Can you think, dance, and dream at the same time? We get to debut a new video for Concubine, and it’s the perfect time to look at what this duo has accomplished in 2015.
Concubine, the project from Noah Pred and Rick Bull, is never cold, but it’s always expressing several sentiments simultaneously. It’s at once hypnotic and cerebral, visceral and abstract. Smartly-calibrated percussion politely swings atop future-prog funk flights of fancy. It’ll get a little cheeky, but within a song framework that’s been obsessively constructed. And the album itself is put together similarly. Driving dance tracks are effortless interspersed with ambient tracks that keep the dynamic energy moving – rather than feeling like incidental excursions. It is relentlessly high quality, always at a level of polish – music made by proper gentlemen who nonetheless know how to have a good time. By the time the synth sirens start going off in Entropia, you’re ready for a night out in Blade Runner’s Michelin-starred restaurant and … see where the night leads.
This is exactly the sort of music you’d expect to form when two richly-experienced producers combine efforts. Australian-born Rick Bull is better known as Deepchild, the versatile and prolific house and techno DJ and producer with outings on Get Physical and Leisure System and more. Noah Pred we’ve seen round these parts before; the Thoughtless Music label chief has bridged Canada and Berlin with prescient good taste while remaining productive with his own music. (See Juno-nominated Third Culture, for one.)
Both artists also have spoken about how this production (and subsequent live show) helped each of them through tough life turns – it’s deeply attentive music making as therapy.
And so Concubine has been widely visible in critical attention, but has also generally flown under the radar of crowds looking for more quickly-digestible snacks. This is a dance album that demands some processing – some time to settle into the details. It doesn’t stray too far from its references in technique; it elevates those techniques to peak performance, which requires you to sharpen your ears. They’re producers’ producers, and this is the record that fits that, a fleshed out full-length in the desert of EPs.
Clearly, then, if you have escaped downloading it already, go do it. It’s free from the mini-site for the self-titled debut, and you can pay what you want on Bandcamp – just the means of consuming music other DJs, producers, and enthusiasts now prefer.
https://concubinesound.bandcamp.com/releases
http://www.concubine.cc/
What we get now is a music video – premiering here exclusively on CDM.
Concubine – Luxend [Video Edit] from Concubine Sound on Vimeo.
The official video for Luxend from the debut Concubine album – download it free: http://www.concubine.cc
https://www.facebook.com/concubinesound
https://soundcloud.com/concubine-berlin
https://concubinesound.bandcamp.com
https://twitter.com/concubinesound
http://www.concubine.ccMastered by Roofless Creations: http://www.rooflesscreations.com
Video created with Generate Pro: http://www.generateapp.com
Also on YouTube if you prefer to share there.
Happily, it takes the record’s funkiest outing, Luxend. The film is a rainbow-hued spin in the woods, monster vision rave style. It feels more improvised than the production of the music, perhaps, but it also has a unique real-time source.
The video was created live with Generate, the new iOS and Android app that lets you reimagine video creating and sharing by applying spontaneous creative filters. Instead of the edit and edit and render workflow, Generate is part paint tool, part video, made for in-the-moment videos – and certainly worth a look on its own soon. Noah and Rick are evidently part of the artist program, using the app and providing feedback.
Rick and Noah did an all-hardware set live at Panorama Bar in June; I’ll be keen to see where they drive this project next. Stay tuned.
SoundCloud / Bandcamp: