Predictably jacked to the brim full of their signature no-gristle, no-glory aesthetic, In Flagranti introduces their new album, Worse for Wear. Succeeding 2006’s Wronger Than Anyone Else and 2009’s Brash & Vulgar, In Flagranti’s Sasa Crnobrnja and Alex Gloor have left behind their vintage porn-chic sensibilities and instead turn to yesterday’s trashed goods for inspiration.
“Flea markets and recycling parts of our production are really at the center of this album,” said the now London-based Crnobrnja. “I like things to be old and run-down,” added Alex Gloor, who still resides in Basel. “So I let myself be inspired by one of my favorite places to spend time: 1970s-80s New York City.”
Using experiences from Gloor’s past trips to the Forty Deuce, Worse For Wear conjures up ghosts from the finest of adult playgrounds past. “Hollow Discourses” swaggers in on a gritty bassline, revealing excess in its degenerative electro finest, and “Prelude to Chaos” reminisces the days where the finest of 69-cent wines glistened in the gutters outside the arcade.
But standing at a right angle from In Flagranti’s better-known, dirty disco sound are tracks with a peculiar sense of calm. Tracks like “The End of the Road” and “On the Fringe” leave a bit of the sleaze at the massage parlor door, opening up a new chapter of sound for the band. More outer space dump diving than straight-up vulgar, Crnobrnja also added that the album “Works with old recordings that we have not used yet, such as vocals recorded years ago that I didn’t like at the time.” Bringing back the past has meant a softer edge for the duo, who still work from different countries. The only time they come together is for music.
file under: In Flagranti – Worse For Wear – Codek Records – Hauntology
here a quote from Tristan Eldritch on Hauntology:
The culture we are exposed to as children exerts an extraordinary power over our imaginations; it leaves a heightened impression of something, which is not quite what it was, or is perhaps the essence of what it was in a way that becomes only partially retrievable through memory. Every childhood will then create a store of memories to haunt the adult world; a series of entities out of time which, like paranormal hauntings, operate under a potent but mysterious logic.
more reading on Hauntology on Adam Harper’s Blog:
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More In Flagranti – Worse For Wear – Teasers from on Youtube
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In Flagranti – Worse For Wear
Have you visited the digital mausoleum that is MySpace UK recently? I’m on its homepage now, trudging through the wreckage, lost in a garish dystopia where every click blows-up your laptop in a landmine of random content. [BOOOM] Featured Artist Morning Parade’s Tour-Diary Webisode Catch-up [POWWW] Fan Payback: Win Tickets + Exclusive Meet/Greet livestream w/N-Dubz @ 02 Arena.
It’s like some cosmological entity that’s expanded to breaking-point only to implode in a shower of debris. After repelling ten million users in a month its updated logo now best represents the site’s pulse on a heart-rate monitor. For an act like In Flagranti, this can only be a good thing.
You see, since the release of Wronger Than Anyone Else back in 2006, In Flagranti have busied themselves making the sort of warped, unsanitary, mutant-disco that would have MySpace street-teamers reaching for the Dettol. They’re the musical equivalent of a £2.99 bottle of Lidl Grand Reserva; glorious in their vulgarity, slightly depraved yet utterly intoxicating. Whether it’s their pornographic artwork or the grammatically incorrect song-titles, In Flagranti are as exhilarating as they are unmarketable. So as MySpace slowly dies whilst vinyl sales resuscitate, there’s no better time for the near-anonymous production duo to launch their triumphant third record Worse For Wear.
If you’ve yet to sample the band’s musical delights (and judging by their impossibly modest last.fm stats, few have) then I urge you to try ‘Latter Day Methods’ on for size. Upon hearing it for the first time I leapt from my chair with joy, splurged it all over the music board as song of the year (0 Replies)and fired the MP3 off to friends’ work emails with a big red priority flag on it. Like all their best songs it’s a rambunctious jumble of delirious synths and warped beats, seconds away from collapsing to the floor in a drunken heap at any moment. I can’t tell you how happy it makes me feel. Elsewhere check out ‘Hollow Discourse’ with its ridiculous bassline and barely in-time samples, it’s more DIY-centric than a mid-Nineties Tim Allen stand-up routine and all the more fantastic for it.
