricky Ducati (then busy with his project Midnight to Monaco) had already created together the popular “Alive,” which adorns “Panorama,” and “Sail Away,” part of the fascinating EP L.A. “Møment II” (2018). The “Flashback FM,” “a mixture of the retro and futuristic vibes” (Møme), was envisioned as a radio station, which plays all the 15 tracks that serve as a narrative space, where life of their characters evolves. An excellent conceptualist, Møme pays attention to every single detail in the conceptual design of the album. All the songs are connected with each other sonically through this radio theme and also through the characters’ sentiments wrapped in a flashback. The lyrics, a fruit of Ducati’s imagination (with Sonny Sachdeva and Nicole d’Anna’s occasional help), are a realistic depiction of life; some are easy and light-hearted (e.g., “She’s Gone,” “Flamingo”), some are earnest, reflecting on the conflictual side of life (“They Said,” “I Know”). The characters’ emotions, their complicated relationships, their search for happiness, the other, and home are almost Sisyphian, and are a significant part of the lyrical content. The synthwave-y “In Control” is one of the best songs on the album lyrically. The way the character is brooding over the complex existential problems, while driving with the autopilot turned on in the given time and space, is compelling and profound.

After the release of the video clips for the most vibrant songs on the album “Got It Made” and “I Know,” they shifted the focus to the two male heroes. “Got It Made” and also “Friends” have a boost of inspiration from Daft Punk. The positive and pulsating energy of “Got It Made” is so strong and forceful that one ends up returning to the song again and again, and dancing to it till s/he drops. And it’s hard to resist Møme’s perfect beat here. In the superb video, directed by Pauma, out of nowhere, in the middle of the deserted and futuristic city, two handsome characters appear. They are described by Møme as robots, although they aren’t your ordinary machines, not the sort of Kraftwerk’s robots, either, who are reduced to mere tools that would repeat: “We are the robots. We are the robots. Я твой слуга. Я твой работник.” On the contrary, the Daft Punkesque, humanlike creatures, are so happily in love that they seem to notice only each other, whilst fully engaged in a playfully seductive dance, wonderfully choreographed by Ablaye Diop, Louise Adj, Manon Bouquet, and Abel Djelali. This love story, set in the colourful, digital cityscape and Martian landscape, creates a very special uplifting atmosphere and conveys the memorable impression of happiness. Now, what kind of robot is capable of doing that?

The mood in the song and video clip “I Know” is quite different due to the circumstances the characters are forced to endure. The lovely playfulness of “Got It Made” is replaced here by the tragic darkness of impossibility of the physical touch and intimacy. The love story ends in the literal (in the clip) physical and emotional crush of the characters. “I Know” is the album’s pièce de resistance, as it’s more original than the Daft Punk-driven “Got It Made,” also the emotional depth of the song is very moving. The robotlike heroes are a metaphor for the progressing digitalisation of our existence and society where social interaction is being more and more pushed and transferred into the virtual realities. But we are still humans, aren’t we, and mustn’t forget it. It’s also a reminder to us of what role a human being has in this universe. The question whether the AI would ever be able to replicate human emotions remains open, though I doubt it would. But the hypothesis that humans could/would become half-machines in the future seems dangerously plausible, and I dread it.

Of course, there are also songs here where the sketches of the female portraits are made, but they are not as vivid, let alone sensual, as the male ones. The female who just left the character in the rhythmic and breezy “She’s Gone” or even the sweet “Flamingo,” an energetic, warm, and humid song that has some sonic references to Møme’s “Club Sandwich,” both make a fleeting impression. “She’s Gone” sounds like a variation of “Cantare,” I’m curious how the song will be received by the Latin American audience? The Pitbull’s ft. Lenier version of “Cantare” has more than 5 million views since January 2021. And it seems like the “Flashback FM” creators may have had precisely this aim in mind, going mainstream, that is, when choosing the period soundscape. The song “Moves” is slightly tired and uninspired, although stylistically it is that sort of song you would really want to slow-dance to, as in the 80s, but melodically it is so unremarkable that you would wonder whether both artists got out of breath at that point and decided to take a break. I wish they had Vladimir Cosma’s “Reality,” performed by Richard Sanderson for the movie “La Boum” (1980), as a Vorbild, while writing the song, then the desired effect would’ve been there. And the effect of Il n’est ni bon ni mauvais would’ve been avoided. But perhaps that was precisely the desired effect? Also, lyrically, the rhyming of ‘money’ and ‘honey’ is a huge ‘no,’ unless it’s a deliberate move to stress this paradigm, but then it’s utterly unromantic, isn’t it? Remember “Can’t Buy Me Love” by the Beatles?

