ANONYMITY IS LUXURY
Today we talk to French independent music producer R. Djordan. Self taught and heavily influenced by soul, groove, funk, electro, and movie soundtracks, he has released six self produced albums to date.
Greatest inspirations or influences?
Musical influences of my last album "1984", themes from Georges Orwell's novel.
The American producer Quincy Jones for the guitar-played funky tracks, the French Touch Electro for the use of the Vocoder and "Dark" electronic basses, Ziad Rahbani (Lebanese producer of Fairuz) for the Electro-Oriental track mixing synthesizer and Wind/string instruments.
For the album intro, Aquarius, I immersed myself in the music of Eric Serra composed for the cult French movie " the Big blue " in the late 80s. There are also some Laidback tracks reminiscent of California sounds. Finally, for "movie soundtrack" tracks, I drew my inspiration from Japanese percussion instruments.
Regarding the cover, the graphic inspiration comes from the psychedelic, illusionist and abstract works of the 80s by the famous painter Victor Vasarely, a French artist of Hungarian origin who marked his era in Op Art.
Tell us about your creative process.
The idea of this album grew-up during lockdown. To get as close to the funky sounds of 1980, I collaborated first with two Brazilian musicians, electric guitarist Junior Souza and bass guitarist Rubens Filho, to get a specific funky signature. At the same time, I used electronic drums, vintage synthesizer emulations and the vocoder to keep an electro backbone to this album. I practiced crate digging for final arrangements, added composition with orchestral synthetic sounds, as well as the collaboration with a Greek Lyric singer, Athina D.
To sum up, a rich and interesting multicultural music experience, for an album which is made of shadow and light.
Tell us about the music industry, in your opinion.
The music industry is now open to everyone due to the democratization of home studios, the technological evolution of music production tools and its simple distribution to internet video and music platforms. I think it's a great thing, because electronic music creation and diffusion should be accessible to as many people as possible, unlike times when only expensive hardware was available.
However, in today's image-based world, the music video is taking precedence over music, relegating it to a secondary role. In a frantic race for the number of views, plays and album releases in very short completion times, the mainstream music industry is taking another direction : quantitative rules qualitative.
How does technology come into effect in your work or your creativity.
Technology in music production has diversified a lot and the offer has multiplied over the past 10 years due to the democratization of the home studio. For my part, I always compose with the same material. And I always have my vintage AKAI MPC on hand if needed. In my last album, I wanted precisely to take the opposite of this current trend of highly publicized mainstream musical productions, often realized in 100% "synthetic", by collaborating with guitarists.
Digital music technology with streaming service leads to quantify music by track, whereas in CD or Vynil format, it was mainly quantified by album. This leads many producers to create shorter and shorter tracks, by deleting verses, in order to maximize the number of titles played over the same lapse of listening time. Some have even abandoned the album format to only make singles, for a question of profitability. I didn't follow that trend either concerning this last album.
what does wellness mean to you?
Well-being is multifactorial, and it is already a matter of its relationship to oneself, to others and to the environment in which we evolve. Obviously, emotions, health, materials , security and spirituality are also key points .
Serenity and peace of mind are necessary for well-being.
Anything else you would like to share?
Anonymity is luxury