The first time I took 2009 album Brash and Vulgar out for a stroll with me I assumed I’d accidentally put my iPod on shuffle because the album flipped from squelching-house through to cosmic-disco and then onto mischievous bouncy post-punk girl-pop in the form of ‘Pick A Trick’ (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0FHJtHz4wJE). Similarly the mixtape-aesthetic on Worse For Wear makes me feel like a child waking up on Christmas morning to find a stocking rammed with treats at the foot of the bed. Dig through their sonic-scrapyard and you’ll find languorous Italo-lounge (‘Three Piece Suit’) rubbing shoulders with slinking claustrophobic-euphoria (‘Worse For Wear.’) This splendid array is only dampened by the fact that the playful female vocals which so elegantly punctuated the last album are absent this time round.
Whilst the digital explosion may avert the eyes, the real pulse-racing thrills spring from the fallout. In Flagranti offer no hype, no glory, no backstory, no limited edition MP3 dongle for the first 500 customers. What they do offer is a jolt to the system, a record bursting with spontaneity that thrills and delights in equal measure. Superb stuff. – by Hayden Woolley – drownedinsound.com
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In Flagranti – Worse For Wear
Exciting news today as arch Juno Plus favourites In Flagranti have revealed details of their second album proper, entitled Worse For Wear, and set for release in April.
In Flagranti are veterans of filthy discoteque tackle and deified by their peers old and new, their music influencing everyone from Erol Alkan to Stopmakingme. Despite this, they only graced the music world with their debut album in 2009, the gloriously smutty Brash & Vulgar – some may disagree but we tend to think of 2006’s Wronger Than Anyone Else as a delightfully rough mixtape ode to Chicago style Hot Mixes.
In the time since Brash & Vulgar, the duo have remixed all and sundry, appearing on everyone from Permanent Vacation and Kitsune to DFA and Tigersushi. In addition, In Flagranti have treated lovers of vinyl to a debut original production from Rory Phillips, plenty of illicit Sounds Superb edits and their own work on the Codek imprint they run, naturally covered in their distinct vintage risque artwork.
Fans of this visual aesthetic will no doubt be dismayed at the news Sasa Crnobrnja and Alex Gloor have tossed aside the vintage porn sensibilties for a new concept to influence the album in the shape of yesterdays trashed goods (though a brief glance at the back cover shows they’ve not abandoned the filth wholesale). Heavily inspired by one of Gloor’s favourite places to spend time, 1970s/80s era New York, Worse For Wear is a musical flea market, recycling unused recordings, such as vocals recorded years ago that were considered unsuitable.
Across the ten tracks, you still get a keen slice of In Flagranti’s signature sonic aesthetic, though these are punctuated with moments of peculiar calm, perhaps signifying a softer new chapter for the band.
Codek will be releasing Worse For Wear on CD on April 4 and we can’t wait!
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John Sex, Jean-Micheal Basquiat & Keith Haring at club AREA (photo by Ben Buchanan)
In Flagranti’s inspiration is from yet again the past, but with a deeper excursion and thought philosophy called hauntology which is a fascinating read about ghosts of past childhood memories leaving a brunt on impression on a person that he build an effigy of those memories which in this case is through Alex’s experiences of 1970s- 80s New York City.
In Flagranti – Worse For Wear
Alex Gloor and Sasa Crnobrnja are about to release their highly anticipated 3th album ‘Worse for Wear’ to an eagerly awaiting fanbase that they’ve established since their debut album Wronger than Anyone Else in 2006.
From first impressions of this album (courtesy of the Youtube Teaser and the preview download from Above Board) this feels like a mature take on ideas predicated on their love of throw away nostalgia from the 70s and 80s. As a matter of fact this album did away with the nefarious nudity cut up of playboys and skin magazines (see their last release EXEXEX as proof) and went for a more simplistic take with the cover even though the back does have a bit of skin for you in the upper right hand corner.
Again with In Flagranti it’s pretty hard to determine whether they used samples or not but that’s the beauty of it all is that it keeps you guessing and cements their allure and mystique.