Ricky Ducati offers mostly smart vocal execution on the album. His vocal style is particularly gripping in the triad “They Said,” “I Know,” and “Got It Made”, the key songs that are holding the whole album together and the listener under a spell, and he is very impressive in “They Said.” In good trim are his vocals in the dancey “My Attention,” the song that is reminiscent of the Weeknd. I didn’t expect everyone’s darling to land here, but maybe my ears playing tricks on me? Whatever the case is, it’s a sprightly and lively variation. But shall Ducati wish to add more vibrant flexibility to his vocal space in the future, that would be of benefit. Møme’s response to the lyrical and vocal side of the songs is being expressed best in his tremendously fine guitar lines, which are essential part of the sonic narrative in the songs in this saga of distances, longing, roads, car rides, radio, broken hearts, friendship, and love. All the instrumental tracks are very fanciful and captivating. “The Final Dream” is a lush and elegant piece of the synthwave, filled with joy and optimism, despite the somewhat sad title.

This is a formidable and tidily produced album, conceptualised as the period sound (of the 80s and the 90s), that is meant to be played on the radio, but at the same time, it’s a little bit disappointing that with this choice of the musical style they limited themselves greatly to a parade of the cliché-pieces, such as “She’s Gone” or “Flamingo.” It’s a pity, as it seems to me that because of this Møme couldn’t play here to his full artistic potential. On the other hand, it’s understandable if they want to experiment and please a different listener than someone like me. But, luckily, they have the songs on “Flashback FM” that I also like.

Congratulations, Møme and Ricky!

(written on the snowy Shining Sea bikeway on Cape Cod on February 15, 2021)

Tuning to the Sylvan Esso Frequency

By Elena Vassilieva

On Sylvan Esso’s feminism and activism, “Radio” and “Free Love.”

Photo: © Elena Vassilieva, The Playground Free Love, 2020

It’s March of 2015, and the Tiny Desk concert at NPR’s headquarters in Washington, D.C., has just begun. The young woman with a funny bun on the very top of her head seems to have no bones at all when she is making waves-like dance moves. I’m curious how on earth she is able to be so rhythmically precise and light as a feather while wearing her bulky white platform sneakers? “But if you, guys, want it to, like, do a little moving together, just imagine you are the seaweed in the Ursula’s cave,” she urges the audience to join her, making everyone laugh at once. Who is that whimsical beauty, the Moominvalley’s Little My-like character she is portraying, who can be affable and bold, smart and naughty, kind and subversive?

For a very long time, I thought Sylvan Esso equals Amelia Meath solely. Oddly enough, I could only hear her (en)chanting, with morning crispiness, voice that was singing about the everyday of a woman that is down-to-earth and yet full of daydreams: “I’m the song that you can’t get out of your head.” A woman that is yearning for the simplest pleasures on Earth, say, a warm embrace of the one she is in love, or a cup of very strong coffee brewed in a percolator in the middle of an ordinary and busy day. That level-headed woman would rather confront than break things and flee, or inflict self-harm. “Oh if my ears were as big as the ocean, I could hear all your devotion. Play it right!” She would run away in her imagination only, just for the sake of her self-indulgent playfulness, provided, she has a worthy company. She is a young woman of an independent spirit. At least, these are the clues I gathered from the raw, stream-of-consciousness-like lyrics on Sylvan Esso’s earlier albums.

