MEDHA SINGH

Two boys got together two years ago to make music, paying extra attention to the then sudden upsurge of vocal oriented electronic music, and decided it was important to join the roster. 2010 saw Ketil and Ulrik’s synthphrases, up-tempo beats and a compilation of various live instruments. Fast forward at least four years into its more sophisticated version since its inception, indie-electro music has caught on. Ketil Jansen and Ulrik Denizou Lund are childhood friends and have worked with various genres, grounded largely in rock, indie and electro; we get a very strong texture coupled with mature vocals. Lemaitre is an exemplar of something extremely interesting, what we gratefully attributed earlier to the Arctic Monkeys as well: we don’t need record companies anymore. Not for the indie/electronic scene at least. The case to be made is that unless one is someone like Lady Gaga or Coldplay/John Mayer (pregnant and cramped with their first world dilemmas), or any other pop-star so to speak, no one can tell you what to say and what not to say, what to create, how to go about it and what exactly constitutes this problematic thing called the ‘mainstream’.

Lemaitre claims to be a combination of synth, vocals, disco-beats, live instruments and, well, ‘not-so-live-instruments’. It has been a remarkably short career for the kind of following they’ve managed to conjure. It is remarkable how after Daft Punk released Discovery, beat-dominated-feel-good-music became infectious to no end. Six years post that we see Cross by Justice and now we have these boys. They released an EP at the end of 2010 called The Friendly Sound. The duo actually does manage to get around, working vigorously on new material and moving about ‘wherever the music takes them’. Which is also why we’re anticipating them at the India Music Week this year (which is to say foot-pop-kiss-oh-em-gee-gender-bender-moments are equally anticipated during this time; the line-up is pretty killer).

I mean, there was a time when the Scandinavian region was (or rather still is) known for its contribution to the melting pot of metal (quite the image, that).  It is interesting that the emergent trend in Europe has experienced a paradigm shift towards the composite genre of electro. Lemaitre also claims, at the same time, to be hugely influenced by some our favorite head-bobbing-sound-and-beat-brothers such as Justice, Phoenix, Deadmau5, Daft Punk, Ratatat, Noisia, and Röyksopp. Of course, it is unfair to mention them all in the same breath, but these are not our claims to make.

The boys have played at huge festivals like Øya, Slottsfjell, and Hove. Festivals have a tendency to announce and springboard new artists into the pool of popular music without the trappings of record labels/corporations, and once you have a faithful and impressed live audience, it multiplies tenfold on the internet; Lemaitre is one glaring example of this phenomenon known as an internet viral. Two years into its making, Lemaitre already has plans laid out halfway across the world to do shows.  They have been invited by radios, played concerts and released three EPs so far; the latest one is called Relativity 3 EP that came out in November, not so long ago. So what they are, is essentially something that resembles Apparat, but more… how-do-we-say-it? Continental. Norwegian. Forgive me.

They take odd sounds, samples, noises, whatever one might call it and assemble them together to make music. It works in perfect harmony. For those of us who haven’t seen Across the Baltic, the name originated from that of Georges Lemaitre, the mathematician and theorist who developed the Big Bang theory. The genetic structure of their sound has visibly large traces of 2000’s indie-pop that also does coalesce with their devil-may-care ethic. There are sporadic, quick and crisp spurts of electronic in bed with thick, prominent beats that enable tracks to be both melodic and energetic at the same time. They have maintained their standard throughout the length of their musical career, in terms of production and content. The ambiance could be perceived to be very ordinary though the whole feel good sensibility seems to weigh heavy after a certain point. However, Relativity 3 is promising in the very least. As one would say about their whole sound in general, if it didn’t so blatantly spell out its influences in the tracks. As a listener, one needs to listen and follow closely until they burst into a million stars some day; hopefully at the IMW gig, this time. I will be there, that’s for certain.

Learn more about artists performing at the India Music Week at www.indiamusicweek.com