In Flagranti’s inspiration is from yet again the past, but with a deeper excursion and thought philosophy called hauntology which is a fascinating read about ghosts of past childhood memories leaving a brunt on impression on a person that he build an effigy of those memories which in this case is through Alex’s experiences of 1970s- 80s New York City.
What are my thoughts of the tracks? Well what do you think? I love it despite going by a small snippet previews and the videos. There is a fair amount of balance that engrosses you into that era with little discontent. Tracks like ‘Prelude to Chaos’, ‘On the Fringe’ and ‘Anglo-Saxon Pragmatism’ offer the darker and slower chic of In Flagranti’s while ‘knock out logic’, ‘Peculiar Protagonist’ and ‘The End of the Road’ are sure to becoming classic trash disco bangers for the 23 century!
The film (via their brockenstube Youtube channel) matches up well with the music that it becomes stamp complimentary to the album as head visual man Alex Gloor utilizes film stock footage of New York in its prime state of gritty disarray but hidden beauty within the hauntology permeating within. A scene of the late night streets of NYC in the 70s to the ever famous subway system and even a roller disco rink shows us the intent and direction they chose to go.
Worse for wear is set for an April 4th release from Codek and I might forego the digital download as the CD looks like a collector’s item with some visual keepsakes. – nerdy-frames.org
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Dan Avery has a quick drink with In Flagranti
Stopmakingme meets one half of the London/Switzerland based duo to chat tailoring, punk attitude and their new album ‘Worse For Wear’.
- Text: Dan Avery
I’m always banging on about club records which stand out in a set. Those tracks that make you go “what the hell is this??” with a massive smile on your face. When I first started going out and would ask the DJ about those records, I became pretty used to receiving the answer “oh it’s the new In Flagranti single/remix/edit.” And so the duo of Sasa Crnobrnja and Alex Gloor quickly became my favourite producers. They clearly have record collections to make others sick with jealousy and it is through this mining of past sounds, dragged into modern clubbing culture, that has made In Flagranti such a unique proposition for more than a decade. Although, would never accept such gushing praise. There is no bravado to what they do, they just want to get stuff out there and their Codek record label has proved the perfect outlet for this: an amazing marriage of video imagery and music which adds another string to their already well populated bow (did I mention they’re also excellent DJs?). Their new album, ‘Worse For Wear’ is released this month and seems to explore even further corners of their overwhelming music libraries. I met Sasa in the suitable surroundings of Dalston Superstore, shouting to be heard over Green Velvet records.
Your new album has a slightly different feel to your previous work: a bit deeper, more late night. Did something inspire this? Is it ever to do with your surroundings?
There’s no particular reason. I thought about it myself when we were putting it together actually, I could tell it had a different feel. I can just assume it has something to do with the environment. The previous two reflected the time period between 2003 and 2006, my lifestyle, the places I was going to, the music that was around. A certain era has ended for me personally and I think for a lot of people. You can tell already the music has changed in the last two years. The whole ‘electro’ /punk funk thing has definitely gone. Even ‘disco’. it was a nice revival, I appreciated how it became popular again, but as soon as you have this term ‘nu disco’, like it was ‘nu-jazz’, I kinda lost interest as there’s suddenly a definition for it and everything has to sound a certain way. And that means there is no more room to explore and I definitely want to explore different things.
It’s funny isn’t it, how much hype was surrounding that supposed ‘disco explosion.’ Obviously there were some great parties in London but you’d travel to somewhere like Sheffield and mention it to promoters and they’d respond “what you talking about?”
Well yeah, it is still popular around the world but in small pockets of people. No one managed to produce a new hit record…
Exactly. There was no new I Feel Love?
But then you can’t do it…
Right!
…because how do you top any of those classics? So, all you can do is take influence from them and try to produce a different sound. I remember when I was growing up and these Teddy Boy bands were trying to recreate a sound from thirty years previous (in the same way as people are doing with disco now.) I mean, you couldn’t bring out a new Elvis thirty years after it happened because it’ll never be the same. You ended up with Shaking Stevens in England and it’s embarrassing. I feel it’s the same with disco. You can’t just recreate Donna Summer or Sylvester, you can probably get close but what’s the point? It was cool for me and Alex [the other half of In Flagranti] because we could go back to all this stuff we already had and reinterpret it our own way.
