PRESS RELEASE

Composed by David Jacques in Paris, France. This album uses samples from old vinyl records found at Village Records in New York.

"I built this album as a false relic — a lost tape, accidentally found and linked to the Vanderbilt family. The idea was to restore it, structure it, as if it had come out of a pile of old recordings before turning into a real album. The title plays on this ambiguity: a historical document, a lost artifact, a forgotten cassette. And yet, every track is original.

This whole project is a tribute to the Vanderbilts and the legacy of the Gilded Age, especially Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney and Carl Van Vechten. These two figures acted as cultural intermediaries, supporting African American artists and fostering dialogue between different communities — Black, White, Jewish, and Queer.

It made sense to open with Carl Van Vechten, as it sets the tone for the album. Then comes He’s Dancing Like a Gun, the project’s centerpiece. This track embodies the cultural fusion that the Vanderbilts encouraged. A thick house bassline merges with an 85 BPM hip-hop beat — a contrast also inspired by SoHo, my former neighborhood in New York. A tense waltz, both elegant, slow, and sharp.

Then there’s R.I.P. Gershowitz and April 3, 1963 — the first song is a tribute to George Gershwin, a friend, and a figure in the Vanderbilt circle; the second honors Martin Luther King. After that, the album moves away from New York’s pulse with Disco Vietnam, shifting to Newport, where the Vanderbilts spent their summers by the sea. An airy flute rises over a nervous piano-bass and hurried hi-hats. This track highlights the stark contrast between the anxiety of the battlefield and the tranquility of home, contrasting the soldiers sent to Vietnam with the civilians left behind in the U.S.

With Yvonne & Shimmle, the album takes a detour into something more danceable, a fleeting moment of lightness that could’ve wrapped up the album. Instead, it acts as a transition toward a more ambiguous ending, leading to R.I.P. Gloria — the first direct reference to a Vanderbilt family member. Gloria was a beautiful, elegant, and courageous woman — born into wealth, yet she faced a life of struggle. Marked by her family’s downfall, she witnessed both privilege and decline. Her passing in 2019 sealed the extinction of the name and the end of a dynasty. Deliberately rougher, this track resonates in a more personal way — it echoes my own fear of losing everything, of being erased."

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