He approaches that charged, many-voiced, inexhaustible topos number one with the opposite strategy: as little as possible. Fred N’Thepe aka Neue Grafik deliberately limits his tools. He repeatedly works with the same equipment. Precision is the aim. Hitting the mark directly.
N’Thepe’s Neue Grafik project is deeply rooted in urban music. He grew up with hip-hop; jazz followed later, which he went on to study. Genres are not territories he moves between but tools he draws upon.
Rachael
With his latest album, Rachael, the Paris-born, now London-based musician seeks »to translate emotional shifts into sound: the intensity of a first kiss, vulnerability, joy – but also chaos and confusion«. Heavy artillery. He meets it with a steady hand.
Call it emotional precision
A concise arrangement of strings and piano opens the record: the heart beats, anticipation is there, chaos still at bay. And then: house. »Narcissus 909« ushers young love onto the dancefloor. A lifted heart lightens the feet. Acid follows. The night stretches into morning. Then: R&B. You get the idea. The narrative is clear – until it no longer is.
After all, this is about love (and, at times, chlamydia forms part of the story). N’Thepe maintains focus within each piece. By reducing the instrumentation – mostly to piano/keyboard, Rhodes and synthesiser – individual emotions emerge more distinctly, allowing subtle nuances and tensions between them to surface. Across the album’s progression, he deliberately reintroduces certain sounds, binding different phases into a coherent (love) story.
The result is music in which control and freedom are felt simultaneously.
N’Thepe finds inspiration in artists for whom sound design and conceptual clarity matter more than genre boundaries. He draws particularly on Flying Lotus’ approach of conceiving albums as self-contained worlds: it is less about individual tracks than about storytelling. Working with familiar equipment reinforces this method: decisions come more quickly, details are placed more consciously, repetitions accrue meaning. By focusing on a limited set of instruments, he achieves striking precision in each.
The result is music in which control and freedom coexist. Control through a clear system and the deliberate choice of means; freedom through the multiple meanings a single sound can unfold depending on context. In this way he steps onto the field of love, opening up the spectrum of experience: »physical on the dancefloor or emotional in an introspective way«.
