Parisian musician Hyperactive Leslie could easily have styled his name as Psychoactive Leslie, judging from the aspect of his upcoming EP ‘Fluid_e‘ for French label Airfono Records.
Not to say the productions here are, on the whole, intense, or even particularly colourful in regards to speedy tempo or hyper-vibrant synths. Leslie (actually Antonin Leymarie) works on a relatively muted palette, and earns his Hyperactive title through complex — but not overbaked — percussion and rhythms, more than likely a skill gleaned through Leymarie’s training as a jazz percussionist.
It’s clear from listening to ‘Fluid_e‘ that Hyperactive Leslie, Leymarie’s dance music “alter ego”, perhaps, is attributable to the flow and shift electric dancefloors a small world away from the jazz auditorium though — a fair amount of this EP would easily pass for a Livity Sound release you’d slept on, that psychoactive compliment paid earlier rising from the way Leslie wreathes drums in patterns to make the head spin.
‘Soli’ shows what is meant there, taking the focus entirely back to the bare concrete of deep percussion and deep swells of bass that set something stirring in ancestral parts of the brain. Slowly pacing forward with a methodical pressure, Leymarie sparingly adds further drops of percussion, resulting in a polyrhythmical madness finish. On ‘Soli‘, and the EP at a wider scale, Hyperactive Leslie calls back to acoustic instruments’ strongest strengths in his application of them to electronic dance music.
‘Fluid_e’ is scheduled for release 15 April via Airfono Records. Order a copy from Bandcamp.
TRACKLIST
1. Cymbale
2. Soli
3. Syncussion
4. Rebond