When I discovered Sylvan Esso through that NPR Tiny Desk Concert series, I had been a passionate Wagnerian, but a novice in the territory of electronic music, let alone its subgenre of folktronica. Thanks to their introduction, I immediately became quite a devoted lover of that genre, expanding my cultural horizon further. Nearly right after I got acquainted with Sylvan Esso, I also dared to step inside the magical musical box of the celebrated and influential Australian electronica artists Cut Copy who have been on the musical scene since 2001. Only then, I began to see and hear Amelia’s partner, the talented Nicholas Sanborn, the man behind another music project, Made of Oak. Of course, one may find it perplexing, but the truth is that Sanborn’s sound arrived to my ears through the Cut Copy’s founder and adventurous talent, Dan Whitford. Nick and Dan share a very similar taste for rhythmic textures and beats, very often exotic in the best sense of the word, say, African and Aboriginal. Needless to say, what a delightful surprise and joy it was to have Cut Copy’s remix of Sylvan Esso’s Radio in the early June of 2018.

The song’s harsh critique of the political maneuvering inside the music industry resonated well with fans, fellow musicians, and, ironically, even radio DJs. The main idea of the song was to show the music industry’s demanding and very often unfair attitude towards musicians, and also to highlight the fact that the mainstream music is being played on radio stations much more often than independent music. Sylvan Esso protested strongly at the situation of injustice and inequality. Although Cut Copy didn’t say anywhere explicitly that they were driven by the same idea of unfairness, one still may interpret their willingness to make a remix of the song as their wish to join the protest. Moreover, the remix is anything but a mainstream piece, displaying a smart attire of attractive hooks and unexpected turns. Just recently, Dan Whitford continued the topic by questioning Spotify’s position towards the artists in terms of their economic wellbeing, let alone Spotify’s CEO’s reasoning behind it. Daniel Ek gave a surprisingly preposterous suggestion to musicians for improving the situation: Make more songs, and you’ll earn more money. It does sound nearly exactly as the first line and the chorus of Radio: “Gimme a new single! Make me a new baby! Slave to the radio!” The most brazen words in the song had to be bleeped/edited, of course, in order to be played by radio stations freely, without getting complaints from all the puritanical listeners. Should the artists take the ill-fitting advice from Spotify’s CEO, it is inevitable that the quality of their songwriting would suffer tremendously, argues Dan Whitford, and the platform will be flooded by the substandard or derivative product in no time at all.

Political or apolitical Cut Copy’s remix of Radio might be, at any rate, it succeeded in making me as a listener to have another fresh look at the original version of the song and Nick Sanborn as a dexterous and very engaging producer. His minimalism, combined with his feminism (in a similar way John Lennon famously declared that he was a feminist) and egalitarian philosophical outlook, is quite impressive. Yes, it is, once one realizes how careful and smart his production technique and style towards Amelia’s vocals and lyrics are. No wonder the naïve listener (at least, in myself) sees and hears only Amelia at first because Sanborn as a producer deliberately and fully focuses his attention on her, in order to highlight the conceptual side of their songs. Even when he opts for some experiments, e.g., making a track sound as if it were being played on an antique pathephone, he is approaching it with great care and consideration so that it wouldn’t interfere with the colorful palette of Amelia’s voice, but also with her rhythm, tone, and intonation. After all, it’s still a nonconformist frontwoman’s repertoire, nearly always showcasing its daring and anti-puritan aesthetics that stretches easily even to her own body image. The “folk girl” who would like you to take off guard with her unshaved armpits, a ring in her nose, Spice Girls’ shoes, sex-appealing dance moves, and the free spirit of Sylvan Esso.

