Photo credit: Katja Ruge
Today French producer Terence Fixmer releases his brand new album, THE PARADOX IN ME, digitally via Mute and NovaMute, alongside a limited edition 12” album sampler.
Listen to the album HERE.
THE PARADOX IN ME is his second album for Mute / NovaMute and follows the releases of the PARADOX EP series, which shared tracks from the record across specialist digital music platforms.
Throughout his influential career, uncompromising French producer Terence Fixmer has straddled a precarious line, masterminding his own strain of taut, dancefloor-ready techno while simultaneously paying respect to the EBM sounds that helped crack open his mind as a teenager. On THE PARADOX IN ME Fixmer confronts this duality, stretching the limits of dance music by interlacing evocative, cinematic electronics with pounding, peak-time 4/4 pulses. "There's always a fight between directions," he says. "This album represents all the sounds I have within me."
Listen to “Evolve” HERE.
Fixmer burst onto the scene in the late ‘90s, establishing the Planete Rouge label in 1998, and releasing a slew of influential 12"s under a pseudonym before signing to DJ Hell's International Deejay Gigolos label and unleashing Muscle Machine, his acclaimed debut album which pioneered a new genre that merged the sounds of EBM and Techno.
Listen to “In Synthesis” HERE.
Not long later, he achieved a personal milestone, collaborating with Nitzer Ebb vocalist Douglas McCarthy for two albums as FixmerMcCarthy that bridged the gap between EBM and classic techno. And since then, he's barely stopped for breath, remixing personal heroes like Front 242, Nitzer Ebb and Depeche Mode, as well as respected peers such as Ellen Allien, DJ Hell, Dave Clarke and Sven Väth, simultaneously building up a canon of work on CLR, Electric Deluxe, Ostgut-Ton and of course, Mute and NovaMute. He channels all this experience into THE PARADOX IN ME, building a world that reconciles his past and present. The essence of the album is the way it effortlessly presents tracks with different kinds of energies and artistic facets, each track has a strong presence, and a unique soul and energy which comes from a place that is specifically, and recognizably, Fixmer’s.
Listen to “Shore Break” HERE.
His writing process for the album was relatively straightforward. Fixmer worked with his arsenal of synthesizers and focused on the unique textures of the instruments themselves, following his instincts and experimenting boundlessly until happy accidents evolved into finished tracks. Knowing when to stop was the key. If he stumbled over something surprising, whether it was a sound or simply an attitude, Fixmer would endeavor to capture it, and then stand back. On opening track “‘Test of the Times”, he layers dizzying, industrial grain clouds over an undulating rhythm, spiking the mood with hoarse, robotic vocals and haunted sci-fi atmospheres. Neither fully techno nor wholly EBM, it exists in a zone between the two realms, harking back to history but pushing relentlessly into the future.
The limited edition 12” album sampler, features 6 dark electronic tracks from the album, all infused with his signature energy and thoughtful sound design, and comes with an audio download code of the full-length album.
Fixmer's passion for electronic music hums from every note and carefully engineered beat on THE PARADOX IN ME. He has created an album that plays almost like an autobiography, and assembles a world that's tactile and strikingly visual, capturing the soul of the synthesizer in all its forms.
LIVE DATES:
7/13/2024 - Lyon (FR) LE SUCRE
7/26/2024 - Zurich (CH) HIVE CLUB
8/31/2024 - Mannheim (DE) MS
9/14/2024- Gijon (ES) LANNA CLUB
11/2/2024 - Berlin (DE) BERGHAIN
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