Médecines (LP) :
The Balek Band and Abstrack Records's first album, Médecines, is the product of a magma of influences, the emanation of large decade of music infused lives. The emotional tessitura is wide: the dark meadows of "The Balek Bad" reach us through like a mantra from the end of a dark tunnel, while just three track earlier it was a caribbean Zouk euphoria which ruled the world. Inbetween, it's a wide spectrum of hybrid epiphanies : Hagen & Again is a progressive Dub jewel, even Krauty to an extent, where the instruments play the lead role. Cosmic Barry is across the Channel : thick and broken club music, sweating with subs, yet always disputing it to the Funk accent of the the keys and the slap bass. This list of Geographical and stylistic hybridations simplys goes on, and it's the XX minutes of the album that put an end to it. But beyond the never-ending list, this first album is alive : its gets us breathing the therapeutical air which fills the world of its creators.
Médecines (LP) dans l'oeil de Vidock (Main artist) :
An album is something that is conducted like a boat on the river of inspirations, sometimes calm, clear, sometimes thunderous, thick, and black.
It was like a dream belonging to others, not to me, not to The Balek Band project. Records, I released some but always in the format of Ep, because an album is the idea that floats in a corner of the head without anyone daring to tackle it.
However, there it is, after a year and a half working, after long band sessions, after many doubts, laughter, tensions and especially moments of musical grace.
The Balek Band was born four years ago in a flatshare's garage. At that time, it was mostly experimentation. There was already ambition, but the music we hold had to face the test of time. After 2 Ep, about ten concerts and a dozen others planned, the way seemed to open to The Balek Band. But here is, the dreamlike world of our music was caught up in the real world and it was the covid that blocked our path. I mean, that's what we thought at the beginning.
We seized this parenthesis to ask ourselves all together, Vincent, Ludo and Sam, the musicians and myself, Valentin.
The words of Moussa, an old friend I had only seen a few times in 10 years, still resonated in me: "Your last Ep has matured, the next step is the album!" and me responding: "You know, an album is not anything... blah, blah, blah, blah." In fact I wouldn't allow myself to face this work, and yet so essential in the life of a group.
So it was finally in a world turned upside down by Covid that we tackled "Medicines". An album's name to ward off fate, a medicine for ourselves, a group therapy, but also a gift for others.
In one week, during a mild spring, in the quiet of a country house, we laid the first bases of this album which was meant to be a summary of our beings.
The varied styles (cosmic-disco, Dub-Zouk, or Krautrock), reflect of our boundless love for Musics, marry or clash themselves to form our identity. Our instrumentarium, our different musical universes and our spontaneity are the cement of the nine tracks with varied colours, sometimes shimmering, sometimes chiaroscuro.
From this week of work without discontinuity, 9 frames were born which, surprisingly, never changed. This first draft was the right one. Many studio sessions allowed us to support our purpose, to enrich the arrangement. In short, to finish this sound sculpture. Well, not quite. To smooth it and give it its best expression, we needed a mixing studio.
Our universe being largely inspired by great albums, such as the productions of Brian Eno, Herbie Hancock, or David Byrnes, the analog mix seemed obvious to us to give our album this sound grain specific to the 80s.
I then turned to Raphaël D'hervez from the FVTVR label, who was already following our work and with whom I had already been able to discuss at length about our universe.
This unreachable dream is finally here, waiting to be pressed and delivered to the world. These nine titles all hold a special place in our hearts, and they listen to each other in dialogue, to bring out their differences and their similarities, in the image of the members of the group.
"Médecines" is what we carry in us of love, laughter, gloom, or melancholy. It's the world seen through our prism. It's the synthesis of our musical universe. It is an important event in our lives, and a milestone for a band that will not stop that soon.
Bio of The Balek Band :
Borrowing their name, Balek, from the eponymous piece of the virtuoso and amazing musician Marc Moulin, The Balek Band was born in a bituminous cell of an old Nantes blockhouse in 2018.
Initiated by Valentin Tisserandet (Vidock, Ago Gazo, Icaros), the live band is formed around its multiple machines and hardware synthesizers thus pursuing its quest to cross electronic music and organic instruments.
