- Pépé Bradock returns on a zany, outer space-inspired ambient house tip.
- Surrealist, master antagonist, comedian and deep house legend—Julien Auger wears a few hats. His baffling sense of humour is preceded only by his ability to churn out infectious and iconic house grooves. Best known for his work as Pépé Bradock, Auger is one of the best to ever do it. When he feels like it, anyway.
The French polymath's second outing under his Brigitte Barbu alias is a zany one. So far, this moniker—a play on a French actress's name and a popular card game—has been an outlet for Auger's most abstract work. Picking up where he left off with 2020's Muzak Pour Ascenseurs En Panne, it's all intrepid sound collage and genre fusion on La Science Des Imbéciles, a sprawling record filled with strands of off-kilter house, Krautrock and jazz across 17 brief tracks.
"So Dad…" emanates intergalactic sci-fi dad rock energy, with shimmering guitar licks that swing into an iridescent disco groove without ever getting fully going. Cascading synths phase in and out of focus, while pneumatic air flushes sound like spaceship doors opening in an old film, or fresh steam rising from the hot coals of a sauna. Whatever it is, peak dad mode is unlocked.
To me, the record draws to mind French director René Laloux's cult classic film Fantastic Planet, a surrealist story where a rebellious human runs away from his tyrannical alien masters on the blue planet of Ygam. The comparison seems obvious, if cheeky, reading the liner notes for this album: "A cheerful memento escaping from pressure and weight like one of those fancy diets."
At times, it sounds as if Auger is communicating with actual extra-terrestrials. "Aliens" is a slow, trippy detour section with incomprehensible vocals that leave a confused but calm mood. "Vol Plané" is more cinematic, with pulsating synth tones and more direct French vocals—"explosion de vol plané"—that sound like the voice you might hear over the intercom of a space station during a landing. Throbbing bass melodies and mid-tempo synth treatments feature on tracks like "Bonnes nouvelles des étoiles" and "Venus," which also remind me of Larry Heard's Alien, a classic LP that also went deep on the influences of progressive rock and sci-fi soundtracks. "Fruit Cakes" is the best house track on the album, a sly window into the more familiar world of Pépé Bradock. It's a taste, just enough to take you out of outer space and back to reality for a moment, to show you that the master is still home.
This is a record filled with vignettes and sketch-like interludes, which help tie the LP together, making it feel more like an actual film score. Fans of Auger's music have become accustomed to full sides of albums filled with wacky and highly captivating indulgence, deep ruminations on sound and fluttering strokes of audio genius from an iconic French boffin—all steered by whichever ancient literature, rare artefacts or hallucinogenics he has been consuming and influenced by. La Science Des Imbéciles isn't exactly Pépé Bradock canon, instead more of a diversion. It's an adult contemporary album for the heads, those who will diligently sift through spools of strange jazzy material, searching for the gold inside.
Tracklist01. Venus
02. Marché
03. Foule
04. Saloperia
05. So Dad...
06. Fluids
07. Bonne nouvelles des étoiles
08. Flirty
09. Audio Sexual Part 1
10. Science imbécile
11. Maternaliste
12. Gravos
13. Wesh Finn Zerb
14. Comput
15. Aliens
16. Fruit Cakes
17. Vol plané