Paris Treantafeles – Anatolé Album

Delivering sixteen cuts of stripped back, often funky tracks, Anatolé, a cassette and digital release by Paris Treantafeles is a great release for the end of summer and the coming fall. Treantafeles, a Queens, NY musician, manages to use a restricted production method to deliver what’s been one of my favorite releases of the recent past. I came across his work thanks to a mutual friend and have been putting this one on repeat since pre-orders went up.

Employing only a Casio CZ-1000, a garage sale find, his MPC, a couple of effects pedals and a couple drum machines to build these tracks, Paris Treantafeles creates a world full of squiggling synth lines, memorable hooks, slow jams to light candles by and tracks that are perfect to bump late at night while cruising on the come down. Effects and post-production are minimal, with Treantafeles preferring to leave the component parts of the track largely free of processing, a production choice that is a relief and in stark contrast to the often over-sculpted (and lifeless) techno we’ve got in piles coming out at the moment.

Anatolé, the title track on the album, is full of fun, loose squiggling melodies, clean and spare and pitch bent lines slip in and out of the track. Helios, is the sleeper that I admittedly wish was two or three times longer. It’s got a really great bubbling bass line pushing things along from the start and a deepness that is really wonderful, especially considering the constraints Treantafeles is working with, everything from lush pads and a catchy lead. None of the tracks on this album are over three minutes, they get stuck in your ear almost immediately and end before they wear out their welcome.

Tracks like Dynamis, slow things down, bumping nicely with synth lines warbling and chirping over a piano infused pad and woodwind stabs. Many of the tracks on this release slip and slide elements over one another, adding complexity and allowing for a playfulness I’ve been really missing lately in releases I’ve been going through. Time and time throughout this album, Treantafeles shows that it doesn’t matter what you’ve got in the studio, but rather, what you do with it.

In a world full of the over-hyped and mediocre same-sounding productions, Treantafeles provides a very needed breath of fresh air with this release, it’s available now over on his bandcamp, https://parisonic.bandcamp.com/album/anatol.