PRICE:
$17.00
IN STOCK
ARTIST
TITLE
Sans Dormir
FORMAT
CD

LABEL
CATALOG #
CLICHE 053CD CLICHE 053CD
GENRE
RELEASE DATE
12/10/2013

Bot'Ox is a duo formed in 2005 by Frenchmen Julien Briffaz and Cosmo Vitelli. After a road-trip to Babylon (Babylon by Car, their first album released in 2010), they come back to haunt dark clubs with a second album, Sans Dormir. The album consists of 10 tracks, mostly sung, some of which have already been released in the form of singles and remixes. For the second album, the battered Cadillac comes to a stop in the parking lot of a deserted nightclub, as suggested by the visuals presented with the project, abandoned French clubs as photographed by Phillipe Lebruman. Opening with a spectral visit from downstairs, "Basement Love," the album continues with "Grands Boulevards," an instinctive, nocturnal trip where rockabilly guitars rub elbows with Moogs while giving an account of obsessions, recurring dreams and waking nightmares. "2.4.1" speaks of disillusionment in love while leaning towards soft-rock. "Another Form of Fatigue" tries to tame the migraine with a dubby feel. "Back from the Suburbs" is a twisted electro-rock ballad. "Goodbye Fantasy" is an anti-declaration of love with pro-British pop accents. "The Face of Another" is a kind of dissatisfied, sexually wandering disco-pop while "Night Stuntman" is a psychedelic credit roll for a movie with no happy ending. The sweet "Unfinished Business" makes an attempt at reconciliation, before the synthesizers all emerge for the title-track. In the cold but heartfelt voices of the artists is a meeting of male and female intimacy, which sometimes replies to each other ("Unfinished Business"). These voices include Mark Kerr, Anna Jean and Judy Nylon (of the legendary punk band Snatch). They are joined here by Samy Osta and Foremost Poets, the iconic trans-Atlantic voice of underground house/techno. The two members of Bot'Ox are prominent figures of electronic music "made in France." Julien Briffaz was a long-time part of the house and techno duo Tekel. Cosmo Vitelli earned his reputation as a producer during the early French Touch years, remixing or being remixed by De Crecy, Cassius and Daft Punk. Cosmo Vitelli and Julien Briffaz came together by indulging their common obsessions: an aesthetic mechanical universe, marked by the mythology of the automobile, the paradoxical fragility of its bodywork, and a fanatical mutating vision of music. This highway alternates car chases, anxiety-filled passages through customs and forest walks at dusk.