“Making timeless music is one of my first goals,” says Belgian techno-funk visionary Fabrice Lig. His new album, Galactic Soul Odyssey is a journey through the cosmos as told through the funkiest techno you’ll probably ever hear. “I’m trying to make music respecting the idea of original techno,” says Lig. “But I don’t want to reproduce music from early nineties. That period was prolific enough, and thousands of classic records were already made.”
Lig is loathe to use the phrase concept album, but the galactic aesthetic is prevalent throughout the release. “Its important for me to build a real story, a bit like life. It’s up and down, sad and happy, hard and soft, sometimes faster, sometimes slower…I always try to be out of electronic music listening when I want to record an album. I really want to make personal music without any influences of actual trends. I’m a big fan of Sci-Fi and space, though. I wanted the journey to go to space.”
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Lig is no astronaut, though. In fact, his day-to-day is spent with intronauts. He explains, “I teach at a secondary school, and specially for teenagers with special needs like autism. I love it. They are so cool, every kid has his own personal and unique world inside, and my mission is to understand each of them to” be able to enter their world and than try to move forward with them.”
The album is released on Carl Craig’s Planet E. It’s a dream-come-true for Lig. “I’ve been a Detroit techno music fans since late 80’s,” he says. “I know all the labels, I love many of them, and there are few I admire for their innovation, constant high-quality rate of their music, or just their music approach. And on top of these, I have two labels that I never even thought I could sign for, as I feel they are untouchable: Underground Resistance and Planet-E. To sign an album for the label that released Moodyman, Recloose, Kevin Saunderson, Kenny Larkin and everything Carl Craig did on was so unexpected.”
The story goes like this: “It started in 2002 when Carl picked up 2 of my tracks for his ‘The Workout’ compilation on React. It was amazing as I had no idea Carl knew about my music. But after that, I never sent any stuff to him. I had too much respect for that label…I just sent it with the hope of getting an answer by Carl to know if he could find some tracks good enough to play or better, if he could spend few minutes to give me some feedback on it. But he loved it, enough to sign it! It was so stressy for me to get that e-mail. I was sure ’til the last moment that he would change his mind.”
Stream the whole thing below and pre-order on iTunes:
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Jemayel Khawaja is Managing Editor of THUMP – @JemayelK
