Franz Kirmann - First Broadcast (2020)

The French producer Franz Kirmann released his fourth album, the languid and foggy Madrapour, on Bytes, the London/ Dorset-based electronic label and offshoot of Ransom Note Records, in October 2019.

Released only a few months later, the music of First Broadcast is the polar opposite of Madrapour. Recorded in a week from the confines of Kirmann’s Battersea studio during the Coronavirus lockdown, the sound is rougher, wilder and more primal; it sweats with paranoia and anxiety. The album imagines a possible follow up to Merle’s novel. The plane did eventually reach its destination and this is the first transmission we receive from Madrapour, a place that Kirmann imagines as a wild, virescent, tropical land (think Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness), where the disorientated passengers encounter a primitive tribe and experiment with hallucinogenic plants.

Opening with the calm and textured Mangrove (Evening), the album quickly evolves towards something more beat orientated, minimalist and repetitive. Slow and tribal, the live jams recorded here (mostly on modular synthesisers) oscillate between futurist African music (Masques), pagan rave (Expo), acid (Dancer) or early-1980s post punk electronic music (Mannequin), concluding with the sun rising over the jungle in Mangrove (Morning).

“I disconnected from my environment,” Kirmann explains. “I set up a music system that I could completely improvise with. I had to remove the analytical part of my brain and just play, play, play. Everything is one take straight to stereo. A couple of edits here and there, but that’s it. I couldn’t touch up the structure, the mix, anything... it was so liberating!”