[engl] We used to know Émile Sornin as the son, the pupil, who saw fathers of his among the pioneers of baroque, progressive and psychedelic pop; who found big brothers by heart and aesthetics in Aquaserge; the (nearly) solitary creator of the “fine retro-maniac piece of work” (The Drone), Rhapsode, in 2014. After experiences in metal, garage, hip hop, he had spent a lot of time exploring, mixing together, digging, getting to the roots with the seriousness of a young man on a quest for territories to occupy. An insatiable jack-of-all-trades, he directed delirious videos for Dizzee Rascal or Disclosure when he wasn’t combing the countryside to discover new instruments (the movie Le Bon Coin Forever). Here is Émile Sornin the (new) father, the dubbed artist, the one-man-studio fully aware of his essential influences (French 70s movie soundtracks – Philippe Sarde, François De Roubaix, Francis Lai – rather than Italian giallo soundtracks, synth pioneers such as Wendy Carlos or Mort Garson, library music à la Camille Sauvage, Claude Vasori and Roger Roger); the captain of a dense, tight live band. The man called by producer Sebastian to the bedside of – scoop – Charlotte Gainsbourg’s next album. The man who just gave birth to La Pantoufle. From shore to shore, Émile Sornin incorporated into his music the humor and self-mockery he didn’t dare to embrace in the past. He dropped English to explore sideways his mother tongue, the tongue that says “ça lance”, “ça m’est égal”, and “c’est pas si dégueu”. He unleashed his instrumental eloquence – more obsessive than ever arrangement-wise, more jazz and nervous execution-wise, not balking at any dramatic effect to seize our perceptions. Most importantly, he drew on his own memories and blanks (“La pantoufle dans le puits”, “La soupe à la grolle”, “Les groseilles au fond du jardin”) to give rise to suspense, fiction and interpretations. Built as an imaginary movie in which genres collide from one scene to the next (crime film, romance, comedy, erotica, slasher – you name it), La Pantoufle draws on childhood joys and terrors, only to reenchant them. This is how Forever Pavot takes on its role as a “Father”, laying the foundations for a bright future.

[engl] The pop world is divided into two categories. On the one hand, groups that create new things out of old ones. We know them, we have the names. Yawn, yawn. On the other, those who create old things with old ones, left behind by the wars they have not lived, in search of times they have not known and consoles on eBay in the hope of sounding like Velvet Underground. Just as pathetic as the first, the whole thing coupled with an obsession for imitation which gives their future a taste of an old biscuit dipped in formalin. “Fashion is what goes out of fashion”, used to say Cocteau. Although he died without having been able to listen to the first Forever Pavot’s album, we must grant the poet the gift of prophecy: the classical opposition between past and future is completely stupid. On these grounds, Forever Pavot has done honourably. Create new things with old ones, or rather make something beautiful with the old, it is the ambition of “Rhapsode”, record where Ennio Morricone, Francis Lai and other film music composers from the 60′s find at last the singer they were missing. But beware, under the cobblestones of these 68′s composers, no plagiarism. In the same way that old stone is a long term investment, one is tempted to describe Emile Sornin, Forever Pavot’s leader, as a maker of things solid, expert in both messing around and demolishing walls. His got his trainingwithin a first group – defunct Arun Tazieff – where the desire to be the conductor is already being felt. Emile is already developing techniques dear to François de Roubaix: dreaming his songs, fiddling them solo track by track to eventually produce them in his closest buddies studio, the Aquaserge from Toulouse. The result is worth all these sleepless nights: where others merely copy the past, Emile stacks up sound, rehabilitates the harpsichord in this narrow world that has become pop music. He composes arranged pieces (Electric Mami) that give the impression of hearing Strawberry Fields Forever sung by Zombies. After an initial 45 rpm, “Christophe Columb”, which he produced in the spring of 2013, and which was”distributed free with chocolates” and then repressed by Frantic City, the story of Forever Pavot begins to take shape around a new group. Then will come two EPs (the first with the English from Sound of Salvation in January 2014, the second in April in Requiem for a Twister), all released in such limited numbers that already the word CULT writes itself in large letters on this long-haired Emile’s forehead. So there is a new tenant in the Jean-Claude Vannier residence. The discreet type, but rather noisy. Fuzz guitars, wild farfisa, bass lines mixed well ahead in the Burgalat tradition, flutes playing, horse cavalcades on Miguel El Salam, “Rhapsode” is such a huge indoor Western shot by the ORTF ( 64′s to 74′s French Broadcasting Authority TV) that sometimes we expect to see Jean-Christophe Averty spring out from an enclosure, holding both a camera and a joint. But again, clothes don’t make the man. The name Forever Pavot was not born of an apology of drugs: “It started as a joke. One day I read too fast a “flower power” poorly written on a school pencil case. It made me laugh“, said Emile. Fan of Jazz programming and of Turkish psyche, he is also shooting video clip for others (Disclosure’s videos or Dizzee Rascal’s) and proves at every moment that appearances are often misleading. “I feel a bit like Stereolab or Broadcast, artists who draw from the past to make something new (…) Ten years ago or so, I was doing hardcore punk, then I did chiptune, pop, compos garage / folk recorded on K7, and now things inspired from the 60′s movie music … the only guideline are my desires. Nobody will be able to get in my way if I want to make a reggae album in three years or an album of French songs. Because I’m the one who decides.” Being modern is being master of one’s time. As for Emile’s paradise, it is obviously paved with good intentions.

