Christian Montoya

#musicfortoday SomethingALaMode - RondoParisiana (feat. Karl Lagerfeld)

tuneage:

SomethingALaMode - “RondoParisiana (feat. Karl Lagerfeld)”

SomethingALaMode are Thomas Roussel and Yannick Grandjean, two prized string players that spent their teenage years at the An-Fer — the venue of choice for 90s French electro greats like Laurent Garnier and Daft Punk. They formed in the wake of a project that eventually produced classical reinterpretations of Jeff Mills’ work performed by the Montpellier Philharmonic orchestra, in 2006 (which you can watch in full here, and I suggest you do).

The term “electro-string” has a distinctly novelty sound to it, but SALM have made something great here. Their first, and currently only, album (self-titled) shows a tremendous amount of range within the formula. “Gstring” sounds like it belongs on an Ed Bangers compilation, while “5 AM” features west-coast rapper K.Flay, and “Little Bit of Feel Good” reduces the tempo and emphasises some wonderful cello work. Every single track does something a little different with the genre, and the result is an album that deserves to be on heavy rotation for any fan of electro.