Peppermoon

  • Posted on 01/10/2010
  • /Under Musique

Peppermoon, the beloved trio from Paris returns with on October 18 with a great new album. Because of the 5th birthday of this blog, I can post some new tracks. Main man Pierre Faa tells all:

Happy birthday Filles sourires ! Joyeux anniversaire… Thank you Guuz for these five years of passion, thanks for opening doors to artists like us. We owe a lot to Filles Sourires and the Filles Fragiles compilations. And we keep only good memories from the Filles Fragiles tour you set up.
Five years ago, I was just about to meet Benoît and Iris, and form the band with them. It’s been quite a slow and difficult process to get the first album released. So slow… Amazingly slow… I wish I could release albums once a year, like they did in the sixties. It’s a good rhythm, it keeps you busy and creative. No time for procrastination and debates. Anyway.
We’re now about to release our second album Les moissons d’ambre (=Amber harvests). It begins where the first one was ending : the piano piece Lonelunaire has become a little song named Larme de lune. It’s like a bridge between albums, a magic link… It also shows that we intend to explore the same territory, in terms of music and mood. It’s like visiting the same island, but at a different season. Same landscape, different light. Different colors in the sky… Nos ballades was a spring album. Les moissons d’ambre has definitely warmer shades. It feels like late summer / early autumn. Hence the title…
Hopefully, we managed to create something that is not a photocopy of Nos ballades. Iris’ singing still has that very unique innocence and freshness, mixed with new colours, new layers of sensuality. May be we have a few more electro sounds here and there – probably under Jay Alanski’s influence. I bought a kantele (a finnish harp) that you can hear in C’est la pluie qui veut ça. And lyrics wise, I tried to escape from the clichés of modern french chanson (the worst one, to me, being the obscure-meaningless-poetry-but-let’s-pretend-it-means-something-with-a-pretentious-pose). “Impressionnisme” says that happinness is never delivered in one piece – most of time, you have to connect the dots, to find the pieces of that personal jigsaw. “C’est la pluie qui veut ça” is about the memories brought back by the smells of the rain : schoolyards, old lovers… Les moissons d’ambre is about the beauty of transformation times – in nature, and in ourselves. Poupées Russes is some kind of funny Yin-Yang metaphor, saying that opposite feelings are often contained in each other (love and hate, to begin with). Gaspillées is about all the unknown family stories running in our blood… and Le refuge is about Iris’ childhood shelter, in the woods, where she hides away from Paris’ pollution and music industry people !
This new album is also more open to collaborations : our guitarist Benoît gave me the melody to Cocoon. Our friend Toshiya Fueoka, from Mondialito, composed the music of Le refuge. And my friend Ludovic Perrin wrote the lyrics to “Gaspillées”.
Now, I’m already thinking about our 3rd and last album. I see a turquoise-light green-light blue cover, something mineral, with water, crystals, air… I hope to record it next year, and then peppermoon will be over as a band. May be Iris will do solo albums, as I plan to do myself. And we’ll probably go on working together on new songs. But we definitely want peppermoon to be limited in time. There are too many bands and artists who don’t know when to stop… and that’s where I stop writing.
Enjoy the music !

Peppermoon – Poupées Russes
BONUS:
Peppermoon recorded a few covers for the Asian release of their album. This is a lovely version of a Sylvie Vartan-track
Peppermoon – La plus belle pour aller danser

Le Tour #5

  • Posted on 30/09/2010
  • /Under Musique

Though Thomas Bohnet, compilation svengali behind the Le Tour collections, lives in my old ’hood and still only a few kilometres away, we have never met. That may have to do with tastes. Le Tour volumes 1-4 were competently anthologized, but there always was some diminutive irritation factor. Now, with Le Tour #5, I figured it out. The assortment contains impressive and appealing stuff, like Féfé’s Clichés, Biolay’s Padam, or a minor track by FS faves Mickey 3D, but some songs here, despite being French, would easily qualify for Munich’s famous Oktoberfest: The opener, La Crise by L’Homme Parle, features German boof-tah at its very grooviest social-democratic street festival feel, and the As de Trèfle and Babylon Circus tracks are surely great, if … well, if you’re into Stimmungsmusik of this kind. I’m more into Mélanie Pain, also on Thomas’ compilation. Kind of a French Schlager as well, but a more sexy one.

Mélanie Pain – Ignore-Moi

Babet

  • Posted on 30/09/2010
  • /Under Musique

Babet Maistre, aka Babou Calou, made on of this summer’s prettiest songs. Now, when Fall is on it’s way, her second solo-album is released. It feels like the summer’s heat is still in the grooves of the album – pretty, upbeat songs with folky influences, subtle violin (of course, Babet plays the strings in Dionysos) and a few male collaboraters. Edouard Baer, Andy Maistre, Mathias Malzieu and everyone’s favourite gravel-throat, Arthur H(igelin). Love their duets. Piano Monstre is a great album that has you longing for an indian summer. Talking about great albums, summer is definitely over in France, outstanding albums are being released. Elodie Frégé’s (more on her later), Bertrand Belin, Marie-Amélie… Hope I’ll find the time to keep you updated on all the goodies.

