Image credit: Iviu Torre
Melodic deep house duo Jaffna released their debut album, Odyssey today via Enchanté Records. Lifted from the album is the track ‘Roots’, accompanied by an animated video created by Pauline Bricout, the video director.
Inspired by London’s electronic scene, Jaffna is the combined creativity of Bravin and Stan, a classically trained pianist, and chef, respectively. The duo’s sound has been compared to the likes of Tycho, Floating Points, Rone and French 79, and they have racked up nearly 10 million plays across platforms.
The duo’s affinity for travel is apparent in the LP, which traverses a vast soundscape, encompassing a diversity of musical elements.
“For ‘Roots’, we created a fast-paced energetic track with hints of tribal percussion in the background. We were motivated to try something different and were inspired by the idea of moving forward” the duo explains. “The rest of our album is comprised of several deeply personal elements including a voyage of sounds influenced by an Indian classical chant in ‘Byzance’, while the main “icy” synth ostinato in ‘Oslo’ was inspired by the typical snowy winter’s day of Norway during a visit to Stan’s brother. We’ve also enjoyed sampling voices, including an interview with Idris Elba in ‘Hackney Boy’ as well as an interview with Dizzie Rascal and others in ‘Headlines’.”
The video, which is the ideal visual accompaniment to the track ‘Roots’, is an emotional journey of two characters (illustrated versions of Stan and Bravin) making their way through various surreal situations, to finally join up and become an “allegorical Jaffna.”
Bricourt gives some insight: “The meeting with Jaffna began with the animation of the track ‘Oslo’. The request can be summed up in one sentence: “Draw me a man”. It was then that two characters were born, like Bravin and Stan. “Roots” story follows on from this first collab. Two complementary characters begin their dreamlike parallel journeys, during which they contaminate the world with poetry. In a dazzling finale, these two entities merge to form a whole: Jaffna. My credo: generate emotion. Always narrative, surreal and aesthetic, the clips I make have a recurring central theme: Destiny. Systematically living between confinement and freedom, the protagonists are irremediably drawn to their bittersweet spells.”
Odyssey LP Tracklist
1. Hollow Fields
2. Oslo
3. You Got Together
4. Roots
5. Manifest
6. Hackney Boy
7. Follies
8. Headlines
9. Byzance
10. Rival
11. Bhairavi
12. Sturm Und Drang
13. Outro
Follow Jaffna:
Facebook – Twitter – Soundcloud – Youtube – Instagram – Spotify
