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Maxime Denuc - Club Imperiale
Maxime Denuc follows 2022's genius 'Nachthorn' with another set of fractal Balearic hallucinations, moving to Caterina Barbieri's light-years imprint to redefine his trance-meets-church-music concept. Next level, really - essential listening if you've been stumped wondering where Kali Malone might overlap with Shpongle. We have to respect it when an artist doesn't feel the need to rip it up and start again every time they set about making a new record, but instead considers ways they might perfect their concept. Because Denuc's last record took us by surprise; we were certain that the pipe organ had lost its shine back in 2022, but Denuc's approach was simple and effective. Using the instrument housed at St. Antonius Church in Düsseldorf, he took advantage of a Max/MSP and OpenSoundControl system that could control the organ's keyboards, stops and pedals, so began to program seemingly impossible music, referring to techno and trance directly. We know what you're thinking: at face value, it sounds like it could sink like a cannonball in a paddling pool, but it worked remarkably well, sounding a weighty as a Catholic mass and as euphoric as a night at Amnesia. Somehow, Denuc tapped into the wellspring of ecstasy that underpins so much Western music - often completely unseen. Is trance really that different from baroque and romantic forms when you examine the core notation? There's a good reason that William Orbit and Ferry Corsten turned Samuel Barber's 19th century-style weepie 'Adagio for Strings' into a trance anthem in 1999. And Denuc is even more intentional on 'Club Imperiale'. He was given more time to shape the sound this time around. The church offered him regular access so he set up shop in Dusseldorf, recording for hours between services each week and then returning to his studio in Brussels to pore through the files. It allowed him to consider the physicality of the sound a little more than he did previously; here, he places an array of microphones around the church to fully capture the almost overpowering hugeness of the church organ - the sense of space, plus the deep lows and high highs that force our minds into that ecstatic zone. Denuc didn't just spend time researching exactly what made church music so perennially resonant either, he dived deeper into the history of trance, scouring its core texts for inspiration and even figuring out the ideal backdrop for his sound. Because 'Club Imperiale' isn't complete fantasy, it's a quite real defunct club on Italy's picturesque Tuscan coast. And although Denuc references the Balearic islands' white sands as a core influence, we can't think of a better location for this music than in Italy, stuck between the beach and the seat of Catholic authority. The album opens with Denuc's most direct reference yet to trance lore, 'Hallucinogen', which loosely interpolates the distorted chorus from Simon Posford's enduring psy anthem 'LSD'. And it's fascinating to witness how different it sounds when the brain-tickling squelches and rubbery synths have been completely removed; if trance's relationship to sacred music had been distant, Denuc makes it perfectly clear, juxtaposing his OSC-controlled arpeggios with booming sustained notes that seem to echo through the cloisters. We can hear Denuc's most recent technique on 'Atlantis', where rapid sequences of notes, unplayable by the human hand, are recorded at a distance in the church so they sound like undulating drones. Denuc noticed immediately that these swirling ambiences moved with almost water-like characteristics, so it's a sound that keeps surging back, a sonic representation of the cover image's aquatic horizon. Even when Denuc is being more figurative - like on the anthemic 'Everytime' or the brilliant 'La Paloma' - there's a sense that the water is there lapping away in the background, easing in the hummable melodies and abrupt, chiming chords. In fact, 'Club Imperiale' is most affecting when it sounds almost completely submerged. Check the dense, drowned title track, or 'Sueños', that's the windswept memory of a Balearic sunrise - the perfect afterparty soundtrack that's overflowing with freshly unlocked emotions.
