{"id":12299,"date":"2025-07-21T06:35:07","date_gmt":"2025-07-21T06:35:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/12299\/"},"modified":"2025-07-21T06:35:07","modified_gmt":"2025-07-21T06:35:07","slug":"le-diouck-grace-joke-album-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/12299\/","title":{"rendered":"Le Diouck: Grace Joke Album Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

Berlin\u2019s PAN label has been sidling up to Parisian gallery Bourse de Commerce since the latter opened its doors in 2021. The two collaborated on Baiser Mortel<\/a>, an LP and performance of the same name that took place in the gallery the year it opened. In it, Paris-based producer Low Jack<\/a> paired up with French rapper Lala &ce and a host of other musicians\u2014one of whom was Le Diouck<\/a> (real name Magueye Diouck.) The Senegalese French artist designs graphic novels and has performed on several releases with Boukan Records boss Bamao Yend\u00e9. His latest project, Grace Joke, is both his debut solo album for PAN and the prologue to a trilogy of comics he plans to release with Yasmeen El Hamdani in the coming years.<\/p>\n

The album\u2019s title might sound like a dig at Grace Jones<\/a>, but in fact it\u2019s a portmanteau of two characters from Le Diouck and El Hamdani\u2019s forthcoming novel: Grace is a young woman reanimated as a cyborg searching for her memories, and Joke is a down-and-out circus clown broken by melancholy. This split personality recalls the record\u2019s near namesake, who declared in a 1985 interview, \u201cI\u2019m schizophrenic, I have many moods.\u201d Rendering his character sporting lipstick, an angular haircut, and a hundred-yard stare, Le Diouck evokes Jones\u2019 iconic figure on the cover of Grace Joke, a bubbling alt-R&B album that flaunts every iota of its maker\u2019s mercurial identity.<\/p>\n

Until now Le Diouck\u2019s androgynous Auto-Tuned verses have sauntered across Afrobeats, batida, and dancehall tunes. But, as he told French television show Basique, he really loves Brazilian funk and rock, so a bunch of talented musicians from France\u2019s underground electronic scene and PAN\u2019s roster conjure up this refreshing blend for him on Grace Joke. Yann Rose\u2019s guitar and Yves Tumor<\/a>\u2019s vocals breathe an emo edge into the alt rock of \u201cOnigashima,\u201d while the strings on \u201cOVNIesque\u201d\u2014produced by Modulaw, Eliot Rdv, and Bamao Yend\u00e9\u2014abruptly leap from their floating intro into short, skipping bursts over a funk beat.<\/p>\n

Frequent sudden changes like those spice up the album\u2019s verse\/chorus structure with sharp and unexpected turns in mood and intensity. After screaming over creeping grunge guitars at the start of \u201c\u00c9meraude,\u201d Le Diouck retreats to a whisper beside light percussive taps. Such shifts in tone aren\u2019t always so blatant; occasionally Le Diouck lets them coexist like a devil and angel on each shoulder. The electric guitar whining beneath the jaunty reggae of \u201cCumbia del Diamante\u201d mirrors the stark contrast in the track\u2019s video between Le Diouck\u2019s fabulous yellow tunic and the forlorn figure he cuts. Grace Joke and its many producers find boundless ways to make the record pop.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Berlin\u2019s PAN label has been sidling up to Parisian gallery Bourse de Commerce since the latter opened its…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":12300,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[342,49,48,75,341,343],"class_list":["post-12299","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-albums","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment","tag-music","tag-web"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12299","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12299"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12299\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12300"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12299"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12299"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12299"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}