French musician Xavier Soquet returns this week with his excellent synth-pop project Orchid�e Noire! Soquet’s new single La m�moire des souvenirs, roughly “The memory of memories”, contains the tracks “J N V I” and “Instrumentale“, and is currently available via his Bandcamp page. In addition, the artist’s video offerings set the tracks to clips from Fernand L�ger‘s 1944 film La fille au coeur prefabrique, as well as Oskar Schlemmer‘s extraordinary Das Triadische Ballet.
Soquet crafts a Romantic melancholy from his minimal synth wave approach, underpinning “J N V I” with a deeply sublimated post-punk urgency, while “Instrumentale” simmers with a stark, retro techno vibe. The former, matched with edited clips from L�ger’s film, uses the painter’s study of wooden mannequins to investigate the politics of courtship, as life-size male/female dolls act out a drama of voyeurism and vanity. “Instrumentale“‘s video uses scenes from Schlemmer’s amazingly surreal ballet, and again we see the dynamics of courtship, but this time played out in a dream-like setting of spectacular color and costume! Don’t miss Orchid�e Noire’s Bandcamp embed for La m�moire des souvenirs, which follows the videos.
