Track By Track: Frànçois and The Atlas Mountains on Solide Mirage

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Grand Dérèglement

The album starts with a Middle East groove in a blast of distortion. The lyrics deal with the great movements of populations that force the weaker to adapt to intense and strenuous lifestyles. I'm particularly happy with the break down section on which I use a daf (a turkish hand drum with metal rattles) I bought in Istanbul when we toured the Middle East in June 2015.

Tendre Est l'Âme

Track two has to be the easy hit. "Tendre est l'âme" is a straightforward song. Funny how simplicity is always so effective. The lyrics picture a kid bullied at school, he climbs on rooftops to sing to the moon. He's too sensitive, his anger is like a lava erupting out of himself. He's so sad that he imagines the whole city covered in ashes. Thankfully he meets like-minded fellas through music. The guitar riff had more of a PJ Harvey Stories From Sea... vibe initially. But as often, when I brought the song to the band it took a different turn. Overall on the album our young recruit David, from Le Colisée, gave our songs a shiny twist with the keyboard sounds he crafted on his computer... a habit that earned him the nickname 'Digi-Dave'.

Apocalypse à Ipsos

This song was a folk ballad initially called "Apocalypse", in reference to the Tapestry Of The Apocalypse According To St. John that you can find in Angers' Castle. One of the embroidered scenes depicts the evil word spread by a monster spitting out frogs. I found it was a funny metaphor of the French nationalist party's atrocious speeches. I was attached to the words and was looking for a way to make the song more live-friendly. We rehearsed the songs live last summer in a series of small festivals, and to make "Apocalypse" more suitable to dancing crowds, I made a calypso version of it, and the title became a play on word 'calypso', the Jamaican songwriting style used to share the local news when TV didn't exist, and 'Ipsos' the polling firm. Ipsos is also a kind of monster that spits out frogs sometimes, in the sense that it is quite effective in the task of confusing and influencing opinions.

1982

The song says "you will never find me, I’m still hiding in the moment of my birth". That is how I summed up the lyrics to Owen Palett when I sent him the recording. Owen was commissioned by Domino to do the strings arrangements. The strings turned out sounding real good. So, I guess my song description was accurate (...and I guess Owen is a musical genius!) I was born in "1982". I could say this song is an homage for the people from my generation whose parents had humanists’ dreams, who ended being caught up by the absurdity of the lifestyle of the late XXth century. Sometimes I meet cool musicians and wonder why I appreciate them so, then I realize we're from the same year (Botibol, This Is The Kit, Carey from Camera Obscura...) like for wine 1982 is a good vintage. I love the sound we got from running the instruments through the old echo room at Jet Studio where we did the album. It's a very old studio (1942) and the echo sounds pretty ancient too... yet again: a magical vintage.

100 000 000

This songs puts the whole weight of the history of humanity and a single love story on two sides of a scale. Humans are said to have been around for about 100,000,000 to 200,000,000 years. With that in mind, how do we deal with heartbreaks? Even though billions of humans have gone through the same patterns we're still paralyzed when our love stories fail? "Heeeyou, heeeyou" resonates like a soft shout and punctuates the album (we hear them on "Tendre est l'âme" and on "Allité", a song that didn't make it on the album). It's a rip-off from a song that someone dear to me used to sing. You can interpret it as a call out to someone distant that haunts your heart, whose echo will run till the end of time.

Âpres Après

On the album it sounds like a circuit-bent Sega game. But initially this song was written on an acoustic guitar in a forest in New Zealand, where they shot Where The Wild Things Are. I was imagining some fancy primitive parties by the fire. The 'Megadrive' feel came later, during the band rehearsals, with Jean Jaune our drummer doing some crazy beat programming on his Swedish drum machines, Digi-Dave bringing some digital swings on his computer compatible keyboard, and Amzo fooling around on his electronic pad with a Bulgarian sample I had exported on his USB stick. Not much to say, apart from it's a really fun song to play live!

Bête Morcelée

Oh, I wrote this in my bathroom. It went unnoticed from the neighbors; I have a really noisy washing machine. It took about 20 mins to record and 10 mins to mix.

Jamais Deux Pareils

This song was a puzzle to put together. We were really excited by its groove and by all the little riffs, and I was so pleased with the erotico-Arabic words. At the last minute we did an audacious edit, and the song lifted off towards pink clouds and digital haze in the end. Good old Digi-Dave! I love the way the all album has last minutes’ drastic decisions made to it. Like in "Grand Dérèglement" we chopped a minute off on the last day of mixing. Let's not even mention the album cover...

Perpétuel Été

This is a song for the secretaries and office workers who dream about their summer holidays during their lunch break. Especially dedicated to the ones who take the time to read The Odyssey, sat on steps in the sun, before heading back to work.

Rentes Écloses

The best for the end, that's my favourite track on the album. I listen to a lot of healing and hypnotic music these days: Jonathan Fitoussi, Terry Riley, Alice Coltrane, etc. For me sleeping music is the best type. I'm glad I managed to convey a bit of that in the album. Mixing the album was a very intense process (13 songs in four days!), we dealt with that track last, we were probably half asleep while running the sounds through the desk.