JONQUERA, TOLOUSE LOW TRAX — Series 33 Part One

Avenue 66 opens Series 33 with a Düsseldorf–Lyon connection. Jonquera first encountered Tolouse Low Trax a decade ago in a small Lyon club. That night, his hypnotic slow-motion set was cut short, yet it left a lasting imprint. The Düsseldorf artist’s mechanical psychedelia, and the influence of the Salon collective have been a constant touchstone for Jonquera, even inspiring playful “Düsselcore” edits in his Tera Octe days. After several LPs, Jonquera returns to the EP format with Cause & Utility / Tales of Decay. Built from improvised drum, bass, and vocal recordings, the tracks are reworked through heavy looping and acoustic treatment, a method inspired by his recent live shows. Cause & Utility revolves around the abstract idea of two dogs as concepts, enriched by the earthy drone of a hurdy-gurdy. Tales of Decay paints a surreal image of a house losing its rooms like a body shedding parts. The MPC sorcerer Tolouse Low Trax, aka Detlef Weinrich, brings his Düsseldorf circuitry and autobahn funk with two tracks of pure rhythm apparition. Amp is a quintessential Tolouse Low Trax cut, built on concealed rhythmic structures, swampy bass lines, and fragments of radio and voice samples. The piece extends his exploration of how art can mirror the flow of inner-city traffic; drifting without a clear climax. Solid Rock echoes this idea, first conceived as a variation on Amp where particles repeat themselves. The result is distinct yet conceptually linked, evoking the density of a crowded neighboring city: beginning in apparent disarray before locking into an abstract, hypnotic funk. Series 33 begins with the convergence of Jonquera’s looping experiments and Tolouse Low Trax’s mechanical psychedelia, a dialogue between Lyon and Düsseldorf.