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Too many people seem to put more stock in the stars and celebrities of fads and fashions, as if they do the artists actually driving the music forward, without realising that those so-called stars are just the ones the record companies are using to cash in on any given current zeitgeist. The elevation to celebrity status is rarely a bellwether indicator of creativity; in fact, it is usually the opposite.
True creativity happens much further down the pecking order via people who leave themselves free to take chances and explore, people who don’t mind failing or, more appropriately, are not bound by cash and cachet and so don’t even have a metric to measure such a concept. This, in turn, pushes ideas and creativity upwards, acting as the base for new sounds and styles, not that the pop-pickers and those they worship would ever acknowledge or even realise such a force is at work.
Pas Musique is such a force and has been an ever-fluid line-up for nearly three decades and takes the form of an ever-evolving, experimental electronic sound based around Robert L. Pepper. “Come Follow Me” is the title track of his latest album and is a tribute to one of his biggest influences, the late, great Frank Tovey a.k.a. Fad Gadget.
If every album he makes, in some way, adds additional aspects to his canon of work, this is the first one to use traditional vocals, as opposed to the usual synthesised vocalisations. And as a tribute to the past, the song is Peppered (see what I did there?) with all manner of 80’s synths and shimmering beats but sits in the present too, thanks to its strange noise inclusions and avant-garde adventurousness.
It’s not a song that will break far out of the realms frequented by those who like exploring the liminal spaces where song meets noise, beat descents into alternative grooves, and dance music is warped into art, but that is the whole point. Whilst mainstream music looks up to the skies for pennies to rain down, people like Pepper, not that there are that many people like him, and projects like Pas Musique, are mining deep underground, following strange creative seams and turning over hidden musical gems. It is here that the true riches are found, even if few surface dwellers would recognise them as such. But then Mr Pepper has a keen ear, keener than most.
Come Follow Me
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