Michel Tenoît – Je m’apelle Michel

Album information:


Artist: Michel Tenoît
Album: Je m’apelle Michel
Type: Extended-play (EP)
Release date: 12 August 2015
Label: TKX Vault
Format:

  • Digital download (TKX Vault, 2017)

 

Recommendation: ☹


Of all the releases featured on TKX Vault, a new release from Mike Tenay was one of the least expected. Tenay is a real-life announcer for World Championship Wrestling and Total Nonstop Action Wrestling – but Mike Tenay is a future funk alias whose adoption of the Tenay name caused some very real confusion among wrestling fans.1 Mike Tenay’s 2013 album Jacuzzi is a well-known example of early future funk, so a new release almost four years after the fact on TKX Vault with a new French name was a surprise to say the least.

Je m’apelle Michel is a four-track EP from Michel Tenoît, alter ego of the future funk Mike Tenay.2 It eschews practically all future funk vibes for a cool vibes atmosphere with wafty retro-synths influenced by Serge Gainsbourg and other French artists, replete with the sexiness only a non-Frenchman can imagine from the French. Simple drum machine loops provide most of the rhythm via a slow kick-snare tempo. Unlike previous albums, this EP substantilly features deep-pitched sprechgesang vocals akin to those used by HKE on albums like Charming Devil, albeit to a lesser extent there. Female vocals provide the lead to opening track “Appel du nuit” with the eroticism championed by 90s Air.

It’s hard to argue if there’s a point to Je m’apelle Michel. The overall simplicity of the songs in composition, percussion, and presentation add little to either the Mike Tenay name (as in, the artist) or TKX Vault as a whole. Too often the EP is just awkward, especially with how hard “Tres bien” tries to go. This is accentuated given its strange placement among the rest of the albums – and not strange as in experimental or challenging like so many of the label’s other releases. If listeners are interested in Mike Tenay and the vaporwave/future funk identity-crisis mythos, just hop on over into the Jacuzzi instead.

 

Tracklist


1. Appel du nuit – (3:45)
2. L’amour – (2:04)
3. Tres bien – (2:06)
4. Parlez-vous Français? – (1:58)


 

1As memorialized in this reddit thread.
2No, not The Professor.

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