Gene Tellem - Phantom Vibrations Gene Tellem

“A place between deep listening and a dance” is how Gene Tellem describes the music she releases via her Montreal-based independent label, Bienvenue Recordings. However her words apply just as well to her own sound as an artist, producer and remixer. Though inspired by early deep house and its musical antecedents, Gene’s work possesses an emotional resonance that transcends influence. It’s a quality that’s characterized her output since debuting her productions in 2017 - whether working solo or within her four-piece group Secret Witness, with vocalists or instrumentally, or via Bienvenue or other labels within the indie community. And it’s in abundance on the fivetrack Phantom Vibrations EP - her latest contribution to the imprint with which she shares an appreciation for the sounds and spaces that blur active listening and movement, NYC’s Love Injection Records. 

Its centerpiece is “Phantom Vibrations” - a paean to the allure of the elusive and ethereal that features the soulfully understated vocals of singer and co-writer Teddy Bryant across four distinct mixes. Gene’s “Main Mix” emphasizes the song’s emotive duality. It opens pensively - Teddy’s doubled voice pledging devotion to an unrequited “phantom love” over stuttering bass and percussion. But halfway through, his repeated refrain (“Step into the beauty/ Let it soothe your soul”) becomes less a plea than an invitation. Bass and drums synchronize, the track motors up, and the lyrics’s melancholia is absorbed into the momentum of the dance. The “Radio Mix” and largely instrumental “Alt Mix” capture these intertwined emotional ghost notes as stand-alone statements.

Two remarkable additional remixes come courtesy of Sapporo, Japan’s Kuniyuki Takahashi. Long venerated as an artist, producer and sound designer (over a storied career that’s included collaborations with Theo Parrish, Joe Claussell, Henrik Schwartz, DJ Sprinkles and 4 Hero’s Dego amongst others), Kuniyuki’s “Kuniyuki Remix” dubs out Bryant’s vocals within a beautiful arrangement of darting synth work. His dreamlike “Beatless Remix” strips back the track to its melodic bones, and in the tradition pioneered by Francois K’s early ’80s Prelude dubs, bathes Bryant’s vocals in ecstatic echo. (In a bit of poetic happenstance, Francois mastered the entire EP as well.) An altogether new piano-led track from Gene, “Tough City,” concludes the EP’s digital version. And if its characteristics - visceral, insistent, persuasive, and ultimately addictive - encapsulate her affection for metropolitan life, they’re also apropos to the entirety of Phantom Vibrations.