French producer, label founder and manager of the fantastic Tigersushi and vinyl-only Crowdspacer imprint, Joakim, recently released his new record Tropics of Love, via Because Music.

This album sees Joakim reinvent his musical roots and go back to basics – with the sheer use of a sampler, microphone, a few analogue synths and a computer. To celebrate the release of Tropics of Love, Joakm gave us a track by track run down of what went down while creating this strange but wonderful new record.

Chapter 1

This is the intro obviously. I tried to recreate that sound that you hear in THX cinema theatres with my ARP2600. Pretty happy with the result. Then it turns into an ambient / soundtrack tune, sort of between Badalemanti and Italian 80s composer such as Fabio Frizzi.

Bring Your Love

Featuring Luke Jenner who I actually met in Australia on the Parklife tour a few years ago. When I was mixing On The Beach he was rehearsing in the same studio so I invited him to come say hi and hear the song. He seemed to like it so I quickly proposed him to sing on another track that I had trouble with. He sent me back a vocal demo, it was great, and I went to his apartment and recorded his vocal in his kitchen.

Three Laser Finger

A track I started in Paris before moving to New York and that I reworked many times before finding its final form. It’s built in 3 parts. The drum machine and some synths were recorded like a jam; I like to do that to keep something very organic in the music.

Heart Beats

That one was recorded and finished in Paris before I moved. Basically the first track I finished for the album. Quite a sad one. It came together very quickly except for the vocals. I asked a few friends to do something first, but no one found something interesting or wanted to do it. A few months later, I finally found a melody with the vocoder voice and that very close-up sounding voice on the chorus.

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Chapter 2

This is Michel Foucault speaking about craziness over crazy beats. I like using bits of spoken words, theatre, conferences in my music, like a way of creating weird meanings.

Each Other

I met Akwetey who’s singing on that song when I was working on the soundtrack of Camille Henrot’s film Grosse Fatigue. He’s part of that band I love called Dragons Of Zynth. Once he came at home to grab something and I played him this tune. 5 minutes later he was writing lyrics on a piece of paper, and 1 hour later it was in the box. Nothing was planned. It was magic.

This Is My Life

I almost didn’t put that track on the album. And now everyone is talking about this one haha. It’s always like that. Luckily I played it to some trusted friends who said I HAD to put it on the album. It’s some kind of biography of my life read by a computer voice. Just random events that happened to me. It’s not all accurate of course, but some of it is.

RX777

A tribute to early Acid House, Art Of Noise and African beats. Sort of. I used a lot of Fairlight samples, that prehistoric sampler from the 80s that was heavily used by Trevor Horn. And a typical drum machines from the 80s, the RX7, which inspired the track title in a very lazy way.

Chapter 3

Last chapter, towards the night. I love ambient and drones as you can see. I could have done a 20 minute version of this.

On The Beach

A cover of one of my favourite Neil Young’s song. I was obsessed with that song and especially the lyrics that are so dark but so nice, very true. I wanted to try a cover on that album, so I had to pick a song with vocals I really liked.

Hero

Again, I love drones. I started to build a modular synth in NYC, this is basically 90% modular synth, one take, live tweaking. Starting as a darker, bass heavy drone to finish with some light. The title was inspired by a book I was reading from Bioy Casares.