Conversation with Miossec

Unpublished article - David Glaser, RTL and RTS radio journalist

This article is also available on Suississimo.com

For Christmas, David Glaser, music journalist at Radio Télévision Suisse, RTL reporter and former Europe 1 and France Inter journalist, gives us a long telephone conversation with Miossec, and an account that goes to the very heart of his art.

Initially, I wanted to tell you a disco Christmas tale in the style of «Il est né le divin enfant», with music remixed from the originals that make plez’ at fans of Santa Claus. I'm talking about Nat King Cole, Tony Bennett and Dino Martin, the voices, the croon’ in these uncertain times, a classic end-of-year change of scenery far from the protests and looting, the Brexits and immigrant shipwrecks, looking towards New York and its materialistic - but beautiful - Christmas fairytale, a story with good feelings to talk about love in the world between peoples and families, to pray together that 2019 will finally wipe out all the misery and also turn the vests into gold... oh how beautiful and benevolent it all is. But in the end, no, I want to talk to you about drinking and fucking like Finisterian mammals embracing down here as they did in 1964... to burn ordinary songs at both ends and end up as survivors of the musical autodafé.

I've been looking for the right person for this 101^th piece of Suississimo Christmas special. A man to talk about the music that's been bothering me too much lately. A singer for whom I have had a sincere admiration for over twenty years. It is therefore an act of commitment and sharing that I sign with my pen at the bottom of this page. And this conversation is of a special nature, coming as it does just before his concert at Les Docks in Lausanne on January 26. The person in question is Miossec, and after each exchange with the Brest man, I have this impression of having experienced a few things sensass with the funniest, most discreet man on earth. A full, literary, witty and direct artist, a militant leftist who has never stopped thinking in that direction, but without forcing himself; he's sincere. A beast of the stage, all nuances, close to the people without blowing their minds with his status, a man who celebrates fifty-four years of soul-stirring music and moving writings, depending on the moment in life you've chosen to immerse yourself in them.

Last but not least, Miossec, born a few hours before JC (another master-singer who sinned a bit), is an ex-member of the French chanson scene.punk rocker to keep us awake in 2019. We need it, given that Bashung and Rachid Taha are no longer with us. to represent! The true Breton craftsman of straightforward musical poetry, of moving music on minor chords, of romantic confessions on the pillow and therefore for the ears, is a storyteller of wild tales of inhabitants of provincial towns («de petites préfectures») barely moved by the bedtime stories of their councillors, or brightened by the halves of beer and glasses of whisky-coke served too expensive in nightclubs for didjis «relous».

Saying stupid things to all the Breton spectators of the Tour de France with a French flag on the sunroof of the France Inter broadcasting car during the 2006 edition (departure from Rennes, arrival in Lorient, passing through Mûr-de-Bretagne), we did that together. The memory is still vivid in my mind. Miossec fell back into childhood during this Breton stage, which he watched in its entirety from head to toe for ten hours at a time, a plunge into memories of watching the Tour de France with his family on the family TV screen or on the roadsides of Penn-Ar-Bed. The sportsman who has been involved in UNSS or club efforts, was here living another group experience, with teams of riders of course, but also a media experience, a real shot of pleasure at being there, «pelotonné», with his ass on the back of a France Inter follower's motorcycle and the feeling of being part of the newspaper's history. the Team and French sport.

In 2018, Les Rescapés is out now. A new album full of moving orchestral discoveries, imbued with a whole new urgency, in the face of scorned ecology, in the face of peoples abandoned in the name of money, of complicated human relationships barely healed by little deaths stealthily buried, sentimental life, «those who eat the snakes, those who eat the petals», still chronicled here with envy and inspiration this time in an album of dark yet lively elegance (see my comments and track-by-track notes below). Listening to this opus, Miossec's lungs are full of oxygen, iodized by the sea spray from the Mer d'Iroise, and he is aware of his responsibility as a man with roots who has seen many heroes fall on the battlefield of addiction and celestial bullshit.

With Mirabelle and Leander in «fellow survivors»

We love the «editing» of this eleventh album (the second for Bob Dylan and Jeff Buckley's home, the venerable Columbia Records, which is more Japanese than ever; it's owned by the Sony group, so be careful not to embezzle money, as Japanese justice is intractable). The instrumental matrix is signed by Miossec and his «beatmakers Mirabelle Gilis and Leander Lyons. The words are as carefully chiselled as ever by the author on the musical bed. As a frenetic fan of Henri Calet and Raymond Carver, artists of metaphor and ellipsis, he always works to sculpt palaver without fat and as close to the bone as possible.

