It’s time for some Dirt Crew action. This time the Berlin label showcase French artist S3A who is no stranger to Bolting Bits or to the world of electronic music production. With experience comes expertise, S3A has been producing for over 15 years and has released on the likes of Quartet Series, Lazare Hoche records, Concrete Music and Local Talk. He cut his teeth with a residence at Rex Club, Paris’s oldest and longest running club, before jumping ship to a regular slot at the three tier riverside club Concrete.
Today we have the pleasure of premiering the third track from the release titled Greed. The eleven track special is due out very soon in all good record stores. Greed is a smooth soulful number, coloured with vibey keys, loose but snappy drum breaks, shuffling hi-hats and to top it off some funk bass. It is very easy to get lost when making sample based music. You can choose a sample from any piece of audio that has ever been recorded and printed to wax or made available online. Samples can be taken from any era and from whichever corner of the plant you desire. The key aspect of sample based music is maintaining a unique sound. This is a key driver in S3As music and you can hear individuality all of this record.
[soundcloud url=”https://soundcloud.com/boltingbits/premiere-s3a-greed” /]
On the rest of the EP you can find tracks like “Fever”, “Friends, “Joint No. 5” and with similar all funk fuelled jams composed by Max, re-played and recorded again in several live jams with fellow musicians Nicolas Taite, Raphael Vallade and Pierre Vadon and edited in the studio by S3A afterwards, they breath this special Soul and Funk love Max got into by listening to “Masters at Work” and old Disco jams. The latter “Greed” has a special story, it is a cover of an early “Laurent Garnier” track that got reworked by “Avril” in the early 00’s, here Max wanted to present his own Jazz and Funk perspective on that same track.
The club stompers “First Day With Lucien”, “Lockwood”, “Clarence J. Boddicker” and “Leaving 19th” are the true party business on this album and range from Deep House to more classic edit style Disco tracks with live improvisations played on top of them. This is what made us love the S3A sound from the start and it has that unique cut up sample work Max is best at.
“Interlude for Marc”, “Obsession” and “Eaux Troubles” introduce a third vision of S3A’s musical universe. Cinematic, emotional and with an much more old school “Trip Hop” approach to them, in some parts even referring to 80s “Italo / Cosmic” and early French funk. These are some of our personal favourites on the album, especially “Eaux Troubles” is a 6 minutes dramatic string filled trip that is just the perfect ending to a beautiful album journey.
As a vinyl only bonus Max also added a very personal Intro and outro that consists of field recordings from his trips abroad and kids Eva and Bastien accompanied by Rhodes and strings recorded during the above mentioned live sessions.
Go check it out!
