Julien Ribot

Julien Ribot has always loved both music and image. At the end of the nineties he was a professional illustrator. He had always composed from his early years on for his own pleasure and out of a natural need related to his being a man of many ideas…

The triggering event was the meeting with a Japanese pop star seeking new songs for her new LP. He wrote her two songs and met a few people in the small French pop world. As the buzz around his mysterious personality increased, Julien Ribot gave up his job in order to devote himself entirely to music. He released his first LP Hôtel Bocchi at the end of 2001. On top of having Françoiz Breut’s participation, he was surrounded on some tracks by Dionysos or Katrine, who helped him enjoy a pleasant succès d’estime.

As a pianist and a singer he has been influenced (among others) by Mike Garson (one of Bowie’s musicians) and Gérard Jouannest (who worked with French singer Jacques Brel). He also drew his inspiration for his second LP from graphic worlds belonging to David Lynch, Roland Topor or Tim Burton. It was called La Métamorphose de Caspar Dix and came out in 2004. This album proved his ability to build a rich and sophisticated world around a dreamlike story served by sensitive and creative pop music.

He is back today with VEGA, a record he wrote between Paris, Berlin, Copenhagen, Rome and Florence...
Without being a concept album, this new release is fully coherent and builds up again a subtle and captivating atmosphere. The artist describes a quest for identity and inner peace throughout the fourteen tracks of the LP which stand for joyful or sad – but always edifying - personal experiences.

His most personal record was made with a new team of musicians and here Ribot stands out as a solo artist able to create a world of his own. The recording of this album provoked some enriching experiences like the recording of the strings in London or the meeting with Mieko Miyazaki, who has fallen in love with Julien’s project. She is one of the most popular koto players worldwide and her instrument enlightens Le rêve de Tokyo. To finish, the presence of Julien Ribot’s partner in life, Annabelle, should also be underlined. She cosigns two titles (La nuit and Les jardins de Boboli) and sings them in duet.

No one is as talented as Julien Ribot is when it comes to creating original worlds, yet he uses very simple ideas. La chambre renversée is a good example of his inspiration. An artist (Daniel Spoerri) who covers tables with every day objects before sticking them on the wall pleased Julien to the utmost. He saw in it an inversion of perspective which can be summed up as follows: everything is possible in the imagination! A rather naïve idea that the artist claims. Julien Ribot is a cunning composer who wrote a heady gimmick of flute creating something close to the sound of fanfare in the listener’s ear and which plays a major role in making this first single a charming and efficient one. As far as the lyrics are concerned, without getting into any of the details of the simple poetry of La chambre renversée, it must be said that the “top of the great alphabet” where the bedroom happens to land on is directly inspired by The Alphabet, David Lynch’s first short length film, which is a sort of painting that comes to life that fascinates Julien Ribot. By the way, he is currently using his own talent as a graphic artist in order to illustrate this song with an animated video clip made with his own drawings. It will soon enable us to see Julien Ribot’s special talent for twisting ideas and perspectives so as to create a matchless universe.