Cassius The Sound Of Violence (Narcotic Thrust remix)
Real Media
"We were in a dream when we made this", suggest Zdar. "It's good to dream and find images and ideas," adds Boombass, "but there's nothing mystical about it". Au contraire, the album is packed full with tracks so intent on stamping their way through the floorboards of your local disco. What differentiates 'Au Rêve' from its predecessor is far less reliance on the loop-and-filter minimalism of house music into a wilder stylistic field. These days, the sampler is just an instrument among many in the Cassius arsenal, and the tracky filter disco prototype just another style they've mastered. "Au Rêve is not just beats and basslines," says Zdar. "You have to transcend the genre. We wanted to make songs and write poems". Principal among 'Au Rêve's' peaktime moments is the Jocelyn Brown-fronted single 'I'm A Woman'. Brassy doesn't begin to describe what must be French house music's least restrained moment yet. Thank Erick Morillo for that one - he passed on Jocelyn's number. "Straight after 1999 we contacted her and did the track, because we'd seen the potential to do a track in a studio with a singer. So we invited loads of people onto the album. Jocelyn is like a girlfriend now.'
While 'I'm A Woman' is a classic of empowered female disco, it's chest beating male-vocal counterpart is 'The Sound Of Violence'. A juddering and unashamed paean to male sexual dynamism (key lyric: 'I feel like I wanna be inside of you/when the sun goes down'), it's sung by Steve Edwards, previous collaborator of Charles 'Presence' Webster and native of that global house vocalist hotspot, Sheffield.
If you notice Cassius's far more song driven approach to house music at a time when sample technology remains pre-eminent, you may also notice the gratuitous use of screaming heavy metal guitar solos on both tracks. 'Très rock," beams Boombass. "We love the guitars, some people are like, I hate guitars! For me it's great, and it sounds good on the track". It's a trick, which begins to make sense when you consider the Cassius home-listening diet. "We've been listening to a lot of Seventies West Coast music," says Boombass. "All the classics of musique blanche, stuff like Crosby, Still & Nash. Sure, we're always listening to new music in clubs, lots of rap, reggae and house. But at home its Neil Young's 'Harvest'". "The aim since 'Motorbass' has been to make album that lasts," adds Zdar. "An album like Daft Punk's 'Homework' is an album I listen to all the time, even though it's five years old. The beats still sound fresh in a club."
'Au Rêve', like any decent dream, heads into places it takes a powerful imagination, or a powerful stimulant, to conceive of. We begin with Chicago house, head for the West Coast and rock out, then, on 'Thrilla', make for the hood with Ghostface Killah for a rumpshaking hip-house floorquake, then to Dusseldorf on the Kraftwerk-esque electro-baroque workout 'Telephone Love'. As if all that isn't enough a bona fide legend in the form of vintage soul brother Leroy Burgess, responsible for Seventies funk classics 'Mainline' and 'Over Like A Fat Rat' also guests on the album. Unlike the ranks of producers who've sampled Leroy's tunes over the years, Cassius hooked him into their Labomatic studio near the Champs Elysees, and two soulful tracks - "Under Influence" and "Till We Got You And Me" were the result.
Protection - we do a lot of it these days. Sun cream for our skin, sunglasses for our eyes, condoms for you know where - but do you remember to protect your hearing?
Click to find all the information you need to look after your hearing now so you can enjoy music for years to come
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