[engl] Introducing them for the umpteenth time would be disrespectful. But reminding everyone of why they’re essential can’t hurt. They’re closely intertwined with Born Bad’s rise to fame, being their first ever release, they’re seen as the caring big brothers of the French indie scene. Their pathway in itself is symbolic: hailing from the garage closed circuit from the 90s, they gave up the tattoos and brilliantine rock to try something different –at the crossroads of punk and cold wave, of Métal Urbain, Killing Joke and Joy Division, while we were all rediscovering France’s synth-wave heritage with theBIPPP and Des Jeunes gens mödernes compilations. And five fellows not particularly renowned for their technical skills found themselves invested with a peculiar grace, becoming avant-gardist just as they were entering their forties, and showing the way to a whole generation of bands that suddenly became aware that it was possible, even here, in our star-crossed France. Critical acclaim, high sells, delighted crowd: the rest is history. Ever since, nostalgia has kind of lost its appeal. We grew fed up of reading in the rock museum press that nothing valuable had been recorded since 1967, and we figured out that all things considered, we probably had better things to do than picking the patterns on our wallpapers or our Italian ties. It was time to get back into the pit, not looking back, and getting numb on something that is ours. The excitement of listening to the latest garage hit boys has well faded (the next band trying to emulate Thee Oh See’s repertory can already consider itself dismissed), but it is intact when it comes to lend an ear to Empire of Shames, the third album by Frustration. It is “only” their third album in over 15 years of existence, the defining sign of bands that don’t ride any wave but would rather dig their very own hole in the wall of legends, and hang there their plaque of best craftsmen in the industry. They crushed mountain chains on Relax (2008), uncovered new continents and rainforests withUncivilised (2012), so it’s only logical they now project to terraform Mars planet with this album that celebrates their return to a cold hostility that echoes the one of punks going by the name of a Polish capital city. “Dreams, Law, Rights and Duties”, “Just Wanna Hide” and “Excess” are punches in the knees as signs of welcome from Fabrice, whose voice wanders from a Curtis-like spleen to a cockney spit. If “Arrows Of Love” sounds like the album’s break, this mesmerising Smiths-like ballad that turns into a proletarian anthem is one of the peak in the album. “Mother Earth in Rags” will undoubtedly be a hit, given its harangue as baroque and dramatic as a speech from Lenin you would hear in an opera about communism; “Cause You Runaway” shows that our lads have also listened to James Murphy; and “No Place” (a last minute addition) is a synth-punk-noise gem that will generate one hell of a pogo at the end of their next concert. Frustration is now this fully grown-up lion that has no intention of ending up as a bedside rug. The grouches that you only hear when the press hands them a megaphone, and that would be disarmed if their MacBook were taken away from them are still talking about the good old days. The king of the jungle is back to restore its order, reminding tourists that coming here as a casual observer is not an option, because this is no ordinary regional park. The great history of rock can take a hike because our softened nerves are yearning to be tense one last time, our voices get lost, and we want more of those poor attempts at stagediving if only we can see Frustration one more electrify a crowd like they did at the latest Villette Sonique, with their social-class comrades of Sleaford Mods. And this, is the only reason why we agree to give in to music, this intrusive thing that never asks for our advice. The rest is just a background noise of conceited babbling saturating the feed of our souls. Bollocks, basically.

