DEMENT3D Records

François X – Irregular Passion

At night, things get a lot more unpredictable. A stranger can become a friend, you suddenly become intimate with a woman or a man whose name you will never find out, while darkness also allows you to conceal your true identity – even become someone else.

Inspiration for this album emanates from the fascination towards the intensity of what nightlife has to offer ; euphoria and melancholy, spotlights or incognito, sexual contact or lonely voyeurism… Francois X entertains the listener with playful ambiguïty and unsettling, yet sensual atmospheres. Sometimes dirty, sometimes just quite naively elegant, the double-edged demeanor on this album fittingly concludes the Blade-Runner’s replicants-inspired triptych with his two previous EPs on DEMENT3D. X had envisioned Rachael as the last reference to the movie. The enigmatic, smart but unpredictibale woman. Exactly the kind of muse an artist seeks.

In the intimacy of his studio, he slowly reached a state of flux, where creation and narration blends in naturally. Just like when the dancers let go, X’s mind was pouring ideas. Quite a surprising variety of genres and references featured on this album, bridging a lot of influences and different compositions together – yet held together by a cinematic, sexual tension and blurry atmosphere. Much like his DJsets, you have to imagine Francois X running an esoteric ceremony of sexual wizardry and card-shuffling where bodies slowly moisten and yield to abandonment.

Art Direction by SILENT SERVANT

François X – Unicorn Paranoia

Two years after his latest solo appearance on DEMENT3D, Francois X, also co-founder of the label, reveals his new EP Unicorn Paranoia. A record that sounds slightly more intimate indeed, after a period marked by close collaborations, especially with Opuswerk (Hiss:1292) and Antigone (We Move As One). The active listener will surely notice a shift in François’s musical approach, the tribal shamanism – once his prevailing credo – has ceded the lead to a somewhat subtler blend of influences.The hypnotic affinity, inevitably one of the prepon- derant aspect in Francois’s previous material has combined with his strong house and industrial influences. Inspired by film directors he admires, François X immerses the listener in a distinct moment of intima- cy, both cinematic and captivating, with a very personal vision of the Club and Dance Music as a keystone. Let’s give him the floor for just a few words:

“Unicorn Paranoïa was inspired by a kind of mental utopia that I have of the Club and the electronic music movement as a whole. What I’m trying to transcribe through those few tracks is a daydream that appears to me once in a while, of a New-York City street in the twilight of a starry night. This picture is for me an incarnation of these moments of escape, that I lived many times after every night where this idealized House and Techno movement got me dreaming. It’s that particular fantasy at work on the track Vivid Dreams, for instance. The music coming out of that record is without a doubt techno with raw character. Nevertheless, there is a subtler and more delicate aspect to it that reflects one of the angles of what I feel is my approach to music. My DJ sets, for example, tend to aim at length and progression rather than instantaneous efficiency. I apply myself to bring about contemplation and reverie, those fleeting moments when “the magic” briefly performs. Persistence Hunting and Unicorn Paranoia are a perfect realization of that illusion: the lengthy progression should guide the listener towards an inexplicable frenzy. A fictitious or real one ?

Hence the Unicorn… this mythical animal, visiting many an ephemeral dream sequence. Here, I intended to make a reference to several things: to the movie Blade Runner for instance, where dreams are an essential part of the intrigue, as they help determine the human or robotic nature of each character. Deckard dreams of the chimera many times, together with the movie’s enigma, rely on a unicorn-shaped origami. Dreams and Utopia have had a central role in this record’s composition. The Dream, this ultimate pleasure indulged by music, by the passion dedicated to it; and the Utopia (this of the club), which makes us continuously endure nostalgia, sadness, and sometimes even bitterness in that perpetual quest toward an experience that may be found only in The Very First Time”.

RELEASE DATE …………………………………… 12=9TH OF SEPTEMBER 2016
DISTRIBUTION ………………………………………… CLONE.NL

Francois X – Suspended In A Stasis Field

So finally, we get to release the long awaited debut EP of Francois X on DEMENT3D.

Francois X is a hard worker. Never tired of trying new experiences and starting new initiatives to focus on his energy. Since 2008 he’s been constantly involved in developing DEMENT3D. First as a DJ, then co-running the label, and more recently, remixing Polar Inertia, releasing his collaborative project with Opuswerk – Hiss : 1292 – (by the way, second Hiss EP is on its way…). Given all this history, it is only high time for him to unleash some of his black magic upon us, with his first full-blown EP since September 2011 (and that mighty Marcel Dettmann Remix) on the beloved Deeply Rooted imprint.

Much like hundreds of techno records that we love, Francois subtly weaves a canvas of very personal links between sound treatments and life events, time decay and society, spatialization and science-fiction, rumble and voodoo tribe rituals, and delivers some very powerful moments of raw and gritty music.
We’re very happy to let one of the two people we call “boss” share his music and vision, hope you’ll lose yourself on this one as much as we have.