We are the robots

[imomus]

Robots After All is the new album from Philippe Katerine. Yes, that title is a cheeky wink in the direction of Daft Punk's disappointing Human After All. But there's nothing disappointing about this record, a comical-conceptual work about robots, social conformity and mechanised, Taylorised lifestyles; think of Tati's satires on modernism, Woody Allen's Sleeper, or imagine a more socio-critical take on Kraftwerk's "we are the robots". To toybox comedy-techno arrangements concocted with the help of a Groovebox and Berlin kitsch-comedian Gonzalez (whose presence builds a bridge from Paris to the Berlin ironists, people like Jamie Lidell, whose electronic neo-funk is echoed—and bettered—here), Katerine offers us funky robotic techno-disco, piss-takes of Le French Touch, Michael Jackson, Plastic Bertrand, Kraftwerk and, yes, Daft Punk, married to a quirky poetic-satirical sensibility he shares with Variétés greats like Brigitte Fontaine and Serge Gainsbourg. Here be schedules, braindead automata, interchangeable cliches, idées recus, withering sarcasm, silly voices, DJs who demonstrate their power over furious crowds by waggling the sliders at whim. Listen to the clips here, read a review (in French magazine Chronic'art) here and cast an eye over an interview with Katerine here.

In an age of conformity, Katerine is becoming more magnificently himself; a plaster-haired lush and a gentleman poet. I knew him, Horatio, back in the mid-90s, when he was a fellow Kahimi Karie collaborator, a familiar face at parties at my apartment on the Place Du Tertre. I wonder if his "robots" concept isn't a very French critique of "the anglo-saxon model", a Thatcherite-Blairite mix of "painful labour market reforms" and competitive efficiency currently battling, across Europe, with a more civilised, Slow Life-friendly, social model? The sleeve, in which Katerine and fellow robots wear a uniform consisting of white panties and pink polo neck sweaters, shows the absurdity of conformity and its coding of difference: why this particular combination rather than that one? Why do wigs seem to determine the precise degree of inclusion or exclusion from the pink panty tribe, whereas gender doesn't? As in Sleeper, Fahrenheit 451 or 1984 we see a world where a strange sci-fi conformity—which nevertheless matches our own—seems toxic and arbitrary, and only literature can save us.

"Robots après tout is almost a work of contemporary art," says Wilfried Paris in Chronic'art, "provoking ceaseless reflection, totally ludic in its procedures, totally free in its realisation..." It's interesting to see conceptual pop records straying into the realm of art at just the moment when contemporary art seems to want to embrace rock'n'roll; in today's Guardian there's an interview with Sarah Lucas, "the most rock'n'roll of the YBAs... still living the life." Whereas Katerine has the name and often the nature of a woman in his work, and seems to be veering from rock to art, Lucas has the name and nature of a hard-partying, street-fighting, football-and-community loving, balls-out man; "'I'm a better bloke than most blokes," she boasts. Art and rock, male and female, seem to be switching places. The only question is, are they switching places so that everything can change, or so that everything stays the same?

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

I'm so curious about this record since I've heard two tracks in two different Les Inrockuptibles free CDs (issue 514 also contains an interview with him). They sound so very different from the previously released material I'm aware of

The covers kinda reminds me of Vanessa Becroft's work

Francesco

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Actually, I want to say a bit more about this record. Personally, I wouldn't make a record like this, which adds electroclash sheen to French Touch and loungecore 90s references and is all about pastiche. But Katerine does it with such panache, and above all the literary quality of his lyrics is so high, that I think he gets away with it. And I think that's because of the specific tradition of French Variétés that he's working in, which has always been about comedy and literature and social commentary, and in which people like Brassens and Brel delegated the music to others, or scratched out chord sequences on guitars in fairly basic ways, and everything depended on the words. Kitschmeisters like Gonzalez and Jamie Lidell don't have this French tradition to draw on; there really is no English-language Brassens or Brigitte Fontaine, just as there's never been a major label British or American A&R man like Jacques Canetti, brother of Nobel prize-winner Elias Canetti, and sharing some of his brother's concerns (crowds and power, Kafkaesque social critique) in his selection of chansonniers. It's this literary quality that makes all the pastiche totally forgiveable and even wondeful, just as it is in The Threepenny Opera.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Yes, it's absolutely a pastiche of early Vanessa Beecroft, you're right.

[(Anonymous)]

Knowing

transposer

[mongoltrophies.livejournal.com]

What's remarkable still is only the theatrical, exaggerated assumption of the extremes of the gender spectrum. I'd argue that for most reasonable circles the ridiculously masculine male is an equivalent novelty to the ridiculously masculine female, and the same goes for the traditionally feminine. Most have found a happy medium, I like to think, and would mock a "masculine display of arrogance" as readily as a "feminine histrionic fit." There are some category-obsessed people who are still into switching places, I suppose, but increasingly the lines are unrecognized, no longer describing a binary. Boys grow up a bit more feminine and girls grow up a bit more masculine, take as you want from each.
But, do artists grow up a bit more rock? Yes, because rock has a ubiquitous influence. Art processes are still much more obscure than rock music processes, so the reverse probably isn't as true, and as far as music is concerned anyway the critics must have their genres and cluster into groups based around them, which with gender categories they no longer feel they're permitted to do so much. So, if it's called "art music" only people who listen to & read reviews of art music will ever hear about it; its difference to rock music is seen as legitimate, concrete, exclusive in a way not admissible anymore in discussions of gender.
Everything could stay the same only if perfect transfers were made, and those luckily can't happen.