[engl] During the 1990s, wherever you lived in France, you could see certain groups between 5 and 10 times a year - sometimes even without really wanting to. Guys who played so much, all the time, everywhere, that it was impossible to spend more than three months without being at one of their concerts. Right down to the depths of the Var or Jura, they pushed tons of kids to start their own band or fanzine, to access something different. It was more than just music. It was a spirit, an idea. A way of looking at the world. Rules are no longer the same. Music no longer has the same weight, the bands we come across between 5 and 10 times a year - sometimes even without really wanting to - are rarely the right ones, and the kids from the far reaches of the Var or the Jura have something else to do than formig bands or fanzines. But the spirit and the idea are still there. And in the last 10 years, in France, no group has played them better than Frustration. Like all these groups, Frustration we have seen them 5, 10, 100 times - sometimes without really wanting to. And because we're not quite the same either - more informed, more busy, more jaded, less easily impressionable - we always said to ourselves that we've gone around it, that their whole comedy is getting old. But with each new concert, each new record, we go back to the roots. Because the fire is still burning, because the passion is still intact, because they are not trying to pass for what they are not. Because somewhere in the heart of the Var or Jura, some kids still need to see the world differently. However, we were not expecting a record like So Cold Streams. At this stage of the championship, Frustration could have been satisfied with releasing a record that was essentially identical to the previous one, intense, abrasive, honest but without risk, and could have continued to fill the rooms without anyone having to complain about it by slowly moving towards an exit as dignified as it was inevitable. But from the first bars of "Insane", an insane electro-punk pounding that you'd think you'd just come out of a 1988 EBM EP, you realize that the scenario isn't going to go as planned. Instead of setting up a comfortable routine, Frustration recorded his fifth album as if it were the first, like a band formed 6 months ago that would have nothing to lose and a serious desire to fight it. If the post-punk cavalry is still present (martial drums, elastic bass, hit-and-run guitars), So Cold Streams surprises with its energy, the virulence of certain lyrics and the many risk-taking, "Brume", a nightmare with industrial sounds screamed in French, to the very pop "Lil' White Sister" which looks surprisingly at the Smiths and Echo & The Bunnymen, as well as the sinuous and melancholic "Slave Markets" on which the band invited Jason Williamson, the singer of Sleaford Mods - a band that played a lot in Frustration's new youth. "Sleaford Mods is a band that, musically and humanly, gave us a real boost," explains Fabrice Gilbert (vocals). It gave us a real sense of freedom, it allowed me to really say everything I wanted to say in my words, to talk about extremely intimate subjects as well as much more general things, whether it be political or social. So Cold Streams is, paradoxically perhaps, our most disillusioned, energetic and free record. This observation is perfectly summarized by the cover of the disc, signed like all the others by the painter Baldo, and which represents a machine tarring a road through a field of wheat. A painting made more than 15 years ago and which was originally intended to be the cover of Full Of Sorrow, Frustration's first album. For such a renaissance, the best choice could not be better. Especially since the image alone contains the whole disc: space, strength, light, rage and disgust too. The desire to destroy everything. To make a clean slate. To propose something different. A little more than music. A spirit, an idea. A way of looking at the world.

[engl] Four years after the inenarrable "Cerf, Biche et Faon", Julien Gasc ( Aquaserge, Stereolab) deliver us "Kiss me, you fool!" leads us far far away, into swarms of sound and sentimental, twisted tales, on a quest for illumination that traverses the rich palette of human passions. The title was taken from a graffiti discovered in the ladies’ toilets of a London pub. It is through this peephole that we consider, like a voyeur, the paradoxical complexity of this album: At once witty, noble and degenerate, Julien struts his way through it with all the nonchalance of a night-owl dandy. A troubadour of modern times, he sings of unresolved love, self-mockery, the trivialities of daily life and the search for the Absolute. The fruit of an exceptional artistic collaboration (including Laëtitia Sadier (Stereolab), John Linger (Neils Children), Cathy Lucas (The Oscillation, Vanishing Twin), and Joe Watson), this contrasting, emotional and heterogenous album nonetheless forms a whole. Here, mirror plays, surrealistic songs and decadent poems unfold elegantly, seductive in their effortlessness. Countering the current norms, “Kiss me, you fool!” cultivates its powerful identity far from today’s musical cliques and fads

[engl] Confession, fiction, and observation. This is how the trajectory drawn by Julien Gasc seems to evolve from one album to the next. While Cerf, Biche et Faon took the form of a diary and Kiss Me, You Fool! that of a collection of stories, L'Appel de la Forêt concludes this trilogy in a tender and spontaneous dialogue, broaching the present with clairvoyance through melodies with bright glimmers. More adventurous than its predecessors, which respectively took root in the south of France and in London, this third chapter offers a kaleidoscopic vision, multiplying geographies and temporalities to ingrain itself in the moment all the better. Through a collection of dances of diverse origins, Julien places himself at the heart of the everyday – embracing it, sublimating it, and calling for a transfiguration to escape its imminent disaster. His voice circulate through this fragmented horizon; it is raw and immediate, sometimes so stark that it disappears, making way for its interlocutor, like an invitation to occupy the space shaped by his ritornello. Emancipated from his dandy’s costume, the rare moments where he puts it on again are to more effectively elude it. The address is deliberately frank and above all benevolent. Beyond an amorous chant d’amour, it is an ode to freedom and to the full awareness of our human condition that unfolds before us. An invitation, devoid of cynicism, to take off of our ‘social animal’ mask and decolonise the world around us – to stop wanting to possess at all costs and let those we love be free. This album is a roadside companion, with no dogma or precepts, and a simple motto: Stay joyful.

