terrine: cheat days

"Cheat Days is the new release by Terrine (aka Claire Gapenne, also in Headwar), part techno noise and part bedroom freak électronique. Cheat Days is pressed at 45RPM for maximum heaviness and delight. Nothing ever really runs like clockwork in Gapenne's weird and wonderful world. The Tinker Bell of French noise, her magic whip has the power to turn one into a horse drawn carriage or an old pumpkin. A hyperactive activist and artist, she has been part of Accueil Froid for the past seven years in Amiens. This collective has invited the best of experimental rock to their town, eyes and ears wide open in a place where there is (almost) nothing except pretty canals and unemployment. Her music releases pressure valves and opens a perspective onto infinite possibilities. Though known for manhandling her bass as part of Headwar and has made her mark in numerous groups with delightfully silly names (Snif Nazal, Couteau Twins, and Me Donner), the riotous Terrine has paved a path for herself with constancy and determination. Turning up where least expected, she changes the game plan according to her art and the people she meets, increasingly preoccupied with defying genre, nimbly and tactfully skipping from one style to the next. With the aptly titled Cheat Days, she has concocted a disorientating mix of stunted techno, limping dub and piano-wave improv. Though one could imagine she would dive head first into EBM and post-industrial techno, she now takes a completely different direction with this album; everything is guarded, the approach is minimalist and intensely personal. Between gusts of peripheral noise captured on the go, she dares to combine Cabaret Voltaire and Pascal Comelade, and The Shadow Ring, a St Vitus' dance and a disembodied rave, slow-burning dub and digital crackle, electronic no-wave and jumble sale tech. Too subtle to jerk about on the BPM assembly line, her music is etched upon a backdrop behind which an old piano is hidden, dusty and busted. The only captain of her ship, she uses modest means to fashion cutting edge sound design and summon heavy dancefloor artillery. Stacked with resources and buzzing with a wealth of projects, Claire Gapenne has progressively become one of the most crucial (and jovial) figures of the DIY underground." --Julien Bécourt