VOID, JONI - Selfless (Sealed) (CD)

Producer Jean Cousin - known online as the prolific Johnny Ripper for several years - presents his debut physical release under the new pseudonym Joni Void. RIYL: The Books, Laurel Halo, Forest Swords, Burial, Four Tet, Delia Derbyshire. Joni Void is the newly minted pseudonym of producer Jean Cousin - known until now in online music communities as the prolific Johnny Ripper. Moving to Montreal in 2012 from his native France, Cousin plunged into the city's fertile DIY/loft scene and rapidly evolved from cloistered bedroom/virtual persona to highly engaged organizer and multi-media live performer. An increasing obsession with micro-sampling, aleatory composition and history of cinema - alongside an increasingly active practice of remixing and beat-making - has seen Cousin's music flourish in fascinating ways. His personal hero Delia Derbyshire (BBC Radiophonic Workshop) has cemented his commitment to making musique concrete avant-pop soundscaping. On Selfless, Joni Void constructs tracks entirely from found sources and aims not to 'play' anything at all - while celebrating intimate community and inter-subjectivity through solicitation of private voice recordings from various musician and spoken word friends. The album is an exploration of catharsis and the escape from entrapments of subjectivity and solipsism, chock full of stand-out tracks that work in on their own but also make for a wonderfully complex, coherent and compelling album of structured sampledelica, balancing a freeform spirit with the conceptual, emotive and stylistic specificity of individual songcraft, to glorious effect.