Babet & Arthur H – Ciel de soie

Youn Sun Nah

  • Posted on 29/09/2010
  • /Under Musique

On her brand new seventh album Same Girl, South Korean jazz singer Youn Sun Nah covers Rodgers/ Hammerstein, Randy Newman, Metallica, and My Name is Carnival by Jackson C. Frank, the legendary white bluesman with the saddest life story you might ever read. She also interpretes La chanson d’Hélène, originally written by Philippe Sarde and Jean-Loup Dabadie for the movie Les choses de la vie, and does a remarkable job. A daring one as well, since it’s surely impossible to capture the magic Romy Schneider created with her vocals forty years ago. The male talking part, done by Michel Piccoli on the original recording, went to French romancier, musicien and plasticien Roland Brival, whose last, quite intriguing album Vol de Nuit could be described as kind of a missing link between Arthur H. and a 50s St. Germain jazz nightclub.

Youn Sun Nah/ Roland Brival – La chanson d’Hélène

Romy Schneider/ Michel Piccoli – La chanson d’Hélène

EXTRA:

FS reader Teyo d’Unux brought a sweet English language version of the chanson to our attention, the Dreammakers’ Helen’s Song. And since he labeled it a perfect tune for autumn:

Dreammakers – Helen’s Song

EVEN MORE:
Francoiz Breut – La chanson d’Hélène
Berry – La chanson d’Hélène
Get Well Soon – La chanson d’Hélène
Marina Celeste – La chanson d’Hélène

Mièle

  • Posted on 29/09/2010
  • /Under Musique

The second Catherine starts singing, you’ll know why I’m posting about Belgian trio Mièle. Her voice is like cutting through a big, soft, pastel-coloured, supersweet birthdaycake. The band is part of the tres sympathique Humty Dumpty Records (they also house Françoiz Breut), they just released their second album. Music-wise, they’re like the Walloon cousins of Peppermoon (more on that trio later this week), but a little rougher on the edges. Find out more here.

Mièle – Chateaux de sable

Serge’s Swimsuit Selection

  • Posted on 28/09/2010
  • /Under Video

Les filles n’ont aucun degout? Serge caresse tendresse style, when smoking was still allowed in the bar of his favorite … erm, sauna.

FS Dans Le Cinéma: Éric Demarsan

  • Posted on 27/09/2010
  • /Under Musique

L’armée des ombres, filmed in 1969, was Jean-Pierre Melville’s gloomy and highly gripping account of the Résistance featuring Lino Ventura (see right) in one of his finest roles – a sombre, sober movie with one of the most hopeless endings in French cinema history. The film was scored by the relatively unknown Éric Demarsan who also wrote the music for the TV series Belle et Sébastien (which obviously quite impressed some British folk popsters), and Melville’s bleak caper movie Le cercle rouge. Demarsan’s intricately crafted, highly accomplished bande originale for L’armée des ombres culminates in his Thème de Gerbier, evolving from a painfully melancholic piano melody into a heartbreakingly beautiful landscape of the French soul.

Éric Demarsan – Thème de Gerbier

FS Exclusive: Zaz Meets Serge

  • Posted on 27/09/2010
  • /Under Musique

About two weeks ago, we already posted a live version of Zaz’s splendid Piaf cover Dans la rue here. Since she with the husky voice is a dedicated Gainsbourg aficionado as well, she also played a sparse, and highly intense manouche-style version of Serge’s Ces petits riens during the same gig, backed by bassist Mathieu Verlot and guitarist Guillaume Juhel. You will find this cover neither on her recent no. 1 album nor anywhere on the net. The song was recorded during an intimate live performance at MDR radio station, Halle, Germany, with an audience of ten (!) handpicked and damn lucky guests.

Zaz – Ces petits riens (live)

Ces petits riens, written in 1964, may not be among the most popular Gainsbourg chansons, but has been covered by several high-class artists. Serge’s own version, using a typewriter as rhythm instrument, is surely the coolest; he’s on the Deneuve version as well. Here’s both, along with a bunch of other adaptations, including Carla’s English language version … and Guuz might have a few other ones up his sleeve.

Serge Gainsbourg – Ces petits riens

Catherine Deneuve – Ces petits riens

Christiane Canavese – Ces petits riens

Pierre-Alain Goualch – Ces petits riens

Jane Birkin – Ces petits riens

Stacey Kent – Ces petits riens

Zizi Jeanmaire – Ces petits riens

Angélique Kidjo – Ces petits riens

Francoise Hardy – Ces petits riens

Carla Bruni – Those Little Things

Don Nino – Ces petits riens

Elina Duni – Ces petits riens

Natacha Atlas

  • Posted on 27/09/2010
  • /Under Musique

Combining traditional Arabic and African elements with Disco, Drum ’n Bass, and Hindi Pop, Belgium-born singer Natacha Atlas features as one of the premières divas of the cha’abi moderne, a term she invented herself to describe her style. Natacha cooperated with colleagues such as Peter Gabriel, Nigel Kennedy, and Jean-Michel Jarre, but if those names aren’t really your cup of tea, also with British enfant terrible Jah Wobble or French world music entrepreneurs Les Négresses Vertes. She explains the concept of her brand new, tenth album here – last not least, Mounqaliba (In a State of Reversal) stars Le cor, le vent, a fine after-hours piece with wistful accordion, and La nuit est sur la ville, a lightly orient-ified cover version of Francoise Hardy’s 1964 ballad.

Natacha Atlas – Le cor, le vent

Natacha Atlas – La nuit est sur la ville

On her 1998 album Gedida, Natacha already covered another Hardy chanson, the widely popular Mon amie la rose, transferring Hardy’s Gallic teenage melancholy to the dancefloor of Arabian Nights.

Natacha Atlas – Mon amie la rose (Radio Mix)

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