Some FADER Mixes sound totally batshit in a good way, some are more like mixtapes you'd put together for a hot-and-heavy crush and some of them provide a legitimately revealing glimpse into its maker's key influences. On this week's mix, London trio Eaux (featuring members of the defunct post-rock band Sian Alice Group) deploy a nice variety of druggy experimental tracks, murky production work and even some straight-up classic pop. It's easy to imagine that a lot of these artists and aesthetics were important reference points during the making of the synth outfit's textural and tense new full-length, Plastics. Download the mix below and read a short and sweet interview with Eaux about cooking up comfort food and borrowing Cocteau Twins' delay pedals. Plastics is out now in the UK and drops July 8th in the States.
Download: Eaux's FADER Mix
Where are you right now? Describe your surroundings. We're in our studio in Tottenham rehearsing for Primavera Porto and our album release party at Birthdays in Dalton. The surroundings are industrial, full of tangled wires but somehow peaceful with a window framing the summer evening sky.
This mix is a trip. Where were your heads at when you made it? Our heads were pretty much where they usually are when on tour—in the van, making mixtapes. Layering and blending tracks is always fun and hopefully enhances the trippiness.
Can you share something about the making of your debut album? There's a whole load of space echo on it. We used a vintage Roland Space Echo Tape Delay that used to belong to Cocteau Twins. It's on keys, on vocals, on anything we could get away with.
Collaborating can be tough. What are your studio survival tips? Listen, play, talk, make tea.
What's the last book you read that had a big impact on you? Musicophilia by Oliver Sacks; the human brain has a unique relationship to music, and neurologist sacks documents patients who's brains have changed the way music is processed and perceived. It's always inspiring to read about how inate music is within us, and how little we understand ourselves.
What's your favourite dish to cook and how do you make it? We've been eating a lot of homemade version of salmon ochazuke recently, which is a bowl of hot japanese rice and cooked flaked salmon with hot green tea poured over it. Add some umeboshi (pickled salted plum paste), wasabi, toasted sesame seeds, scallion onions and seaweed. Super revitalising and comforting.
Tracklist:
underground resistance - codebreaker
black dice - things will never be the same
the KLF - elvis on my radio, steel guitar in my soul
kassem mosse - c1
the ccm steel band - alberto balsalm
mark flash - eagle warriors (UR)
jon hopkins - open eye signal
lou reed - like a possum
paul mccartney - waterfalls
yellow magic orchestra - light in darkness
boredoms - super ae
blanck mass - polymorph
arthur russell - in the light of the miracle
Pantha Du Prince & The Bell Laboratory - Photon
head high - keep on talking (dirt mix)
steve moore - logotone
(phase iv film trailer by saul bass)
Group Doueh - Wazan Samat
Darkside - Freak, Go Home
bEEdEEgEE - empty vases (featuring douglas armour)
tongebirge vs. the elektroplankton