The pulsations of the machines then dialogue with the hot groove of bassist Samuel - "Big Chief", the daring virtuoso of Vincent's keyboards and percussions - "Zeppo Vega" and the gentle ardor of guitarist Ludo -"Sweet cannibal Lou".
After a first EP on the Nantes label Abstrack Records, then a second one on the London label Beauty & The Beat, The Balek Band picks indistinctly in 80's influences tinged with sweaty zouk, like agitated italo-disco flirting with the turquoise sea of the Balearic Islands.
Shaped with the bricks of contemporary electronic music, the group cultivates the art of making dance like that of bewitching the spirits, giving rise and place to a post-funk-Caribbean ceremony.
If Bryan Eno and David Byrne had met Marvin Gay at an acid-dripping night club in Manchester overlooking a beach in Fort-de-France, the band's first upcoming album would surely have been the B.O, and their spirited live, their incarnation.
Their first album is released in June 2022, on Abstrack Records, and bears a name to ward off: Médecines. More than just an auditory ointment, the album is meta-musical. Composed in the contemplative sweetness of the countryside, the album nevertheless contains the energy of a brilliant dancefloor.
Opening on an introspective mysticism, the album promises an "astral adventure" to "multiple consciences"... And it is indeed a journey that it is about, sometimes rough and abrupt as a winding path, sometimes dazzling and suave as a sweet summer morning.
The Balek Band proudly takes up the challenge of bringing together oxymorons that nothing oppose, always expressing this burning need to celebrate Beauty, as an echo to our lives and to these verses by Baudelaire:
[EN] 'Have you come from the deep sky or have you come out of the abyss,
O Beauty! your gaze, infernal and divine,
Pouring confusedly the good and the crime,
And for this we can compare you to wine."
[FR] "Viens-tu du ciel profond ou sors-tu de l'abîme,
Ô Beauté ! ton regard, infernal et divin,
Verse confusément le bienfait et le crime,
Et l'on peut pour cela te comparer au vin."
The Balek Band and Abstrack Records's first album, Médecines, is the product of a magma of influences, the emanation of large decade of music infused lives. The emotional tessitura is wide: the dark meadows of "The Balek Bad" reach us through like a mantra from the end of a dark tunnel, while just three track earlier it was a caribbean Zouk euphoria which ruled the world. Inbetween, it's a wide spectrum of hybrid epiphanies : Hagen & Again is a progressive Dub jewel, even Krauty to an extent, where the instruments play the lead role. Cosmic Barry is across the Channel : thick and broken club music, sweating with subs, yet always disputing it to the Funk accent of the the keys and the slap bass. This list of Geographical and stylistic hybridations simplys goes on, and it's the XX minutes of the album that put an end to it. But beyond the never-ending list, this first album is alive : its gets us breathing the therapeutical air which fills the world of its creators.
Médecines (LP) dans l'oeil de Vidock (Main artist) :
An album is something that is conducted like a boat on the river of inspirations, sometimes calm, clear, sometimes thunderous, thick, and black.
It was like a dream belonging to others, not to me, not to The Balek Band project. Records, I released some but always in the format of Ep, because an album is the idea that floats in a corner of the head without anyone daring to tackle it.
However, there it is, after a year and a half working, after long band sessions, after many doubts, laughter, tensions and especially moments of musical grace.
The Balek Band was born four years ago in a flatshare's garage. At that time, it was mostly experimentation. There was already ambition, but the music we hold had to face the test of time. After 2 Ep, about ten concerts and a dozen others planned, the way seemed to open to The Balek Band. But here is, the dreamlike world of our music was caught up in the real world and it was the covid that blocked our path. I mean, that's what we thought at the beginning.
We seized this parenthesis to ask ourselves all together, Vincent, Ludo and Sam, the musicians and myself, Valentin.
The words of Moussa, an old friend I had only seen a few times in 10 years, still resonated in me: "Your last Ep has matured, the next step is the album!" and me responding: "You know, an album is not anything... blah, blah, blah, blah." In fact I wouldn't allow myself to face this work, and yet so essential in the life of a group.
