Somaticae

* Edition of 300. Chrome cover and Black & white insert. * Amédée De Murcia aka Somaticae is a regular of our label, first recording industrial music and techno under this moniker (his first properly distributed album, Catharsis, back in 2013), then powerful digital noise (Electricité, part of the IPX CD series) and a bunch of outstanding tapes on some of the best French DIY labels toying with the format (Fougère, Tanzprocess). Like France Sauvage who recently released on the label, Amédée De Murcia is someone who has and still is touring extensively and playing every cave, bar, garage, house in the French underground and Eastern Europe, alone or with one of his many bands (OD Bongo, Vinci, etc.).

This record manages to encapsulate the spirit of his semi-improvised live sets of this past two years. Reminiscent of Pan Sonic at their most techno, and of the ghost in the machine of Toshimaru Nakamura’s No Input Mixing Board, it’s one of the tensest as well as explosive records we’ve heard lately, just one big burst of raw pulsating energy. It’s all kicks, bass and noises, always on the edge, grapping your ears for a bit more than half an hour and leaving you exhausted and blooming.

The making of the record has been inspired by and is dedicated to Amesys, the French company responsible for surveillance software technologies used by several dictatorships around the world, which story is summed up by Somaticae on the back cover. The artwork designed by Liquid Test Press, attempts at representing the operation of censorship and repression resulting from this too discreet surveillance software. If this records makes any profit past initial costs, they will go to fund the activities of collectives against technological warfare and surveillance (struggles against the deployment of facial recognition; civil liberties advocacy).