A Strange Wedding

A Strange Wedding (Adrien Van de Velde) was my first introduction to the ‘French’ sound. The year was 2021. The record was Black Magic Rituals. The track was ‘Through The Black Hole’. I remember being so taken by the humming bassline, creaking extraterrestrial noises and its pulsating synth. Then came 06:08, and suddenly I was passing through the black hole and it all sounded so new and all I could be sure of was that Partiboi69 was never going to sound the same again. Sorry ‘K-Tek’; I don’t want to play with you anymore.

Following Van de Velde’s releases since then has provided nothing but joy. As psytek reached its zenith across dancefloors circa 2023 and tracks started to sound all a bit too fast and too similar (with notable exceptions like Root Mender), out came Temples of Quantum (Straight Backward Mix). Could portal-opening psychedelic techno get any fresher? That was answered with Wormhole Breaker in 2025: dynamic, charging at a breakneck pace, yet meticulously designed. It was the ‘magnum’ of A Strange Wedding’s releases to date: the beast had been tamed and finally let out of its cage.

This week’s mix to highlight is A Strange Wedding on The Mudd Show. Less wormhole-breaking and more sub-glowing, Van de Velde weaves half-time, bass and hypnotic techno cuts, highlighting some beautiful recent releases on French labels like Cwtch on De la... je l'espère and Andy Martin on Beatrice M.’s Bait. It’s a beautiful encapsulation of the many different directions that the French are pushing sound in, as best explored in Chanel Kadir’s canonical writing on ‘low end psychedelia’.

Joseph Negrine

6 May 2026