Today is Labor Day in France, a special day where all unions organise marches to get together and fight for worker rights and social justice in unison, or at least in theory. To celebrate this day I wanted to find electronic music centered around the concept of work. Interestingly, not that many popped up in my head. While alienation from work in our modern society seems central to the rave movement, not many tracks I know of explicitly mention it, probably because most tracks focus on escaping it rather than addressing it. One piece that came to mind which explicitly mentions work in its name is one my first deep house loves, a track I have listened to countless times during my first years of studying in 2013: Christopher Rau - Ne Travaillez Jamais.

Christopher Rau - Ne Travaillez Jamais (2010)

Excerpt of one of the early releases of Smallville Records (which we mentionned in our article on Moomin), this track marks the entrance into an era of deep house which came incredibly popular in the early 2010’s, popularized by Smallville Records themselves but also Giegling and many others. I remember being in awe by the ease with which this train sample was used, filtered in and out throughout, almost used like any other instruments. The track is pretty minimal yet powerfully simple, masterfully moody. I always wondered how to interpret it, are we listening to a train passing because we are riding to work or running away from it? The mood could either be from someone with deep melancholy of long lost summer evenings, or somebody wandering from train to train, aimlessly, experiencing life by avoiding any planning whatsoever.

Although this is the one of the very few tracks in my library which explicitly mention work in its name; I have a feeling that many more are intimately linked to it; albeit more subtly. One that I always associated with the feeling of helplessness that my generation tends to have when dealing with life and work culture is From Pillar To Post by Escape Artist. From pillar to post, for those like me who did not know this idiomatic expression, means being forced to move from one place to the other. As many of us need to relocate where work is, often uprooting themselves and getting lost in the Big City life, this track seems like a cry for help, if not simply a rallying call.

Escape Artist - From Pillar to Post (2018)

The label releasing this track, Salt Mines, is a favorite of mine, of the very few for which I actually clicked “buy the entire discography” after discovering it. I warmly recommend checking them out, amazing breaks from Australia.