Vincenzo Ramaglia ft. Laure le Prunenec - La parole 4 (Emika Remix)

September 18, 2020 - PEM Records

Berlin-based musician and label head Emika has put her own spin on experimental composer Vincenzo Ramaglia’s ‘La Parole 4’, featuring the voice of Laure Le Prunenec, and it’s a dark techno house stream-of-consciousness that reveals exactly what bewitched Emika about the original track. She has a reputation for edge in the music circles, with a sound that doesn’t apologize for its tenebrosity or opacity. In this remix she created a tangential mood to Ramiglia’s, referential but different, one step to the left and with a simple dance beat, a plant without chlorophyll feeding off of the emotional depth of the La Parole album. The haunter has become the haunted here, with angelic vocal samples, a synthetic faraway Franciscan-esque chorus, a rolling bassline of tumbling chromatic steps, and detail, such as occasional intricately-placed lone piano notes. And we are along for the seven-and-a-half-minute hayride. 

The song’s syntax is theatrical on the surface, with a clear atmospheric beginning and ending, but there’s no clear build or climax once you dig in. It’s looser in structure, more open. It reads from start to finish less like a linear story and more like a lookbook, where Emika dresses ‘La Parole 4’ in different costumes from one collection built from the same fabrics and dyes. Pages turn. Or like a sketchbook that documents the colors of Emika’s thoughts. Colors bleed. Or like a perfectly proportioned sandwich where the taste of every ingredient stands out equally and separately in your mouth. The fromage is good, but, in my opinion, the bassline is especially delicious. 

All in all, Emika’s remix is an introspective journey, and it seems that’s how other artists respond to Ramiglia’s work too—with an intense look inward. I think that speaks to the success of the abstraction in Ramiglia’s and Le Prunenec’s La Parole collaboration. The closer you look at it, the more you see of it as it looks back at you. It’s an infinite space. Great abstraction happens when we fill in the blanks on our own without even realizing. ☔

Emika · Vincenzo Ramaglia - La parole 4 (Emika Remix)