The history of pop music has now reach the point where we
can attempt a first assessment. Through Apogees, recessions,
crashes : a collective soul has developed and new cycles, parallel
with those which we knew, have appeared evolving in there own
way but still in close touch with that rich past. The historical
paradigms are seized by a new generation of musicians who choose
to provide us with their own variation, their interpretation
of the past.
This crossings of genealogies give birth to a renewal
of pop music and France's best example of this rebirth is called
Fugu. An inattentive ear could reduce Fugu's music to another
(very) good homage to the sixties groups, Beatles and Beach
Boys at the fore front. But if you listen to it a true shock
operates: you are projected in the core of pop sensualism,
when this core starts melting with modernity. The fugu is
a rare fish that gives death or ultimate pleasure according
to the way it is prepared. This simple metaphor is very accurate.
Mehdi Zannad's music is dangerous because it plays with the
pitiless blade of the mindset. It is easy to spot some undeniable
influences (Stereolab, High Llamas, these providential meetings),
Under the rough skin of the preconceived ideas, one discovers
the sumptuous flesh, the obvious clarity of the melodies
and the joyful complexity of the arrangements.
We could see
the songs of Fugu as pharaonic monuments and Mehdi Zannad
as the mad architect. But they are not, they
are not either some scrumptious terrestrial foods they are
admirable pieces of music written by a young man filled up
of underestimated influences (Velvet Underground, Kinks,
Left Banke) and whose materialisation took some (long) time.
Eighteen pieces of an extreme strength, polished without
to be crushed, remarkably mixed (glossed/regenerated) by
John Cunningham. Eighteen harmonic parts, ranking from the
baroque interlude to the mind puzzling post-rock, for which
nearly twenty musicians have contributed including the irreplaceable
Jerome Didelot, guitarist, bass player and finest counsellor.
This
project is fascinating by its meticulous approach of the
instrumentation's and the sound, clever by its taste
of the invisible quotations, exciting by what it remains
to know every time it is played. Still, this disc hides a
mystery. An imperceptible voice, almost like a ghost, with
the confluence of Emitt Rhodes/Mc Cartney/Doug Yule, which
fits in and still makes itself so scarce that we can only
keep its mineral print. This voice is powerful in its absence,
in its inconsistency. This music has touched us right on
the spot and a voice was born, like being added to our intimacy.
Matthieu Rémy
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