The news from Paris
Jul. 18th, 2006 10:42 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
imomusFor a self-proclaimed post-national person like me, what's odd is just how national my music taste has been over the last few years. In the mid-90s I was mostly into Japanese pop. Late 90s, early 00s I veered towards German electronica. Since about 2001, it's been Francophone gloop music which has floated my boat -- Scratch Pet Land, DJ Elephant Power, DAT Politics, and the Paris artists associated with the Active Suspension and Clapping Music labels.
Luckily, here on Click Opera I have a sort of conceptual copy-editing going on in the form of comments from my ever-intelligent readers. "You're not post-national," someone pointed out last week, "but trans-national". That's exactly right. I don't wish to deconstruct national flavours -- in fact, I love constructions like "Frenchness" and "Japaneseness". I just see them as arbitrary. They're fixed essences, cultures, ways to live. But anyone can embrace them, and anyone can escape them. You can have a culture of origin and a culture of destination, a work culture and a play culture.
For whatever reason -- and it may just be that something interesting is going on there -- Paris has become my exemplary music city. So here's a little dispatch from Paris, with reports of what my favourite artists are up to.
O.LAMM's third full-length album is called "Monolith", and will be released at around the same time as the Momus Ocky Milk record, ie Septemberish. "Monolith" has something else in common with "Ocky Milk": me! I do a rap on a track called "Syllabus of Errors". It's about khaki teriyaki and Pope Pius IX, who said popes were infallible, and issued a "Syllabus of Errors", condemning democracy, freedom of the press, religious pluralism, and belief in progress. A monolith indeed! Hear some advance tracks here.
"Monolith" also features vocals by Kumi Okamoto of Konki Duet. Kumi now has a solo project, Kumi Solo. You can hear her Casio-toned tracks on her (yuk!) MySpace page. (The "yuk" has become part of the MySpace brand in my mind, like a registered trade mark.) The wonderful Shobo Shobo organization (the brainchild of Mehdi Hercberg) continues. On 12th January Kumi Solo performed at a Shobo Shobo concert held at La Générale. The photos make me sigh with a big, happy sigh, for some reason.
There are also more conceptual events, like Jukebox + Humain, a sound installation featuring various well-known Shobette musicians (Noak Katoi, My Jazzy Child, Minifer) responding to people holding up textual textural instructions relayed via video to their trestle table. "Airy!" "Sharper!" and "Claydermann!" were some of the instructions. Others got more abstract, by getting more specific: "Pour ou contre le CPE?" read one, referring to the employment legislation disputes which have recently riven France. Watch a movie of the event here.
Last but not least, my favourite pop record of the summer has been by the absurdly under-rated Parisian Hypo: The Correct Use of Pets, his record with Emmanuelle de Hericourt. Well, now you can watch an amusing video of a track from that record featuring Hypo, EDH, and a cast of rats.
Finally, let's not forget old friends. After a year in Tokyo, Digiki is back in Paris. And Toog has become a film-maker, playing here on images of national particularity in his usual droll way. "This is a delicacy from the South of France."
The news from Paris isn't all good, though. Anne Laplantine, herself now living back in the French capital, has declared she's giving up music and is concentrating exclusively on playing go, a game she discovered last year at the Koi Klub, the Japanese nightclub in Berlin. This great artist, who could be the Marianne of the French music scene, has been corrupted, it seems, by orientalism!
Luckily, here on Click Opera I have a sort of conceptual copy-editing going on in the form of comments from my ever-intelligent readers. "You're not post-national," someone pointed out last week, "but trans-national". That's exactly right. I don't wish to deconstruct national flavours -- in fact, I love constructions like "Frenchness" and "Japaneseness". I just see them as arbitrary. They're fixed essences, cultures, ways to live. But anyone can embrace them, and anyone can escape them. You can have a culture of origin and a culture of destination, a work culture and a play culture.
For whatever reason -- and it may just be that something interesting is going on there -- Paris has become my exemplary music city. So here's a little dispatch from Paris, with reports of what my favourite artists are up to.
O.LAMM's third full-length album is called "Monolith", and will be released at around the same time as the Momus Ocky Milk record, ie Septemberish. "Monolith" has something else in common with "Ocky Milk": me! I do a rap on a track called "Syllabus of Errors". It's about khaki teriyaki and Pope Pius IX, who said popes were infallible, and issued a "Syllabus of Errors", condemning democracy, freedom of the press, religious pluralism, and belief in progress. A monolith indeed! Hear some advance tracks here."Monolith" also features vocals by Kumi Okamoto of Konki Duet. Kumi now has a solo project, Kumi Solo. You can hear her Casio-toned tracks on her (yuk!) MySpace page. (The "yuk" has become part of the MySpace brand in my mind, like a registered trade mark.) The wonderful Shobo Shobo organization (the brainchild of Mehdi Hercberg) continues. On 12th January Kumi Solo performed at a Shobo Shobo concert held at La Générale. The photos make me sigh with a big, happy sigh, for some reason.
There are also more conceptual events, like Jukebox + Humain, a sound installation featuring various well-known Shobette musicians (Noak Katoi, My Jazzy Child, Minifer) responding to people holding up textual textural instructions relayed via video to their trestle table. "Airy!" "Sharper!" and "Claydermann!" were some of the instructions. Others got more abstract, by getting more specific: "Pour ou contre le CPE?" read one, referring to the employment legislation disputes which have recently riven France. Watch a movie of the event here.
