Brain Damage - Empire Soldiers '2013

Tracks list

With a strong background of countless LPs, collaborations and live sessions all
around the world to their credit, we could think that both entities have little
left to prove. Yet, they both have much in common, particularly a certain
ever-growing and untiring creativity, but also an undeniable sense of challenge,
concept and constant questioning.

The issue that is here discussed extends way beyond a mere meeting: the
presentations between the artists have been made a long time ago, through lots
of remixes and co-bill live sessions. This momentum is now more a matter of the
transient collision of their respective universes, for a live tour and a epic LP
entitled “Empire Soldiers”, giving rise to a third entity, unclassi
ed until then. Vibronics & Brain Damage teamed up and decided to come together
around a concept, a narrative inspiration that will undoubtedly surprise:
Anglo-Caribbean and Franco-African soldiers’ experience during the rst
world war. The academic historian, poet & songwriter, Madu Messenger, uses the
product of years of study and research, to develop, within that very framework,
a series of texts on some key topics such as travel, friendship, war and death.

This project thus aims at offering a learning experience about this often
little-known period of our history. It will draw troubling parallels with some
more contemporary considerations on culture shocks, immigration, imperial powers
and horrors of war that still affects all of us today. Following their re ection
on this sensitive issue, the musicians of the project’s – all of
many other origins, AngloFrench, Jamaican or Asian – move towards a
cultural alignment, opposite to certain enslaving and communitarian models.
Brain Damage and Vibronics’ digital reggae-dub comes in different colors
throughout many in uences, completing the best of their know- how, with the
spontaneousness of the collaboration & human experience. The two producers and
dub pioneers, Steve Vibronics & Martin Nathan, almost transplant their
respective studios on stage, for a performance that is anything but a
confrontation, competition or other kind of battle.

What we are talking about here is more like a sharing and pooling
the know-how of two artists with distinct sensibilities, not rised against one
another, but symbiotically serving an aesthetics, a feeling, an (hi)story. Once
again, here is all about struggling against the operated machines’
rigour, to strike back with a reggae-dub, sometimes slick, then distorted,
hypnotic and repetitive, yet always surprising, with the help of tenebrous
reverbs, unlikely echoes and daring mixes that made their live sessions a
success in the past 15 years.

Vibronics’ style is also here truly identi ed through the appearance of
the two vocalists Madu Messenger & M Parvez, whose so characteric &
complementary voices, embody the concept of this collaboration: a re ection
based around the British-Caribbean and Franco-African soldiers’
experience during the rst world war. For his part, Brain Damage, makes available
to this project, his famous technical crew, to provide every night an iron sound
mixed by the faithful engineer Brice Marin – but also a meticulous
scenography, with an amazing light design operated by Yan Arnaud, superbly
emphasing the musical & conceptual point of the project.

Finally, even if each aspect seems to have been considered and jewelled
upstream, if nothing seems to have been left to chance, a certain fragility
remains however, re ecting all the joint spontaneousness, and constantly
reminding us that this project is de nitely atypical and inherently ephemeral.

Tracklist:
 01. Brain Damage - Gallipoli (01:39)
 02. Brain Damage - Sufferation (04:12)
 03. Brain Damage - Kings Engine (03:49)
 04. Brain Damage - Youts to War (04:27)
 05. Brain Damage - Letter Home (04:55)
 06. Brain Damage - Do U Remember ? (04:45)
 07. Brain Damage - Neuve chapelle (03:39)
 08. Brain Damage - Muchât (05:00)
 09. Brain Damage - Siege of Kut (04:13)
 10. Brain Damage - Flanders (04:26)
 11. Brain Damage - Letter Dub (05:34)
 12. Brain Damage - Sufferation Dub (03:44)
 13. Brain Damage - Dub Engine (04:04)
 14. Brain Damage - Siege of Dub (03:49)
 15. Brain Damage - Youts to Dub (03:36)
 16. Brain Damage - Do U Dub? (04:25)
 17. Brain Damage - Neuve Chapelle Dub (04:02)

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