The Offline announces his debut album with new single 'La mission commence'
Hamburg’s finest cinematic soul artist ‘The Offline’ announces debut album with lead single ‘La mission commence’.
Watch the music video + order the LP below.
Following his debut EP ‘En clair-obscur’ and a series of singles earlier this year cementing his place as a rising voice in the world of cinematic soul & funk, ‘The Offline’ shares the lead single from forthcoming debut album ‘La couleur de la mer’ - ‘La mission commence’.
A track characterised by contrasts, playful horn melodies and soulful guitar lines develops with a rising intensity, balanced with dramatic, stomping beats that wouldn’t go amiss in MF Doom’s discography. The rich array of instrumentation, from Fender Rhodes through to a brass section, creates a symphony of sound that places the track as a movement within an album self-styled as ‘the soundtrack to a movie that has never been shot.”
“I used repetitive patterns in the song to immediately capture the listener's attention and create a sense of intrigue, building anticipation and welcoming people into the screening of the movie to which this is a part of the soundtrack.”
Reminiscent of film scores from the 60s and 70s, The Offline worked with co-producer Tim Liztenberger to channel the influence of film composers such as Francois de Roubaix and Brian Bennet, creating his own soundtrack on ‘La couleur de la mer’. Inducing images of manorial, fog-swept villas at the sea's 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.
“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.”
Aptly named, ‘Thème de la couleur de la mer’ opens proceedings, establishing the core motifs of the record. Haunting flutes and xylophones lead the way into Khruangbin-esque guitar lines, which sit against a hip-hop canvas that returns on boom-bap head boppers like ‘Quelque chose reste’. Retro soul revival takes precedence on deep cuts like ‘Un bout de chemin’, with wah-gated guitars interacting with emotive cello lines and symphonic string & horn sections.
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. His Debut EP ‘En Clair-Obscur’ includes five tracks that capture the essence of his journey and the feeling of a cool summer soundtrack.