The electronic musician Felix Manuel, who performs under the moniker Djrum, returns on August 17th with his Portrait With Firewood LP due out on R&S Records. The upcoming long-player finds the artist eschewing his past technique of sampling in favor of a return to his childhood instrument, the piano. A classically trained jazz musician with a love for artists like Keith Jarrett and Alice Coltrane, Manuel’s return to the piano marks a more confessional approach to music making. The artist explains:
“I realize that’s a word mostly used to describe singer/songwriter rather than (largely) instrumental music, but I think it’s apt. There’s a sort of emotional candor.”
During the compositional process for Portrait With Firewood, the musician drew inspiration from the performance artist Marina Abramovic. Her performance demands of the audience a radical participation in the present and a return to the simplicity and natural order of Being. Many of these themes held a particular resonance for Manuel as he worked on his album in 2017, and he offers:
“I was moved to tears on several occasions watching her videos or reading about her work.”
In addition to returning to the piano–a process which also included attaching contact mics to the instrument–Djrum purchased his first hardware synth for the recording of the album. In a continued effort to expand his technique, Portrait With Firewood also finds him experimenting with field recordings as well as collaborating with the cellist Zosia Jagodzinska and the vocalist Lola Empire. It seems that many of these efforts can be heard on our first listen in on the upcoming record, the extraordinary track “Sex.”
Juggling many of these elements into a complex and engaging sonic tapestry on the cut, “Sex” starts simply enough with an arpeggiating hardware line before getting down to some serious business. Utilizing interlaced patterns of kick drum, snare and hand claps, Djrum’s rhythm section sends the track into a sweaty frenzy. Meanwhile, dizzying vocal ululations are woven into the mix, as well as other snippets of found sound, while just beneath the surface we can make out the occasional moan of breathy pleasure like hearing physically engaged lovers thru a hotel wall. This cut is hot, and one of the best tracks–techno, or otherwise–that we’ve heard yet this year!
