French Production Duo’s First New Album in 10 Years!

Featuring Cat Power, Pharell Williams, Mike D, Ryan Tedder, John Gourley & Jaw!

French production duo Cassius (Philippe Zdar & Hubert Blanc–Francard) return with their first new album in ten years entitled Ibifornia. It’s important to start with the title, because that’s what Cassius did. Before Zdar and Boombass began working in earnest on their latest album, they decided it would be called Ibifornia. A portmanteau of Ibiza and California, Ibifornia is an imaginary utopia, which they say is, “inside every one of us.”

Once they had dreamed up a location, they could set about giving it a soundtrack. The result is a panoramic extravaganza of disco, funk, house, soul, afrobeat, synth-pop, psychedelia, hip-hop and gospel. Though it’s more a feeling, rather than a specific sound – generous, optimistic, and emotional – Ibifornia is also the culmination of a lifetime of ideas. It boasts an all-star cast of long-term collaborators and friends including Cat Power and Pharrell Williams on the hypnotic house anthem “Go Up” while OneRepublic’s Ryan Tedder guests on the jubilant blue-eyed soul romp “The Missing.”

Cassius’ story thus far is already the stuff of dance music mythology. They emerged amidst Paris’ defining French Touch movement, where the likes of “Feeling For You,” “1999” and “The Sound of Violence” – alongside friends such as Daft Punk – helped shape the future of electronic music. It was an intimate scene which always proved conducive to collaboration, and soon provided the band with distractions on a global scale: Zdar has become a Grammy-award winning producer and mixer for his work on seminal albums from Phoenix, Kindness, Bloc Party, Chromeo, and Ibifornia collaborators Cat Power, Beastie Boys and Pharrell Williams.

Yet as the influence of French house was felt further still in recent years – Kanye West and Jay Z even sampled the band on their Watch The Throne project – it always came back to the dance-floor, to club-culture, and to Cassius: the long-standing friendship between Zdar and Boombass who continued to write, perform and bide their time in assembling this stunning new record.