Re: transposer

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Everything could stay the same only if perfect transfers were made, and those luckily can't happen.

But you paint a persuasive picture of rock as mainstream, a basic denominator to which everything converges. Let's say that there's only the mainstream and a marginal "alternative" world. If the mainstream is rock, the alternative is contemporary art. The status quo in that picture is that everything in contemporary art will converge eventually towards rock, but only a few things in rock will head in the direction of art. Katerine's critique here is of exactly this sort of convergence without an answering divergence. He poses on the sleeve in underpants and pink poloneck, but we all know what he really means: jeans and trainers.

Re: transposer

[imomus.livejournal.com]

And, to make myself very clear, I champion many, many women artists on Click Opera, but I don't chamption Sarah Lucas. She's working for the other side. She feels herself drawn magnetically towards doxic, toxic values, and draws us, in turn, towards them in her work. Rock, masculinity, violence... she's very much a jeans and trainers person, a 90s ladette, girls behaving badly and all that. I find Katerine's elegant, epicene, aristrocratic attitude much more sympathetic.

and also his movie

[david-f.livejournal.com]

i like this record, and Katerine becomes more and more personal from record to record. i also recommend his movie shot with a DV camera, entitled entitled Peau de cochon (http://www.malavidafilms.com/peaudecochon/) . the trailer is :here (http://www.malavidafilms.com/video/peaudecochon/ba_peaudecochon.wmv) (WMV, 19Mo). these are sequences shot live without cuts. and this is one of the best movies i've seen this year so far.

Human after all

[(Anonymous)]

I still don't understand why people would call Human after all disappointing. It is rock robuste, daft to the extreme and a good re-modelling of Kraftwerks radio-activity. Repetition is the soul of the man-machine!

[henryperri.livejournal.com]

is that ... male cameltoe? Someone alert the gay community.

[niddrie-edge.livejournal.com]

whats with the robots?
Bertrand Burgalat has just released "Portrait-Robot" and its a tad disappointing...tho i am willing to be grown upon.

Re: transposer

[charleshatcher.livejournal.com]

How very Musk & Fem.

[33mhz.livejournal.com]

With those platinum blonde wigs they have kind of a Village of the Damned thing going for them as well.

[33mhz.livejournal.com]

Re: and also his movie

[cheapsurrealist.livejournal.com]

the trailer is :here (WMV, 19Mo).

God I hate Windows Media Player.

[autokrater.livejournal.com]

this looks and sounds like such an interesting album.
thank you for the little review and mentioning of it!
that daft punk album was so terrible..
have you heard any of
nikaido kazumi?
or
nanao tabito?
you probably have,but if not i highly recommend them to you.
i have been listening to a lot of different japanese artist more singer songwriter than the "new" shibuya-kei/pico pico lately.

a berlin mediapod

[mongoltrophies.livejournal.com]

(http://www.mareikegast.de/brokenshelves/index.html)
You could offer a few songs in trade, although it's not unfinished wood, and doesn't encircle you.

frenchkitsch

[iamcoreyd.livejournal.com]

it seems as if all french pop music artists from the past ten years are so aware of their own absurdity. did frankness (forgive the pun)in french pop die along with gainsbourg and brel?

Re: frenchkitsch

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Well, wasn't Gainsbourg always a bit absurd? His last three big hit singles of the 80s saw him comparing his penis to 6000 volt electric pylon, boasting about incest with his daughter, and screwing a handsome legionnaire in the desert sand. As for Brel, well, his last album contained a scathing red-noses-and-whoopy-cushions attack on the Belgian Flemish, and his record before that a song about a hippie who listens to his own hair grow. As for Brassens, well, gorilla copulating with judge, etc...

Re: frenchkitsch

[chuckdarwin.livejournal.com]

Willful Irony seems to be in fashion in more countries than France, I reckon.

[(Anonymous)]

Personally, I wouldn't make a record like this
Oh but you *would*! What about Ping Pong - or Folktronic for that matter?
It's a fair point that these are not "all" about pastiche, but what else were they if not Francophile, comic, literary and full of social commentary? One of the things that first drew me to you(r work) was that you were clearly aware of the great French tradition of 'chanson'; you were absurd and witty, and could switch between tunefulness and mumble-rap at whim in fine Gainsbourgian style.
Is there any remnant of Frenchness in the Momus melting-pot? Not that I hanker only after a backwards step to those halcyon mid-late 90s (compare Katerine with Benjamin Biolay to see the difference between being aware of one's antecedents and aping them almost to the letter).
But is there space for Paris in Momus's "Disque d'amitié"?

-Mark-

Re: transposer

[(Anonymous)]

Hmmm...

Seems that there is a bit more ambiguity in SL's work, or as a sitter... see her series as a subject in the National Portrait Gallery:

http://www.npg.org.uk/live/search/portrait.asp?LinkID=mp14190&role=art&rNo=0

(Sorry the link was broken across lines.)

The "more bloke than blokes" stance may have more to do with rockist "branding" and authenticity, as you've written regarding Sir Paul McC., Mick Jagger, and Bowie himself. (Still, there has to be something about hair colouring that gives the effect of a simulacra...)

[lust4death.livejournal.com]

I just got this. Its wonderful, thanks!

[lyricsboy.livejournal.com]

This sounds very nice indeed. Any idea who, if anyone, does US distribution/sale?