Next week, Arnaud Rebotini, the powerfully stern analogue synth-wielding Parisian producer, returns with the second album under his Black Strobe guise. Godforsaken Roads continues the meld of electronics and bequiffed rock & roll aesthetics initiated on his 2007 debut, Burn Your Own Church, even extending to nestling a cover of Johnny Cash’s ‘Folsom Prison Blues’ among tracks with titles such as ‘Swamp Fever’, ‘Dumped Boogie’ and ‘The Girl From The Bayou’, the latter one of his two 2012 singles, as well as ‘Boogie In Zero Gravity’, included here. While there’s no shortage of strident EBM-leaning bangers, there are textural departures: witness the cosmic breakdown that brings ‘Blues Fight’ to a close or the wiry, shuffling riff on ‘House Of Good Lovin”.
Says Rebotini of the album: "With this album I go back to traditional songwriting, influenced by the roots of Americana, and for production I use my European heritage, I mean early electronic music, like Krautrock and synth wave. I try to keep the primitive idea of rock & roll and mix it with electronic music. I sing about a fantasy Dixieland, it’s my European vision of Americana, country and blues, maybe you can called it ‘Spaghetti Americana’." Play the album in its entirety above and get hold of it via Black Strobe Records from next Monday, October 6.
