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In Flagranti – Music Review

Posted on 09. Feb, 2009 by Administrator in Music

by Todd Gilchrist

For anyone not intimately familiar with the landscape of electronic music, differentiating the wheat from the chaff is often an almost impossible task. Part of this process, of course, comes down to individual preference, such as whether you like deep house or minimal, drum & bass or dubstep. But sometimes, it can come down to something as simple as artwork featuring a gorgeous 70’s fashion model getting increasingly naked across the front and back cover.

To Alex Gloor and Sasha Crnobrnja, the duo known as In Flagranti, the music and its packaging is equally important. “I choose cover images and title [each single] very consciously,” says Gloor. “If you look at our vinyl releases you can see how things developed from my simple black and white collages on the first In Flagranti release in 2002 to the latest 3D color vulgarities in 2008. I wanted to find my own signature style, a brand recognition, and after a few years of experimenting I found it.”

Appropriately, there is no one way to describe their music, although fans of European disco from the 1970’s and 80’s will certainly recognize stylistic similarities in their tracks, if not the outright samples they build them around. “Each song is a unique combination of elements,” Gloor says. “We never try to do the same thing twice.” Some tracks feature fuzzed-out, ultra modern keyboard parts that demonstrates Crnobrnja’s ability to break down samples into unrecognizable pieces, while others build around familiar guitar or bass lines into dancefloor killers that would fit in comfortably at Studio 54 between Gary’s Gang and Sylvester.

The title track off of their 2006 single “Intergalactic Bubblegum” for example, deconstructs Amii Stewart’s “Knock On Wood” into a chugging, hypnotic burner; meanwhile, 2008’s “Revolutionary Bust” sounds like the bastard child of the Rolling Stones and Sly and the Family Stone as percussion samples circle fuzzed out, funky bass and guitar licks like sharks hunting down their next meal. Gloor says that they try to give even their most recognizable material a unique spin: “Sampling is a big part of what we do, but what makes us different from others is what we sample and how we combine things that don’t belong together. To make something new and different – a unique combination of sounds – that’s what we aim for.”

Meanwhile, even amidst the wealth of colorful and creative disc jackets that adorn the still-thriving market of new vinyl singles, In Flagranti’s labels stand out: Many of them feature scantily clad or sometimes fully nude women, albeit in decadent, highly stylized images more akin to 1970’s Penthouse or Playboy magazines than today’s hard-lit, almost clinical pornography. Perhaps predictably, it’s that era which also provides them with much inspiration when actually creating the music, which Gloor suitably characterizes according to their creative process but refuses to categorize.

“For someone to understand what we sound like, I would have to describe the way we work,” Gloor says. “I sample drums, guitars, vocals, synth noodlings or whatever, sounds I like from records I find in thrift-stores and flea-markets. Sasha arranges the sounds into tracks, then we edit and re-arrange them till we’re both happy with it. Having learned from the original cosmic DJs like [Daniele] Baldelli in the 80’s, we don’t get stuck in one genre, we experiment with all kinds of music,” he adds.

Describing their collaborative process, Crnobrnja explains that combining lots of disparate sources allows them to experiment, and ultimately expand the boundaries of their growing body of work. “I can pick the year I want to sound like or mix it all up,” he says. “Drums from a 60’s record, bass from a 70’s record, and a vocal that a girl just emailed me. It’s ultra modern.”

Crnobrnja says that his more recent work has been increasingly fueled by the availability of audio and visual content he’s found online, even if many of their songs originally take form through more conventional production methods. “I love sampling from vinyl; Alex provides me with a lot of it,” he admits. “But recently I have been sampling from YouTube as well; I love the compressed sound, almost like a cassette tape. I sample random stuff but am always looking for breaks and single instruments, which I chop into loops.”

“It’s less about taking someone’s music but having the ability to create a new song with the vintage sound,” he continues. “That also kind of defines the aesthetic of the song. I start with playing one loop and then changing the slices around or pitch them into a slightly different tone or melodies. It’s fun!”

While Gloor and Crnobrnja have a sizable indie-cred cache, they remain relatively unknown in the mainstream, which is just fine by them. “We do things for us first and not the other way around,” Gloor insists. “If that means not selling 10 million records, that’s fine. Ask yourself, ‘Is music better selling 10 million copies or do you prefer to be appreciated by just a few?’ Myself, I always liked obscure records better that nobody knew or had and were hard to find.”

Currently their own records are pretty hard to find. Distributed only through European mail order companies or a few domestic retailers around the country, In Flagranti’s music is as collectible as it is captivating. But like the samples from which they build their music, each 12” or EP release may not quite seem consistent with what preceded it, but it fits easily into the overall aesthetic they’ve created for themselves as artists. “The process of cut and paste fits prefect into how I listen to music or look at picture or video,” Gloor says reflectively. “I select, dissect and re-assemble material, make collages. It’s my personal approach of understanding things around me.”

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Tags: Alex Gloor, In Flagranti, Sasha Crnobrnja