RONE
Spanish Breakfast
IF1005
InFiné 2009
10 Tracks. 41mins45secs

Rone’s debut album is of a surprisingly sunny disposition for an electronic record, especially one that owes a fair amount to Detroit techno. The fruit of the imagination of French musician and sound designer Erwan Castex, who beside this project, regularly produces music for exhibitions and adverts, Spanish Breakfast offers a somewhat playful and dreamy soundtrack, drenched in gentle melodies and cinematic grooves designed as much for overnight consumption as for chilled summery Sunday mornings.

Having released a first EP on Belgian imprint Curle Recordings in 2007, Castex moved to the burgeoning InFiné stable to publish the rather promising Bora EP a few months later. Spanish Breakfast expands on this record’s moods by developing subtle and effective pieces, drifting from the gentle swells of the title track, Interlude In The Bed or Poisson Pilote to the more linear motifs of Belleville, Tasty City or La Dame Blanche and the almost anthemic Aya Ama. But, while the scope varies, Castex consistently feeds from a pool of warm and elegant sounds, dressing airy melodies in sumptuous atmospheric drapes and holding them together with tight bass lines and neat drum beats to give this album a flow and a rhythm throughout. Without ever emphasising any particular element, but showing great attention to details, Castex assembles here a rather consistent and refined soundtrack. His use of ambient textures in particular gives great relief to pieces such as Belleville, a much more subdued and tidy piece than the boisterous and popular Paris quarter it is named after, Poisson Pilote, with its bleepy backdrop, or the hazy Bora, presented here in its vocal form, with French science fiction author Alain Damasio. The atmospheric peaks of this record are found with the lush and ethereal Tasty City and La Dame Blanche, the former carried by a pneumatic groove and the latter by a much rounder beat over which fluid strips of saxophone float freely. These tracks manage to sum up the whole record, bringing its various elements into two majestic pieces.

Alternating between short vignettes and more elaborated pieces, Erwan Castex creates with this debut a superb record, with a strong sense of direction and a very coherent flow. The only down point of the whole affair is that it is all over all too quickly.

4.6/5

Rone (MySpace) | InFiné