rifo | betel @ freq (uk) clip premiere

Carton Records and Coax Records have jointly released Betel by French musician JF Riffaud, also known as RIFO. The album draws on the music of sub-Saharan Africa such as that of Sunny Ade or Flamme Kapaya as much as being influenced by American primitivists and minimalists from John Fahey to Tony Conrad via Morton Subotnick.

Of the album, RIFO says:

BETEL is a chewing plant in south-east Asia, and also the name of a sanctuary of Jacob in Israel. Starting from the repetition of a declined gesture, taken in games of rebounds and filtered by transistors, spaces confront each other in a sequence of raw and concrete organic materials, sometimes figurative. Like a very old mechanical, pneumatic, pre-synthetic music.

A solo number for guitar and tape echo, “Smile” is taken from the album, released on digital platforms in June, and will be followed by a vinyl edition in autumn 2021. An hypnotic video using glitched photographs and cyanotypes, directed and edited by Ramataupia, is premiered here: