Biografia
-
Luogo di nascita
Paris, Île-de-France, Francia
General Elektriks is the brainchild of Hervé ‘RV’ Salters. A French national and a keen vintage keyboard player, Salters was playing keys for his bands and for various artists in Paris (Femi Kuti, M, DJ Mehdi etc…) before he moved to San Francisco in 1999. He sarted working on funk collages as he was moving to the US, using his favorite keyboards, a computer and a mic. GE became a musical journal that followed RV through his move to Seattle, then back to the Bay Area, in Berkeley, where he currently resides. There, he hooked up with the Quannum crew (Blackalicious, Lyrics Born, DJ Shadow…) and started sessioning for them. He invited Quannum’s own Lateef The Truthspeaker and Chief Xcel on a few tracks, then completed the 1st GE album, ‘Cliquety Kliqk.’ Hailed by URB as ‘Ennio Morricone for the 21st century,’ the album is a far out mix of vintage funk, hip hop beats, noir riffs, cinematic arrangements, pop melodies and digital twinkle.
After touring behind the album, Salters joined Blackalicious in the studio to work on ‘The Craft’ and toured with them for over a year. Concurrently, he formed San Francisco trio Honeycut with singer Bart Davenport and drummer/programmer Tony Sevener. Quannum Projects released their critically acclaimed 1st album, ‘The Day I Turned To Glass,’ in 2006. As he was touring with Honeycut and laying keys down for more artists (Lifesavas, Curumin,, Jel, The Mighty Underdogs, etc…), Salters started working on a second GE effort. ‘Good city for dreamers’ was completed in the fall of 2008.
Much like ‘Cliquety Kliqk,’ ‘Good city for dreamers’ disrespects genre barriers and unveils a world of its own, a place where raw funk sounds dark and where keyboards caress you one moment then bite you the next. But although this new album was also almost entirely made by Salters alone in his garage, it unfolds organically and steers clear of the collage aesthetic of its predecessor. The genre lines are blurrier, morphed together as they are by RV’s vivid keyboard playing, warm singing and generous compositions – impressionistic strings and horns are featured on several songs, arrangements courtesy of the Frenchman. Salters whips up his own take on psychedelia, one where future soul, oldschool pop, sampling, indie rock, hip hop and free jazz make sparkles as they collide. In doing so, the French expatriate joins the growing ranks of artists who are citizens of the world, nomads who create a sonic landscape that feeds as much on their origins as it does on their travels.
Le descrizioni degli artisti su Last.fm possono essere modificate da tutti. Il tuo contributo sarà apprezzato!
Tutti i contenuti forniti dagli utenti su questa pagina sono disponibili in base ai termini della licenza Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike; potrebbero essere applicati ulteriori termini.