[engl] On the one hand, there's Cheveu, the French three-member band, whose soundtrack has never ceased to question music codes by exceeding various genres and pushing back their limits. On the other hand, you have Group Doueh, a combo of Tuaregs coming from the Sahara desert (Dahkla). Their music spans across many styles and hammers tradition with unprecedented finds. In between both their remote musical universes dwells a sound clash. It embodies the meeting between two arts of living music day by day, two ways of transmitting, of enchanting the world or refusing to do so, of exploring the repertoire as well as tradition and creation, two visions of the collective – the list of reasons why these guys should have probably never met or could have failed to get along is quite extensive. This piece was recorded in 2 weeks in Dahkla in January 2016. The mere project seemed like a surreal challenge, something that was almost impossible to achieve and for which time was going to hold major importance. It brought about a telluric big bang, an atomic creation, a story of primitive energies setting the record straight in the whole world. That is, two radically different understandings of time.

[engl] As we know, first times are always the most powerful: the shattering rush of revelation can only be experienced once. After that it’s all an inevitable, exhausting quest for repetition, a feverish search for the original shock, and pointless reiteration and accumulation poisoned by consciousness, analysis and age: and such a sensation keeps fading as we experience it. 2018’s garage band #1001 will look and sound the same as the preceding one, and leave you wondering – half-sorry, half-dismayed – how on earth listening to the Sonics and the Standells could electrify you back in the days. Likewise, you can count on the fingers of one hand the bands you’ve loved up until their 5th album like J.C. Satàn – almost ten years after falling in love. We all already know dudes who have “seen them too much”, heard them too much and stopped expecting anything from them anymore. Except that… Except that those folks are in for a big-time surprise, as the Satàn crew did not deliver a 5th album just for the hell of it, just to justify their next tour: they got together to seek the rare fuel, the miraculous current able to galvanize our sleeping senses, the electroshock forcing us to revive the urgent impression of being alive. Centaur Desire has something of a new first-time record – recorded all together (Arthur and Dorian used to handle all instruments themselves), enhanced by an incredibly powerful sonority (gear has piled up over the last years), and filled with a new groove (Romain finally plays his drum parts, and it’s fantastic). Never where you’d expect it, Paula’s voice adds to the pervading climate of freshness. A true panacea, in the alchemists’ sense – that universal remedy that gives sight back to the blind, hearing back to the deaf and youth back to old jaded bodies. A formula had to be found, that combines an undeniable talent for composition with devastating live fury – the laboratory residue of which, on the vinyl sieve, had always seemed a bit staid. Here it is, and some of this on-stage gold stabilized to get cut on record and reproduced endlessly until reaching our speakers. If the modern-era Nicholas Flamel extracting this yellow metal out of peat was called Josh Homme or Black Rebel Something, the whole world would be murmuring the ecstasy of court’s flatterers. At a time when the aforementioned bigwigs are composing a supposedly magnum umpteenth opus that smacks a lot of schlock, J.C. Satàn release something that dashes all of them with the cheerfulness of freaks and the Rabelaisian, farcical mirth of a horny centaur inviting us to Pan’s great farandole, in the setting of a Manowar sleeve. “CENTAUR DESIRE!” declaims a sonorous voice on the title song, just like one would invoke some demon/leviathan to lay low an army of muddy killer whales by hitting them with burning dildos. Like a superlative life, an explosion of springtime sap accompanying the great universal libidinous rush that seizes us in the cosmic shag or in the mosh pit. No doubt the fact that this 5th album is their best one to date is quite uncommon and leads one to wonder. Light years away from barely-hatched bands that seem to find reward in a second-class access prime-time appearance playing a shortened version of their unique hit before docilely presenting the weather forecast between two cell phones ads, thus betraying their only ambition – to become TV hosts – J.C. Satàn took their time, worked and searched without sacrificing their ambitions on the altar of dayglo-tracksuit pop, on which the critique, hysterical by dint of its own pomposity, reveres each day a new genius. And when a killer such as “Complex Situation” is played on a TV set, we’ll see some dislocated host disappear through a puppet-theater trapdoor, and then be pulled from there with tears on his face: a first-time shock of this caliber really doesn’t hit one every day.

[engl] Brutal and complex, furious and spirit-evoking, making spikes then descending, the new album (sept2015 born bad/ animal factory) strikes the nail of black-garage-gospel with the hammer of Viking gods, right in the middle of a storm of decibels that lance the climate, electrically charged by each of J.C. Satan's coming shows. Imagine QUEEN OF THE STONE AGE backing SERGE GAINSBOURG during Mexico's Day Of The Dead