See the Sea

Vitalic - See the Sea (Red)

Every single instrument from Vitalic's debut OK Cowboy - even the voices - were synthesized. With rare exceptions like Trahison (featured here in French film Naissance des Pieuvres), songs don't fade in or out with a human's touch, they power up and down in rapid combustion.

Four years later Pascal Arbez still owns the Formula One formula with
Flashmob, but as dummy mag says, he's "found scope in disco that the sleazy ice of electroclash did not allow for." Vitalic's disco - the Ridley Scott/20JFG version - finds Justice and Glass Candy tied together at the wrist, thrashing across a strobe-lit Studio 2054 basement with switchblades. Instead of orchestral flourishes and Wurlitzers, we get acid squelches and seas of straight up hot magma.




Vitalic - See the Sea (Blue)

HRO's take: "I think Vitalic made electro techno music before there were computers. Have only heard them on the Party Monster soundtrack, back when I was trying to ‘learn what it would be like to move to NYC and become part of a relevant party scene.’ [In the video for single "Your Disco Song"] there is a broad who has a disco ball surgically attached to her skull. Think she ‘lives to party’ and she just wants to ‘disco so fucking hard.’

Indeed. While his robotic French contemporaries lust over humanity, Vitalic embraces the first pop genre built on synthesizers with a cold, industrial precision we can still dance to - even if the hott claps aren't from real hands.

Flashmob is available now.

photos: Neil Krug (check this bro out)