One of the things I really love about your music is how there seems to be such a disregard for standard dance music conventions. There are so many ideas thrown into every track, some people would even say that things don’t fit, or at least, they shouldn’t. Vocal breaks, an alien sample thrown in, tempo changes… but the energy is always there. Do you think about that when making tracks or is it just something that happens?
It happened when we started to exchange edits around early 2000. The idea was always to use tracks that are not known, that was one of the rules we set ourselves. We’d loved finding those unknown records or even something that was a bad tune but it had breaks which were cool. It was like editing a tape, we didn’t use multitrack, that was another rule. We didn’t add anything like extra kicks, we just used the track as is and tried to make something new. Then eventually we started pasting in bits from other tracks but since we weren’t using multitracks, we were just cutting and pasting into the existing versions. There were no fade in and outs. Alex is not really a musician so he brought something else to it. Sometimes his tracks didn’t even beatmatch but there were a great statement in it. Then I would just fix things a bit… or not. Sometimes I would just leave them because they worked.
This is a cheesy way of putting it but you could say that your attitude to making club music is pretty ‘punk.’ In other words, it seems that you have very few restrictions when making music.
I wouldn’t say it was a conscious decision to be like that. I remember someone describing our early stuff that we did in the 90s in that same way. I guess the way we did everything was like that. I didn’t have the equipment in the first place but I realised it gave us a certain sound and a certain attitude.
Attitude is the right way of putting it.
It’s like people who just want to play an instrument. You take a guitar, eventhough you can’t play it, but you express yourself the best way you can. From that perspective I guess it’s totally punk. They did it with three chords and we did by cutting and pasting with scissors. The emphasis was not on making the best produced, biggest sounding record because I knew I couldn’t do that as I didn’t have that sort of studio so why try? I asked, how can I make something punchy and have the right attitude?
Is it fair to say that you work quickly? Personally, I like to get ideas down and finished as soon as possible. I don’t like working over them for too long. I love the sense of urgency in your tracks, especially your remixes.
Yeah, I have that from when I did a tailoring apprenticeship. The tailor always told me “the longer you have something in your hands, the uglier it gets.” Sometimes something just can’t better even if you keep working on it. In music, if it takes me too long, I just move onto something else. There’s lots of preparation work, though. I have a huge library. I may spend a whole day just going through what I have. So sometimes you work on a track for an afternoon and it’s just done.
So, are you constantly listening and looking out for bits of records that could work?
Yeah totally. I can’t listen to music other than like that. When I hear music I have to analyse it immediately. It’s rare that I just ‘listen’ to music. That’s why I don’t like listening to music with other people as I’m always asking “oh how did they do that?” or “how does that groove work?” It’s like a disease [laughs]
I feel like there is room for a few more nights to emerge where you could just go and hear interesting stuff on a good soundsystem. A place to try out some new stuff I’ve found or early demos by some of my producer friends.
Yeah I agree. It’d be nice to play something and I had no idea how it would go down but it’d be great to hear it in a certain atmosphere, played loud because I know it’s a great record.
I was talking to a DJ friend of mine recently and he was saying similar things: “where has this idea of having to crowd please ALL the the time come from?” He even said that you’re not a DJ unless you clear the floor on a fairly regular basis. [both laugh] I sort of see his point, though…
Totally. But what would be even cooler is to have a place where it doesn’t even matter about the floor. It’s just about playing great music to people and not even thinking about making people dance.
Artwork, visuals and the whole idea of the 12” single are obviously still very important to In Flagranti and Codek. How do you see the current state of vinyl? It’s a small market now but it seems to me that those who still buy it have a healthy appetite for it at the moment.
Well, sales have decreased, everyone knows that but I think vinyl has become a hobby in itself. It’s not even solely a DJ thing anymore. You collect stamps not because you want to send out mail. It’s kinda the same with vinyl now. Collectors research the history of the music. It’s almost like buying a piece of art. It’s not about buying a house tune and then, three months later, you don’t even want it anymore. As long as we can keep selling vinyl, then we will keep doing it.
In Flagranti’s third studio album ‘Worse For Wear’ is out on Codek on May 3rd. The title single will precede it on April 18th with remixes from Mixhell and Punks Jump Up.
dummymag.com
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