Track By Track: Golden Bug – Piscolabis

Antoine extends an invitation to several musician friends too, some fresh faces and others returning collaborators – Vega Voga, The Liminañas and Tim Glass are just a handful of those making an appearance. For Antoine, the excitement lies in working with artists who have contrasting styles and who push him outside of his comfort zone: this is how new and exciting ideas come to fruition, and there’s plenty of that across the LP.

Below, he digs deeper into the origins and inspirations behind each track on his fourth studio album…

Colibri

I wrote this track 3-4 years ago and I had completely forgotten about it, buried away on a hard drive. I think it’s a pretty cool opening track because it creates tension while being calm and composed. I remember that at that time I was re-watching a lot of movies that rocked my childhood like Carpenter’s Escape From New York, Fog, Big Trouble In Little China or French movies like Le Professionnel, Le Marginal, La Soupe au Choux, etc, and that’s probably what influenced me in a subconscious way even if I’m not completely sure. I often try to emulate things that I think are great but the transcription is always very different which is very frustrating but at the same time it’s a good way to motivate yourself.

Variations sur 3 Bancs feat. The Limiñanas

Everything starts with a message Jörg Burger sent me in January 2020, asking me to feature in the Kompakt – Velvet Desert Music Vol.2 compilation, an homage to psychedelic music and to the 60s/70s acid western universe. Some days before I was at Apollo and I saw this super cool set by The Limiñanas, I was instantly obsessed and I told myself they would be the perfect choice for this project. After contacting them on Instagram, Variation sur 3 bancs slowly took shape between Barcelona and Montpellier : Lionel’s calm voice, his expressive guitar work and his delirious lyrics were an almost magically pitch-perfect match to my electronic experiments.

Tokoyo No Kuni feat. Vega Voga

I met Narumi (Vega Voga) through some Parisian friends we have in common and we often talked about collaborating on a track and trying to capture the Japanese atmosphere in a cool way. I went in different directions at the beginning to finally come back on something very organic and psychedelic. My main influences for this track were Run Fay Run by Isaac Hayes and Battle Without Honor Or Humanity by HOTEI. I love the epic and rhythmic side of these two tracks and I thought it was a good direction for my collaboration with Vega Voga. We did our best to create a musical epic sounding like an imaginary, acid-drenched Toshiya Fujita movie mixing Japanese traditional instruments, out of space vocals, synth lines, supersonic percussion and razor-sharp guitars.

La Boite Noire feat. Funboys

I had just come back to Barcelona after a big night at the Renate club in Berlin where I had done a 4-hour DJ set. I turned on my machines and tried to create the atmosphere of the night: something dark, powerful and hypnotic. I programmed the skeleton of the track quite quickly and then my Australian friends from Funboys added some elements to give the whole thing some relief.

La Goutte d’Eau

I’ve always loved spending hours in the studio tweaking ambiences and creating sound atmospheres. Most of the time these tunes stay in a closet but this one had its place on the record to give a breath and calm the game down a bit.

Fata Morgana

Fata Morgana is a dedication to my friends Desilence who make visual art and with whom I went on tour for my third album V.I.C.T.O.R. We played live in incredible places together like Villa Medici, Macba in Barcelona, Sonar, St Petersburg, Africa, Paris, and more. This year they created an incredible installation in Copenhagen of the same name, and I like the meaning of the word: an optical phenomenon that results from a combination of mirages. Musically I wanted to do something hypnotic with a downtempo rhythm and a lot of dub effects, something dancing with attitude.

Nid de Guepes

I had come across a record by a Catalan artist on which there was this flute in the introduction of one of the tracks and I loved it. I sampled it by modifying the key and by making it pass therough a lot of different effects. I built the track around this part, and then invited Lionel from The Limiñanas to add some guitars to reinforce the organic and psychedelic side.

Bring The Light feat. Pajaro Sunrise

This is the second time I’ve collaborated with Pajaro Sunrise, who is a singer I love. He has a way of singing that captivates me, and his lyrics are always so poetic. I wanted to launch into more of a pop piece, and not stay locked in established patterns. The album format is also used for that I think, and I like to get out of my comfort zone and invite artists who don’t necessarily come from the same sound landscape because I guess it’s through these oppositions that we open new doors, and that we manage to create original things.

Kotodama Part I & II feat Vega Voga

While working on Kotodama, Lionel sent me a lot of guitars that were magical, but overloaded the whole thing and that’s why I decided to divide the track in two parts. Kotodama Part 1 is a psychedelic atmosphere perfect for eating mushrooms on the beach with friends while Kotodama Part II is a mechanical track with a lot of sound details that serve to carry Vega Voga’s voice. I really like the idea of having different readings using the same sounds, it’s like self-remixing and I love it.

Le Chant de Sirènes feat. Tim Glass

I spend a lot of time in a small village overlooking the sea in Spain, and I wanted to put these memories on the record. I started the track with a harmonic voice, then I added some very electronic pitched rhythms. When the whole was defined, I proposed to the French singer Tim Glass to add some Theremin and very aerial vocal parts to give a fairy vision to whole thing. I think it’s a good track to finish the album, to stay on an optimistic note.

Piscolabis is out now on La Belle Records.