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Empire Soldiers

by Brain Damage Meets Vibronics

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  • Streaming + Download

    Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    Purchasable with gift card

      €4 EUR  or more

     

  • Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album

    With a strong background of countless LPs, collaborations and live sessions all around the world to their credit, we could think that both entities have little left to prove. Yet, they both have much in common, particularly a certain ever-growing and untiring creativity, but also an undeniable sense of challenge, concept and constant questioning.

    The issue that is here discussed extends way beyond a mere meeting: the presentations between the artists have been made a long time ago, through lots of remixes and co-bill live sessions. This momentum is now more a matter of the transient collision of their respective universes, for a live tour and a epic LP entitled “Empire Soldiers”, giving rise to a third entity, unclassi ed until then. Vibronics & Brain Damage teamed up and decided to come together around a concept, a narrative inspiration that will undoubtedly surprise: Anglo-Caribbean and Franco-African soldiers’ experience during the rst world war. The academic historian, poet & songwriter, Madu Messenger, uses the product of years of study and research, to develop, within that very framework, a series of texts on some key topics such as travel, friendship, war and death.

    This project thus aims at offering a learning experience about this often little-known period of our history. It will draw troubling parallels with some more contemporary considerations on culture shocks, immigration, imperial powers and horrors of war that still affects all of us today. Following their re ection on this sensitive issue, the musicians of the project’s – all of many other origins, AngloFrench, Jamaican or Asian – move towards a cultural alignment, opposite to certain enslaving and communitarian models. Brain Damage and Vibronics’ digital reggae-dub comes in different colors throughout many in uences, completing the best of their know- how, with the spontaneousness of the collaboration & human experience. The two producers and dub pioneers, Steve Vibronics & Martin Nathan, almost transplant their respective studios on stage, for a performance that is anything but a confrontation, competition or other kind of battle.

    What we are talking about here is more like a sharing and pooling
    the know-how of two artists with distinct sensibilities, not rised against one another, but symbiotically serving an aesthetics, a feeling, an (hi)story. Once again, here is all about struggling against the operated machines’ rigour, to strike back with a reggae-dub, sometimes slick, then distorted, hypnotic and repetitive, yet always surprising, with the help of tenebrous reverbs, unlikely echoes and daring mixes that made their live sessions a success in the past 15 years.

    Vibronics’ style is also here truly identi ed through the appearance of the two vocalists Madu Messenger & M Parvez, whose so characteric & complementary voices, embody the concept of this collaboration: a re ection based around the British-Caribbean and Franco-African soldiers’ experience during the rst world war. For his part, Brain Damage, makes available to this project, his famous technical crew, to provide every night an iron sound mixed by the faithful engineer Brice Marin – but also a meticulous scenography, with an amazing light design operated by Yan Arnaud, superbly emphasing the musical & conceptual point of the project.

    Finally, even if each aspect seems to have been considered and jewelled upstream, if nothing seems to have been left to chance, a certain fragility remains however, re ecting all the joint spontaneousness, and constantly reminding us that this project is de nitely atypical and inherently ephemeral.

    Includes unlimited streaming of Empire Soldiers via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    ... more
    ships out within 5 days
    Purchasable with gift card

      €10 EUR or more 

     

  • 2 vinyls
    Record/Vinyl + Digital Album

    With a strong background of countless LPs, collaborations and live sessions all around the world to their credit, we could think that both entities have little left to prove. Yet, they both have much in common, particularly a certain ever-growing and untiring creativity, but also an undeniable sense of challenge, concept and constant questioning.

    The issue that is here discussed extends way beyond a mere meeting: the presentations between the artists have been made a long time ago, through lots of remixes and co-bill live sessions. This momentum is now more a matter of the transient collision of their respective universes, for a live tour and a epic LP entitled “Empire Soldiers”, giving rise to a third entity, unclassi ed until then. Vibronics & Brain Damage teamed up and decided to come together around a concept, a narrative inspiration that will undoubtedly surprise: Anglo-Caribbean and Franco-African soldiers’ experience during the rst world war. The academic historian, poet & songwriter, Madu Messenger, uses the product of years of study and research, to develop, within that very framework, a series of texts on some key topics such as travel, friendship, war and death.

    This project thus aims at offering a learning experience about this often little-known period of our history. It will draw troubling parallels with some more contemporary considerations on culture shocks, immigration, imperial powers and horrors of war that still affects all of us today. Following their re ection on this sensitive issue, the musicians of the project’s – all of many other origins, AngloFrench, Jamaican or Asian – move towards a cultural alignment, opposite to certain enslaving and communitarian models. Brain Damage and Vibronics’ digital reggae-dub comes in different colors throughout many in uences, completing the best of their know- how, with the spontaneousness of the collaboration & human experience. The two producers and dub pioneers, Steve Vibronics & Martin Nathan, almost transplant their respective studios on stage, for a performance that is anything but a confrontation, competition or other kind of battle.

    What we are talking about here is more like a sharing and pooling
    the know-how of two artists with distinct sensibilities, not rised against one another, but symbiotically serving an aesthetics, a feeling, an (hi)story. Once again, here is all about struggling against the operated machines’ rigour, to strike back with a reggae-dub, sometimes slick, then distorted, hypnotic and repetitive, yet always surprising, with the help of tenebrous reverbs, unlikely echoes and daring mixes that made their live sessions a success in the past 15 years.

    Vibronics’ style is also here truly identi ed through the appearance of the two vocalists Madu Messenger & M Parvez, whose so characteric & complementary voices, embody the concept of this collaboration: a re ection based around the British-Caribbean and Franco-African soldiers’ experience during the rst world war. For his part, Brain Damage, makes available to this project, his famous technical crew, to provide every night an iron sound mixed by the faithful engineer Brice Marin – but also a meticulous scenography, with an amazing light design operated by Yan Arnaud, superbly emphasing the musical & conceptual point of the project.

    Finally, even if each aspect seems to have been considered and jewelled upstream, if nothing seems to have been left to chance, a certain fragility remains however, re ecting all the joint spontaneousness, and constantly reminding us that this project is de nitely atypical and inherently ephemeral.

    Includes unlimited streaming of Empire Soldiers via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    ... more

    Sold Out

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Flanders 04:26 video
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Letter Dub 05:34
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Siege of Dub 03:49
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Youts to Dub 03:36
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Do U Dub? 04:25
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credits

released October 14, 2013

Label: Jarring Effects

Mastering: Brice Marin

Producteur: Jarring Effects Label

Editeur: Jarring Effects Label

Artistes: Braind Damage, Vibronics, M. Parvez, Madu Messenger, Sir Jean, Mohammed El Amraoui

Auteurs: Mohammed Parvez, Carl Arthur, Jean Gomis, Mohammed El Amraoui.

Compositeurs: Martin Nathan, Stephen Gibbs

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about

Brain Damage France

With more than 14 albums & 750+ concerts, Brain Damage ventures for 20 years now, into many artistic & stylistic experiments. Acclaimed as one of the founders of the French dub scene in the late 1990s, he soon appears as a major influence for a whole generation of musicians. But the artist is definitely not among those who forever rest on the models he founded, and he constantly reinvents himself. ... more

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