In five years, the Parisian label Antinote has quickly carved out a quirky niche for itself in the electronic music landscape—one that is not beholden to the popular French filter house sound that many still identify with the country. The Antinote catalog might not even scan as dance music, depending on what title you pull from it. The label has included the turbid techno of IUEKE’s Tapes (its first release), the winsome analog twinkle of Syracuse, and the fuzzy boogie of D.K. At times, its sound hearkens back to the Balearic 1980s or else Stereolab during their experimental Duophonic prime and Momus during his Le Grand Magistery years in the 1990s. Antinote’s insouciance with regards to genre applies to borders as well, in that most of its roster hails from outside of France, making for an international cast of eclectic producers.
A wide emotional and genre range from around the world can be most readily grasped on Five Years of Loving Notes, the label’s five-candle cupcake to its fans. The neatly-arranged, 14-track compilation kicks off with the delectable minimal bleep-pop of “+371” from mysterious group Domenique Dumont, who delivers vocals en francais even though the country calling code referenced in the title is for dialing Latvia. Slap bass wobbles around a soft purr, bits of static, and blips from an old dial-up—putting it in company with the likes of Jlin’s “1%” and Laurel Halo’s “Moontalk” for best use of bygone 20th-century telephone noises in 2017.
While Thai-born, Paris-based producer Dang-Khoa Chau has a few releases on the noisy L.I.E.S. imprint, with his D.K. moniker he delivers “Market Session” here, a marimba-laced track that evokes the same smoggy dub as Peaking Lights. Meanwhile Antoine Kogut & Nico Motte’s “Jungle Dweller” is a warped take on 21st-century exotica, right down to canned lion roars and macaw cries. Even stranger is Motte’s own solo track, “Cap De Creus,” which moves at a snail’s pace. Using only finger snaps for a beat and a keyboard set to “door chime,” at first it feels like a West Side Story number set in white sands. But as a synth swells like a sunrise near track’s end, it suddenly turns luminous.
Across a handful of tracks on the back half of the comp, the beats build up some momentum. Leonardo Martelli’s “03 23 (Notte)” brings to mind early Autechre, though the ad nauseam vocal snippet about “25 joints” soon makes it redundant, one of the comp’s few tracks that fails to engage. IUKE’s “Giza” brings to mind his first release for Antinote, which featured tracks rescued from some cassette tapes that the artist (born Gwen Jamois) had stashed in his flat from back in the early ’90s. And while “Giza” is a new production, it still retains that distorted tape feel, a hypnotic throb of drums and claps that sound as if the machine is about to chew up the tape, approaching a breakbeat but never quite getting there.
Düsseldorf artist Tolouse Low Trax—aka Detlef Weinrich, also drummer for long-running band Kreidler—delivers the comp’s most enchanting and irreducible track. A longtime DJ at Dusseldorf’s revered Salon des Amateurs—which Resident Advisor once opined was “where strange music thrives”—Low Trax embodies such strangeness on “Raut.” It’s a low-slung, throbbing, and squelching track that seems to be filled with little metal BBs rattling around at the fringes. “Raut” snakes through dark wave, primitive synth electro, and many other possibilities, never quite beholden to any one sound. Fittingly, the German’s contribution best encapsulates this French label’s unslottable aesthetic.
