The Otium Mixtape

David Kiledjian is a producer/musician based in Lyon. This debut solo album puts us in touch with Lyon’s futurist electronic scene. Some readers will know of the city’s annual Nuits Sonores festival that takes place and perhaps also of the reputation of its clubs, which are said to be challenging the chic cool of Paris. KILEDJIAN is the busy creative producer of Dowdelin, the ‘Creole Afro-futurists’ (soi-disant) whose two albums have been big on many a club dancefloor; he’s also produced diverse artists including Armenian jazz pianist Tigran Hamasyan and Mali’s BKO.

But for The Otium Mixtape, he’s taken some time out, retreated to a house by the sea and filled his idyll with riffs on keyboards, sax, strings and homemade percussion. Then he mutated the demos into a laid-back soundworld where a jazz funk vibe mixes intimately with electronica and his French and Armenian musical roots, often topped off with guest vocalists from Lyon and further afield: Burkina Faso, Guadaloupe and the NYC jazz scene. One of KILEDJIAN’s own favourite tracks is ‘Shaadü’ with a 9/8 rhythm played on driftwood sticks. Mine too! Other delights include the single ‘Niloti (la Nuit) (feat Cindy Pooch)’, ‘2600 (feat Sako Wana)’, ‘Dio (feat Celia Wa)’ and a smoky jazz ballad ‘Jalouse’, sung heart-rendingly by Macha Gharibian. The Otium in the title relates to the ancient Roman practice of ‘leisure purely for one’s own pleasure with no benefit to the state or public,’ but KILEDJIAN has showered us with some (beneficially) rich and strange music.