"Moullinex means attention to detail. A careful craft of melodies, a strong sense of human touch in machine-based music, the melodrama of swirling keyboards, desperate guitars, those basslines, and beats reminiscing from a not so distant dancefloor past. The result is something intangible, somewhere in the thin line between song and club track, able to draw the best from the past and with the hope of shaping the future."
-A Cut Above
I've blogged about a Moullinex collaboration before, but it wasn't until this week that I finally put my finger on exactly what I find so appealing about the Portuguese music producer (i.e. Luis Clara Gomes). At its best, Moullinex's instrumentals seem both classical and modern, mechanical and soulful, a blend of influences that include neo pop, retro pop, nudisco and french house. Descriptors like 'sunset boogie', 'retro electro', 'beach house' and 'mocassin funk' all seem apt, but also somewhat inadequate, failing to capture that genre-blending dynamism that distills the best of the past while hurling headfirst into the future.
The addition of sensual female vocals from contributors like Best Youth's Catarina Salinas and Iwona Skwarek certainly add to the appeal. But as Norman Fleischer notes, Gomes is capable of providing strong lead vocals, which he backs with "fancy beats, versed piano play, warm synths, [and] grooving basslines". This is what unfolds on "Take My Pain Away", (the second track from Flora (2012)) which begins with a vintage metronome that accelerates into a full on chant (which is both a self-serving mantra and a plea to the beloved):
'Hey, hey, hey! 24 hours a dayTake my pain awayTell me you're here to stay24 hours a day'
The perfectly-timed, beautifully choreographed visuals in the music video are a testament to Gomes' attention to detail and his mastery of artistic craft. If Moullinex's career in music takes on the same kind of momentum that "Take My Pain Away" has, future music listeners can expect their eardrums to leave them breathless.
