The Offline - Le motard [New single + Music Video]
Hamburg’s finest is back with another cinematic soulful cup of goodness, spiced with a dose of funk throughout on his new single ‘Le motard’.
Watch the music video + order his debut album ‘La couleur de la mer’ on digital and 12” vinyl below.
Based around an urgent shuffle and Khruangbin-esque guitar parts, ‘Le motard’ comes as a near centre-piece of ‘La couleur de la mer’, taking the energy of the album up a notch as listeners enter the second act of the soundtrack. An infectious bassline forms a tight rhythmic unit with the kit, opening up space for a boisterous horn section, again taking influence from the dark, jazz-tinged hip-hop sampling of the likes of MF Doom and Madlib.
“Ever since I was a child, I was fascinated by the soundtracks from the 60s and 70s, and I always wanted to make an album in the film score direction. I wrote about 30 demos, kicked half of it and stuck to the ones that felt right in the dramaturgical structure of the ‘movie'. Interestingly the main theme was set really early on while writing the album, which made the writing process much easier.”
Reminiscent of film scores from the 60s and 70s, The Offline worked with co-producer Timor Litzenberger to channel the influence of film composers such as Francois de Roubaix, Brian Bennet & David Axelrod, creating his own soundtrack on ‘La couleur de la mer’. Inducing images of manorial, fog-swept villas at the seas edge, silhouetted sailing boats and cigar-chomping villains attempting to thwart the mission of an imaginary hero, the record is a masterfully composed sonic journey. Experimenting with themes and atypical song structures, the music moves from dramatic cues to fragile romanticism. It incorporates psychedelic spaciness, retro soul and hip-hop sensibilities informed by The Offline’s extensive record collection and crate-digger status.
The Offline came to life when composer and photographer Felix Müller travelled the Atlantic coastline in the south of France with his analogue camera, capturing beach life on film. After coming back to Hamburg, he started writing songs as the sonic counterpart to the analogue visuals. Debut EP ‘En Clair-Obscur’ includes five tracks that capture the essence of his journey and the feeling of a cool summer soundtrack. Sonically sitting somewhere between the washed out, sun-soaked sonics of Surprise Chef and Robohands, his music has seen support from BBC Radio 6 and Jazz FM, whilst amassing well over one million streams on his debut EP.
