Etienne Jaumet

Scheduled to drop in early October, Night Music is a truly international and cross-cultural, futuristic concept album. For Etienne Jaumet, one half of Kraut electro group Zombie Zombie, and folk band the Married Monk, this is a solo debut, and one can't ask for more than to collaborate with techno pioneer Carl Craig for a premier outing. The disc is credited as being "recorded and composed" by Jaumet, with "mix directed and imagined" by Carl Craig, but one imagines that the collaborative process was somewhat more involved than Etienne handing over the master tracks and allowing Craig some time for his electronic alchemy. The result is delicate, synthetic nod-out music for analog junkies who crave the warm thump of the 808 and the soft crackle of a Prophet 600 or Micromoog ― incidentally borrowed for the project from Flop and Jay, respectively. Wrapped around the electronic heart of this album are the twisted acoustic simulacrum of synthetic violins and saxophones, no doubt originating from some analog black box, but they give these meditative compositions an organic essence that's difficult to capture with electronic instruments, and I suspect this is where Craig really worked his magic.