Jean-Paul Bondy

Better known as Volum and as one half of angry robots Volsoc (his musical partnership with Justin Maxwell), Jean-Paul Bondy’s output to date has often been categorised as electro, but not as we know it, Jim. Since the early 90s Bondy has been bringing us his vision of a cartoon future of blips, bleeps, squeaks and tweaks, all fed through your speakers and straight into your brain by a rhythmic salvo of breakbeats, bass, and straight-up, glitched-up funk.

Bondy’s first solo album, The Path of Most Resistors marks the culmination of this effort to date, while at the same time representing a subtle departure – not just for Bondy, but for Compost too. Make no mistake; this is a record that is grounded in the kind of solid, machine funk grooves, synthetic melodies and sci-fi atmospheres that the best electro has always brought us. But as Bondy appears to have asked, why stop there?

And that is why nestled in among dancefloor electro bombs like “Xeno Persuasion” and “Prompted Some Observers”, we also find some of Bondy’s downtempo vocal experiments such as the metallic melancholy of “Monochrome’ (featuring vocals from Product.01’s Rochelle Vincente) and album closer “Bit By Bit/Ear Worms”, a twelve-and-a-half- minute collaborative epic featuring the additional production talents of John Tejada, Bass Kittens, David Deande, and Kay Knofe, as well as vocals from Alissa Keuker.

Of course, Bondy has lots more talented friends and he wants you to be jealous, so UK electro legend Carl Finlow lends his characteristically fragile tones to current single Cold Reformer (already remixed by John Tejada, Product.01, Ruxpin, Weedjs, Bass Kittens and Evader). Forthcoming single Something Is Not Right features the warehouse party politics of Blood of Abraham and is set to come with remixes from none other than Si Begg and Robag Wruhme. And former robot companion Justin Maxwell is back to have his bits crushed on Dry Humper.

That’s before we’ve even mentioned the videogame psychedelia of LA is Burning, the drum machine dub of Origami Mommy, or the fact that Delia’s Temptation sounds like watching your first Martian sunrise… and you probably traveled the Path of Most Resistors to get there. (Damien Hallsworth)