Throughout Rone’s long musical career, few things have remained as constant as his desire to try out new things. The producer has collaborated with heaps of France’s most distinguished contemporary minds, each from a different corner of the arts; the writer Alain Damasio, the Marseilles Ballet group, (LA)HORDE and film directors Jacques Audiard and Frédéric Farrucci, to name a few. This incredible versatility, also core to his four studio albums to date, is after all what has distinguished Rone as one of the most exciting acts in the electronic music scene and bestowed him high honours such as a Cesar and Cannes Film Festival award for best film score, and a Prix des Indés in the live category. With his new album L(oo)ping, Rone pushes his dazzling acrobatics further with music that twirls and twists alongside the orchestra under maestro’s Dirk Brossé baton.
The story of L(oo)ping, like that of any great leap, began with trepidation. Even for Rone, who’s used to making bold moves, the orchestra had always seemed a step too far. “For someone like me, who’s self-taught, I felt an inferiority complex in relation to scholarly music,” says Rone. Luckily, the composer and arranger, Romain Allender was there to break the ice. Allender, who has for many years worked beside Alexandre Desplat on several renowned scores (The Grand Budapest Hotel by Wes Anderson and The Shape of Water by Guillermo del Toro amongst others), was an early fan of Rone’s music, detecting in the producer’s sound a palette akin to that of the orchestra. The two firstly worked together on the 2017 piece, Motion alongside Les Siècles, a collaboration that not only sealed their friendship but also opened a new world for Rone, one in which orchestra and electronics conversed with a playful fluidity and harmony. “It was Romain who really built the bridge between this acoustic world and mine”.
In front of a two-thousand-strong audience, L(oo)ping was brought to life twice last year in Lyon. The set-up of the stage mirrored the powerful symbiosis of the music; the orchestra facing the audience, and just behind them, Rone – his eyes meeting those of Brossé in a captivating duet. The album is born from the live recordings of those two evenings, both bookended by standing ovations, but the music will continue its journey through Europe, starting with further two, already sold-out, performances at the Philharmonie de Paris this summer.