So it was finally in a world turned upside down by Covid that we tackled "Medicines". An album's name to ward off fate, a medicine for ourselves, a group therapy, but also a gift for others.
In one week, during a mild spring, in the quiet of a country house, we laid the first bases of this album which was meant to be a summary of our beings.
The varied styles (cosmic-disco, Dub-Zouk, or Krautrock), reflect of our boundless love for Musics, marry or clash themselves to form our identity. Our instrumentarium, our different musical universes and our spontaneity are the cement of the nine tracks with varied colours, sometimes shimmering, sometimes chiaroscuro.
From this week of work without discontinuity, 9 frames were born which, surprisingly, never changed. This first draft was the right one. Many studio sessions allowed us to support our purpose, to enrich the arrangement. In short, to finish this sound sculpture. Well, not quite. To smooth it and give it its best expression, we needed a mixing studio.
Our universe being largely inspired by great albums, such as the productions of Brian Eno, Herbie Hancock, or David Byrnes, the analog mix seemed obvious to us to give our album this sound grain specific to the 80s.
I then turned to Raphaël D'hervez from the FVTVR label, who was already following our work and with whom I had already been able to discuss at length about our universe.
This unreachable dream is finally here, waiting to be pressed and delivered to the world. These nine titles all hold a special place in our hearts, and they listen to each other in dialogue, to bring out their differences and their similarities, in the image of the members of the group.
"Médecines" is what we carry in us of love, laughter, gloom, or melancholy. It's the world seen through our prism. It's the synthesis of our musical universe. It is an important event in our lives, and a milestone for a band that will not stop that soon.
Bio of The Balek Band :
Borrowing their name, Balek, from the eponymous piece of the virtuoso and amazing musician Marc Moulin, The Balek Band was born in a bituminous cell of an old Nantes blockhouse in 2018.
Initiated by Valentin Tisserandet (Vidock, Ago Gazo, Icaros), the live band is formed around its multiple machines and hardware synthesizers thus pursuing its quest to cross electronic music and organic instruments.
The pulsations of the machines then dialogue with the hot groove of bassist Samuel - "Big Chief", the daring virtuoso of Vincent's keyboards and percussions - "Zeppo Vega" and the gentle ardor of guitarist Ludo -"Sweet cannibal Lou".
After a first EP on the Nantes label Abstrack Records, then a second one on the London label Beauty & The Beat, The Balek Band picks indistinctly in 80's influences tinged with sweaty zouk, like agitated italo-disco flirting with the turquoise sea of the Balearic Islands.
Shaped with the bricks of contemporary electronic music, the group cultivates the art of making dance like that of bewitching the spirits, giving rise and place to a post-funk-Caribbean ceremony.
If Bryan Eno and David Byrne had met Marvin Gay at an acid-dripping night club in Manchester overlooking a beach in Fort-de-France, the band's first upcoming album would surely have been the B.O, and their spirited live, their incarnation.
Their first album is released in June 2022, on Abstrack Records, and bears a name to ward off: Médecines. More than just an auditory ointment, the album is meta-musical. Composed in the contemplative sweetness of the countryside, the album nevertheless contains the energy of a brilliant dancefloor.
Opening on an introspective mysticism, the album promises an "astral adventure" to "multiple consciences"... And it is indeed a journey that it is about, sometimes rough and abrupt as a winding path, sometimes dazzling and suave as a sweet summer morning.
The Balek Band proudly takes up the challenge of bringing together oxymorons that nothing oppose, always expressing this burning need to celebrate Beauty, as an echo to our lives and to these verses by Baudelaire:
[EN] 'Have you come from the deep sky or have you come out of the abyss,
O Beauty! your gaze, infernal and divine,
Pouring confusedly the good and the crime,
And for this we can compare you to wine."
[FR] "Viens-tu du ciel profond ou sors-tu de l'abîme,
Ô Beauté ! ton regard, infernal et divin,
Verse confusément le bienfait et le crime,
Et l'on peut pour cela te comparer au vin."
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