Terence Fixmer - THE PARADOX IN ME (2024) [Official Digital Download 24/48]

Throughout his influential career, uncompromising French producer Terence Fixmer has straddled a precarious line, master-minding his own strain of taut, dancefloor-ready techno while simultaneously paying respect to the EBM sounds that helped crack open his mind as teenager. On The Paradox in Me, his second album for Mute / NovaMute, Fixmer confronts this duality, stretching the limits of dance music by interlacing evocative, cinematic electronics with pounding, peak-time 4/4 pulses. "There's always a fight between directions," he says. "This album represents all the sounds I have within me." The album goes straight to the point, brimming with the kind of raw, all-electronic grit that the artist has inked into an idiosyncratic signature over the last two decades, but there's a fresh narrative thread this time around, brought to the surface by Fixmer's hypnotic sound design and atmospheric, soulful melodies.

Fixmer burst onto the scene in the late 1990s, establishing the Planete Rouge label in 1998, and releasing a slew of influential 12"s under a pseudonym before signing to DJ Hell's International DJ Gigolos and unleashing Muscle Machine, his acclaimed debut album which pioneered a new genre that merging the sounds of EBM and Techno.

Not long later, he achieved a personal milestone, collaborating with Nitzer Ebb vocalist Douglas McCarthy for two albums as FixmerMcCarthy, that bridged the gap between EBM and classic techno. And since then, he's barely stopped for breath, remixing personal heroes like Front 242, Nitzer Ebb and Depeche Mode, as well as respected peers such as Ellen Allien, DJ Hell, Dave Clarke and Sven Väth, simultaneously building up a canon of work on CLR, Electric Deluxe, Ostgut-Ton and of course, Mute and NovaMute. He channels all this experience into The Paradox in Me, building a world that reconciles his past and present. The essence of the album is the way it effortlessly presents tracks with different kinds of energies and artistic facets, each track has a strong presence, and a unique soul and energy which comes from a place that is specifically - and recognisably Fixmer’s.

His writing process for the album was relatively straightforward. Fixmer worked with his arsenal of synthesizers and focused on the unique textures of the instruments themselves, following his instincts and experimenting boundlessly until happy accidents evolved into finished tracks. Knowing when to stop was the key; if he stumbled over something surprising, whether it was a sound or simply an attitude, Fixmer would endeavour to capture it, and then stand back. On opening track 'Test of the Times', he layers dizzying, industrial grain clouds over an undulating rhythm, spiking the mood with hoarse, robotic vocals and haunted sci-fi atmospheres.

Tracklist:
01 - Test of the Times
02 - In Synthesis
03 - Razor Sharp
04 - Dark Enough_
05 - Another End
06 - Paroxysm
07 - Shore Break
08 - Ephemere
09 - Evolve
10 - Close to You
11 - Void Machinery
12 - Glacier


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