Over the past decade, Samba de la Muerte has become one of Normandy’s best-kept secrets. But that is all about to change with the exciting release of ‘Memory’ and a brand new album in the form of ‘Ornament’ due later this year.
Fronted by Adrien Leprêtre, ‘Memory’ is an inventive piece of music, drawing on a myriad of styles from pop, jazz, funk, punk and electronica, the sound shimmers seamlessly and delivers all the arresting art-pop pomp you expect. Adrien says: “This is the opening track from the new album, it is a vibrant and danceable sort of introduction to the new body of work that examines memories buried deep inside of us, in order to shape a much sought-after present.”
Formed in 2012, the Caen-based band will embark on the beginning of a new chapter with ‘Ornament’. Between the eccentric folktronica of 2013’s debut ‘Fire’ and 2020’s powerful Landmark EP, supported by Gilles Peterson on BBC 6 Music, the path has been rich and fruitful for Samba de la Muerte. Perhaps it also coincided with a long-term reflection on their own creative process.
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Rising electronica act enlists Beth Hirsch (vocalist of Air’s Moon Safari album)Over the past decade, the musical references that first guided the group’s aesthetics have unfurled naturally and effectively into Samba de la Muerte’s world, nourishing it into maturity. Heavily influenced by the sounds coming from across the channel, the band drew inspiration from England’s musical leanings. From Talk Talk’s sophisticated pop, to Talking Heads’ avant-garde post-punk shenanigans or even Radiohead’s frantic experiments with sound, Samba de la Muerte’s new album will certainly come across as an accomplishment and a rebirth.
Born from a search for the inner child through memories of the past, Ornament will reach its listeners as the lucid culmination of an endeavour that is both structured and spontaneous, just as a cinematographic narrative would be. Its eleven tracks are a combination of eleven scenes, alternating fleeting happiness and melancholy, strength and delicacy. The album purports to be a form of newly coined “stretch pop”, music that sprawls, constantly resulting in new shapes, blissful and dazzlingly subtle, always deepening in the uncharted self.
