Get to know rRoxymore
The French producer with a brilliantly odd take on house and techno
Get rRoxymore talking about the current state of dance music and she certainly pulls no punches.
“I don’t want to play the card that dance music was better back in the old days,” she tells us. “But instead of bringing in new elements or challenging how house and techno should be made in 2016, I feel a lot of producers are looking back at how it used to be made.”
She understands why some may be playing it safe. After all, electronic music is now worth $7.1 billion on a global scale, but her latest release on London label Don’t Be Afraid is evidence that she’s, well, not afraid to experiment. Lead track ‘Organ Smith’ is the 36-year-old’s most fun yet. It’s proper, hyperactive house loaded with a fast-moving see-saw of organs and an irresistibly playful feel. “I try not to choose the easy path. I always try to be surprising in what I’m using,” she says.
Growing up in Montpellier, Hermione Frank's listened to the likes of Sun Ra due to her dad being a “jazz freak”, before she started to hone her production skills in a studio belonging to a friend. She toured with a band – “a pop project” – for a while, before deciding to start making music under the moniker rRoxymore with the wavy ‘Wheel Of Fortune’ on Human Level in 2012.
Now based in Berlin, the last two years have been her busiest yet, playing at De School, ://about blank and in Mexico as part of the Decon/Recon project with Paula Temple, PlanningToRock and Olof Dreier from The Knife. She also went to Pakistan for the Karachi Files, a two-week production and performance project with musicians from Pakistan, the Maldives and Germany.
“It had a really big impact on a human level,” she explains. “To meet them was really beautiful and the magic of being together brings something new.”
An album is next on the agenda and, although she’s being tight-lipped about it, we can expect it to be raw and daring, fully pushing the constraints of house and techno. Conservative and conventional isn’t rRoxymore’s style.
The ‘Organ Smith’ EP is out now on Don’t Be Afraid
Dave Turner is Mixmag's Digital News Editor, follow him on Twitter
