Xavier Thomas (Debruit) — who up until fairly recently released most of his records on Civil Music — has worked on the outer fringes of experimental hip-hop for a few years. His last album, Aljawal, made in collaboration with Sudanese singer Alsarah, was a modern take on the traditional music of his partner’s homeland, fusing the Arab world’s rich vocal history and instrumentation with African polyrhythms, all set loosely within the experimental hip-hop framework the French producer has become known for over the years.
débruit’s latest offering, and his fourth solo album, comes in the form of Outside The Line — released on his own freshly minted ICI imprint — continues with the idea of genre revisionism that he has been playing with recently. This time he fuses his beloved African rhythms with a 1980s New York-style afro-beat sentimentality and a cheeky nod to sound tracking from the same decade.
But reader, fear not: this is not an exercise in the cynical cultural appropriation (cough cough *Cut Hands*) that we have all been reading about so much recently, as débruit’s retro-futurist synth lines, ultra-modern vocal manipulation techniques, clever use of space, and the slippery, choppy rhythms allow his music to transcend the themes that inform his work, allowing the sum to be far more than the parts.
TMT has managed to bag an exclusive premiere of débruit’s track “Transverse,” a number built around a repetitive vocal sample, heavily modulated samples, and proggy synth melodies. Check it out below!
• débruit: http://music.debruit.com