“I’ve always been interested in breaking binaries,” said Amelia in the recent conversation with Bob Boilen during presentation of their new album Free Love at NPR. She also not that long ago bravely made her bisexuality publicly known, the fact that gives an additional meaning to their, as they stated themselves, polysemic Free Love which is about “the anxiety of being in the world and how to love freer,” echoes Sanborn supportively. “But it can mean so many things depending on your mood,” adds Amelia. Each out of the ten songs composed under the conceptual umbrella of Free Love has its own message, be it a social or environmental one, such as a speculative vision of the fragile and cruel world in What If or complicated human relations in Free, the lifestyle of an artist in Train. Or a message about one’s emotional state, where one is flirtatiously encouraging the other to open the heart in “the unapologetically hooky and catchy” (Nick) Ferris Wheel or about the uncertainty and anxiousness of the falling and being in love in Ring when the relationship turns out to be a trap. Or another, this time amorous, nod to radio in Frequency where the character, while being in the woods and among flowers, in the middle of nowhere, is romantically longing for the other who is thousands miles away and with whom she isn’t acquainted at all, but who excites her imagination so much that she happily lives fully immersed in that desirous fantasy. Sylvan Esso’s long-time friend and a true renaissance man, Moses Sumney, directed a video for the song, in which he beautifully translated the relationship into the interracial and same-gender interplay. Or the message can simply be a contemplative state of being with a good dose of silliness, such as the mischievous heroine in Runaway, Make It Easy, and in the joyous ode to NYC Rooftop Dancing.

Although both Amelia and Nick admitted that they have matured over the years, especially in how they make choices for encrypting different messages in their songs, they are still very fond of the youthfulness and bashfulness of the character they are creating. It has that feel to it of the “Victorian teenage, letter writing, romance”, says Amelia self-deprecatingly. It’s a character that is interested in the daily life, its societal, political, and emotional experiences, and is exhibiting an “emotional range of our lives,” as Nick succinctly describes it during their conversation with TJ Morgan on KEXP. “We are feeling the rhythm of the day,” he continues, even “the mood of the weather is influencing our songwriting, but we also inspire each other.” “It’s like that with us,” says Amelia, putting her hands one into another, showing how intimate their creative process in the studio is. “Feelings first,” she laughs. “We have developed our own language in the studio,” adds Nick, “right to the point when it may appear completely incomprehensible to the outsider, but we understand each other just by looking at each other.” “It’s a lot of back and forth about what’s working and what’s not working. And if something is not working, it’s us arguing and then figuring out why it’s not working, and what the song actually wants. It’s almost like the song becomes its own other person in the room that we are trying to discover.” Aside to their close creative partnership, they are inspired by their newly built studio in the North Carolina woods filled with toads and blue-tailed skinks, but also by as “simple” an instrument as Nick’s modular synthesizer, which never stops surprising him.

No wonder the production on Free Love is a splendid and curious piece of boldly crafted work that gives you an impression of one long and venturesome day in the character’s life. The admirable thing is that the lyrics, melody, and production don’t divorce here at all at any instance, but instead coincide in their purpose to illustrate the heroine’s feelings and thoughts. All songs contain tiny different quotes, references or discursive fragments, be it from a (sub)genre of the House music or just a short dialogue such as in Train, or a monologic declaration “I love you” in Free, the song that is very evocative of Joni Mitchell’s aesthetic. The vocal style in the sparkling and bubbly “Look at – look at – look at – I can see everything” line in Rooftop Dancing is a gracious nod to an Australian artist Elle Graham from Woodes, who was supporting Sylvan Esso on their tour in Melbourne in January of 2018. The children’s laughter and rhyming in the song, a sample taken from the archives at the Smithsonian, reminds the listener of the future to which we as a society strive, where there is a chance for everyone to have a happy childhood and equal rights. “Sunlight beaming out over the bridge / We’re all running, outrunning death.” The Sylvan Esso’s character is a rebellious and justice seeking American girl who finds it utterly unbearable to stand at the side. It isn’t therefore surprising at all that today’s problems in American society are being reflected in their songwriting. Like their character, Amelia and Nick aren’t shy to join public protests to support equal rights for LGBTQ community or to encourage people to vote for change. As it happened this year, on October 31, when they took part in the “I Am Change” march in Graham, NC, where, to their horror and dismay, the police pepper-sprayed the peaceful rally that included small children. They also expressed their skepticism about digital platforms, e.g., Spotify, “owned by terrifying conglomerates” (Amelia) that are exploiting artists and their fans. “I’m rethinking my relationship to capitalism right now,” she sighs. The keynote that will probably find place in the everyday of their fearless and freethinking American girl on their next album.

(written on October 4, 2020 in the middle of Atlantic, on my way to Martha’s Vineyard)