Last but not least, my favourite pop record of the summer has been by the absurdly under-rated Parisian Hypo: The Correct Use of Pets, his record with Emmanuelle de Hericourt. Well, now you can watch an amusing video of a track from that record featuring Hypo, EDH, and a cast of rats.Finally, let's not forget old friends. After a year in Tokyo, Digiki is back in Paris. And Toog has become a film-maker, playing here on images of national particularity in his usual droll way. "This is a delicacy from the South of France."
The news from Paris isn't all good, though. Anne Laplantine, herself now living back in the French capital, has declared she's giving up music and is concentrating exclusively on playing go, a game she discovered last year at the Koi Klub, the Japanese nightclub in Berlin. This great artist, who could be the Marianne of the French music scene, has been corrupted, it seems, by orientalism!
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Out of curiosity...
Date: 2006-07-18 09:04 am (UTC)Re: Out of curiosity...
Date: 2006-07-18 09:07 am (UTC)That's the boring answer. The interesting answer is that I've been playing the sound of the Earth's own natural resonant frequency to specially-trained octopi in a Greek fishing village, and recording the results...
Re: Out of curiosity...
Date: 2006-07-18 09:10 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-07-18 09:19 am (UTC)there are not enough great whatevers in acoustronics, especially not women!
when you play like that, you've got a responsibility to those who listened, and more so to those who haven't listened yet.
can't you let out your inner art rudeboy and force her to do summerisle 2-17 with you?
(does she make money playing go???? - not that i think she did with the music yet ...)
What surprises me is
Date: 2006-07-18 09:20 am (UTC)The number of handsome boys in my life that want to revert to tribalism. I try to explain to them (they're young) that tribalism, a throwback, will not work any better than what we have now. Ah, youth. They think they have all the answers but they don't know what it feels like to fail miserably.
The problem with sound
Date: 2006-07-18 09:31 am (UTC)What tries my impatience about listening to audio is it traps me in time. I have to sit and wait for the file to upload, or adjust my volume, or do this or that. Whereas with an image, a flat image, I can take it in in a split second. I like that.
Video and sound will take back burner to flat images. Look at Guenrica and teill me you don't give a shit.
G (http://images.tribe.net/tribe/upload/photo/d49/368/d4936860-032f-4837-9f58-d7e88f8c849f)
Re: What surprises me is
Date: 2006-07-18 09:32 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-07-18 09:33 am (UTC)Re: What surprises me is
Date: 2006-07-18 09:37 am (UTC)I diligently tried to watch it. I counted to ten. It took to long. Nothing happened. I can't sit and wait for a message when I can get news in an instant.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-07-18 09:41 am (UTC)http://www.dragibus.org/
it's minipling pop music intended for children. they play in japan a lot,and sound quite japanized - perhaps a bit like a cross of comelade with pizzicato karie ...
they maintain a great record+art book/mini comics/manga store, too: bimbo tower
http://bimbo.tower.free.fr/
(no subject)
Date: 2006-07-18 09:45 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-07-18 09:52 am (UTC)i met them in 2004, when i brought some books to their store, and we went to the premiere of the new film by le dernier cri, which i would have missed otherwise.
extremely nice people!
i had heard of them years before through pakito bolino, head of le dernier cri, my first french publisher (now i'm waiting for my second - no, he's, in fact, waiting for me ...)
(no subject)
Date: 2006-07-18 10:14 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-07-18 12:43 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-07-18 12:51 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-07-18 12:58 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-07-18 02:15 pm (UTC)I learned about click opera after I played a game with ms. laplantine on the kiseido server (http://kgs.kiseido.com), following a link from her player notes.
Go is good, but it's not the only good thing in a life. I think it has more to do with math than orientalism. When one is being ridden by chess, do we say they are corrupted by Indianism?
(no subject)
Date: 2006-07-18 05:44 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-07-18 06:04 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-07-18 06:20 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-07-18 06:47 pm (UTC)could you tell me, which gallery that is?
(no subject)
Date: 2006-07-18 07:06 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-07-18 07:30 pm (UTC)thanks!
(no subject)
Date: 2006-07-18 07:35 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-07-18 08:54 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-07-18 09:02 pm (UTC)o.lamm
Date: 2006-07-19 01:49 am (UTC)Have you heard it yet?
best,
Shawn / Lullatone
mommus is such a fucking prick
Date: 2006-07-19 05:21 am (UTC)Re: mommus is such a fucking prick
Date: 2006-07-19 05:49 am (UTC)Never mind him, what about me?
Have you heard it yet?
Not yet, looking forward to it!
paris
Date: 2006-07-19 06:50 am (UTC)do you think that speaking french yourself helps you appreciate this music?
i just don't know what it would be like to be able to understand those crazy edh lyrics, hmm, lucky you i guess. especially as alot of these guys music becomes more and more lyrics/song focussed.
also, it would help with being comfortable & making friends in paris too right? i would feel so lost... but v. keen to give it a try sometime, of course.
Re: paris
Date: 2006-07-19 08:56 am (UTC)most of those hypo & edh lyrics are in english anyway,
but they don't sound much like it...
anyway, other french records??