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Though it has only been a few years since DJ F16 Falcon started meddling in music production, he now has a consistent enough string of releases and remixes to his name to let us frame the style and the method: a gritty postmodern take on clearly identified genres – techno, industrial and dub – operating as some kind of meme-fueled, doom scrolling Bill Laswell.
Orange & Blue, that originally started as a set of improvised jams and eventually turned into a coherent album – probably his most consistent release to date – blurs and clears the picture all at once: not only are the six songs clever pastiches of an even broader range of genres – Big Beat, No Wave, you name it – but it also shines a bright light on the common denominator of all these references. It’s that equal dose of free improvisation and pop writing, the very same equation that underlies the music of A Certain Ratio or Coil.
This may sound a little too serious to qualify such a non-serious release, but DJ F16 Falcon’s goofiness, his dubious puns, his light-hearted tone are not here to make up for a lack of precision and tightness: no matter how silly Bienvenue En Trance Profonde sounds it is nonetheless a seriously produced, heavy dancefloor stomper. And Je Suis Ton Chien is a genuinely moving love song. Limelight and the title song both qualify for the most idiosyncratic tunes on Orange & Blue though: two dark and acid-drench one-man-band jams with a steady beat. Jazz for the roaring 2020’s?
Recorded in Frespech (Gascogne) in 2022
Mastering by Guillaume Lespinasse
Art Direction by Fregant Cloarec