Vincenzo Ramaglia ft. Laure Le Prunenec - La parole 6 (Shigeto Remix)

August 13, 2020 - PEM Records

Danceable? You bet. Dark? Yes. Terrifying? Absolutely. Midnight mood in the midnight year. 

Detroit-based producer Shigeto has created a delightfully inky new remix of ‘La parole 6’ by Roman experimental composer Vincenzo Ramaglia featuring the voice of Laure Le Prunenec (Igorrr, Corpo-Mente, Rïcïnn). Like walking a labyrinth in an ancient cave chamber, the remix is as primeval as its roots in the original track, but with a little more cadence and structure. Shigeto has carved out an accessible entry point into the experimentation of Ramaglia’s work by catching it by the tail and containing it within a solid beat and bass line.

The remix begins with a short soundscape of head-throbbing electronic glitches, unrecognizable but familiar noises, like an ominous car horn distorted by distance, and tiny flashes of the vocal samples to come, setting the tone and opening up a wide space for what’s next. It’s a start that reminds me of an orchestra conductor giving the ensemble a few moments to warm up on their own in freeform before beginning a coordinated collective performance. Le Prunenec’s voice is then thrown in like salt into the pot, establishing a clear golden thread for us to follow forward. The bass drops, fortifying that line, that path. Here and now we’re moving, we’re dancing, we’re following along, pleased, hypnotized, mystified, haunted. Feet on the ground and eyes straining to see the gold while drowning in a painted vision of a landscape saturated in black ink. 

The track ambles wild in an amorphous key, and the effect is foreign to our ears so accustomed to pretty harmonies and soothing musical modes designed to sell and keep us mild. The segment Shigeto uses of Le Prunenec’s voice echoes like a ghost behind you in the dark. Or like a rusted fence door that makes an atonal song all its own when you move it on its hinges. Or like drips from one singular point in a cavernous underground ocean that would otherwise be still. It reminds you of mysterious feelings, of what you don’t understand about yourself but still feel compelled to express when life goes beyond comprehension. It evokes the mysteries of the psyche and the animals we all hide inside of ourselves. In these pandemic times, these moods are a little more noticeable, creating an underlying rhythm that runs underneath our day-to-day activities—vibrations of a collective grief and a fire beneath the Zoom meetings, the bulk grocery shopping, the bread baking, the mask making.  

Listening to Ramaglia’s original ‘La parole 6’ made me so anxious I had to get out of my apartment and go for a walk to stare up at the trees. Perhaps that’s more a reaction to where I exist in these present times, detached. But Le Prunenec’s expansive vocal wails, the amorphous structure, and the hard work of listening to the oddity of the conversation in the piece tore my insides up and left me there to deal with that. What I like about Shigeto’s remix is that the track still maintains much of that same emotional weight, but the bass pounds like my heartbeat and is there with me like a shield so I can explore the itchy feeling without ripping myself apart. He took an IDM track from a self-proclaimed PEM—Popular Experimental Music—artist, and pushed it onto the techno floor. Dance is a form of existential self-soothing while idleness is a form of self-destruction. I’m starved for movement while I sit idle listening and writing this review. 

I love when remixes introduce me to new corners of the music industry I’ve never noticed before. In this case, Shigeto brought the work of Vincenzo Ramaglia and the amazing voice of Laure Le Prunenec to my attention (and she is a powerhouse of sound and emotive space of which I am grateful for my newfound awareness). Music today is a room of infinite corners in the dark, and I’m trying to explore it with one flashlight and one set of batteries. Click click click. Something’s there. ☔

Vincenzo Ramaglia · La parole 6 (Shigeto Remix)