Today at the radio station, we recieved a copy of the Para One album. The press kit boasted of favorable comparisons to Justice and Daft Punk, and touted Para One as the next big French electronic artist. The pretentious title of his album (Epiphanie) gave me doubts, but the disc is actually pretty fucking rad.
"Piste Bleue" opens the album with a barrage of funky synth warbles, and it also proves that Para One knows how and when to drop a throbbing bass line on top of said funkiness. It's followed by "Turtle Trouble," a knob-twiddler that reaches the same screeching frequencies that Benny Benassi is known for. Then nothing remarkable happens until track 5, "Dudun-Dun," which starts out as a flawless imitation of Homework-era Daft Punk, but grows into a booming club anthem by the two minute mark.
"Musclor" shows promise at first with a fat hip hop beat that unfortunately heralds the onset of bad French rap. There's some impressive slicing on "Def Tea Machine," but it ultimately adds up to nothing. "Liege" feels like it belongs on another, possibly better album. High-pitched synth stabs recall Vitalic at their best, but the track just sort of wanders in the best way possible, like a tourist in Amsterdam. You never make it to the Red Light district, but getting lost on the way if half the fun.
The agressive "Clubhoppin" starts with a sample of an irate robot asking the listener, "What the fuck is wrong with you?" The answer, it would seem, is that you/I/we aren't dancing enough, and so Para One spends five minutes and forty-one seconds convincing us to.
The disc ends on "Ski Lesson Blues" which sounds the most like "Liege" out of any of the other tracks.
Granted, it's a bad year to be any electronic artist (much less a French one) whose name doesn't start with a "J" and end with a "ustice," but Para One makes a solid effort nonetheless.
Para One - Dudun-Dun
Para One's quasi-infamous remix of "Prime Time of Your Life":
Stay tuned for a Debaser@ Bat for Lashes later today.
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