Also Les Rescapés represents a perfect soundtrack for your anti-system New Year's Eve-revolution, a song of proponents of degrowth and responsibility in the face of the Macronists hardcore and to Wauquieziens of all stripes, who seem to have forgotten ecology and the values of solidarity. Barely cheered up by the promise of an end-of-year bonus, the suffering people should understand the words of the Survivors. The album makes a number of dry observations about French society today, and casts a few lucid (and sometimes benevolent) glances at the world, but also at the violence of exchanges, nature martyred, morality trampled underfoot, and unfulfilled desires for freedom. Miossec and his partners have succeeded in hitting the bull's-eye with a new, rougher, more mechanical style, aided by old-fashioned drum machines and synthetic sounds rarely found so much in the songs of the rocker defrocked since his first collaborations with Matthieu Ballet, musician with Oui-Oui in the eighties and nineties, then producer.

In an unconventional interview, we talk music with Miossec, but also about Switzerland, which he returns to with Les Rescapés on January 26 (already said, but never mind). A land he knows and appreciates, having crossed swords with some of Geneva's natives (Polar and Bernard Trontin, drummer of the mythical Young Gods). We're talking about artists who count and who have counted, heroes, old-timers, big names, characters who are a little or a lot out of touch... or even dead. Rachid Taha's soul hovers over our conversation. We both liked him a lot. Comments on musical tracks based on old machines for composers of synthetic turnings vintage The words are exchanged, but they clearly don't seem important, as if Miossec had always known and been able to fork off onto a country road to retrieve the old trunks of childhood laden with nostalgic memories, without having to justify himself.

And among these cargoes of old structures that would in no way disown inventive musicians such as Jean-Jacques Perrey or Pierre Henry, this return to drum machines is a tribute to the past, when with the group Printemps Noir, they were trying to please and grow in the middle of the eighties. It was with this kind of instrument that we composed back then, so it was a reference for the mythical Marquis de Sade or the brilliant duo Kas Product; «we actually opened for them in Brest», Miossec recalls with amusement. The dirty, bewitching rhythm box - I had the feeling I'd already seen that with other artists in my forty-two years here, like Stephan Eicher in the eighties (my very first concert) at the time of Two People In A Room, or with David Bowie in the nineties with Inside and Outside, and even with Daniel Darc in the 2000s, and now with Miossec.

Names that click, a club of four, a Fab Four as a hall of fame poets who loved words as much as they loved the guitar, machines as much as they loved their effects on words: the circle is complete with Les Rescapés. Tribute to the departed Bowie and Darc, respect to Bernese Eicher. There's nothing better than always having the will to produce a heady sound (The White City and We die, two tracks gently cut with an analog machine), a wavering sound, a sound of sackcloth and surf, but a melodious sound, soft as humus on an Irish plain. An organized storm, a certain idea of a party on December 24. Happy birthday Mioss’.

The «gilets jaunes» affair that has toppled France is deliberately left out of the conversation for this time, the fear of taking up too much space in the limited exchange, as if the disconnect was too great with the place in which I took my seat (a very bad idea) to make the call, this English pub in Geneva populated on this Thursday evening by wealthy Russian businessmen, ears screwed to cell phones, bellies overflowing with the jean, Their 185-centimetre hens, full of blond hair, are at their side... The call is made in a hubbub, the ladies take the light, the men belch their words in a concert of dissonant voices. And because of the loud voices, communication with the Columbia Records office in Paris is very difficult. So I decide to leave the wooded comfort of this public house Geneva for the street, as if we were leaving the Elysée for a traffic circle in Conquet. And we kick off the exchange with the last sentences (frasques) of a famous figure in France's dissonant political music.

David Glaser: You know that France and one of its highest representatives have been in the news here lately... a Finisterian named Richard Ferrand demolished the Swiss political system in a few sentences from the top of his perch last summer. The President of the French National Assembly doesn't seem to believe in Switzerland's direct democracy. Did you follow?

Christophe Miossec: Yes, I've been following all that. At the same time, we know him well in Brest. Richard Ferrand is the kind of guy who gives his wife slightly oversized buildings, right here in Brest. It shocked everyone, it was at the start of En Marche... In short, we were concerned before Switzerland.

What did you mean by Les Rescapés, with its rough side due to the use of certain machines?

In the eighties, we had already used drum machines with Printemps Noir, my very first band. My first album Drink was also aided by a drum machine, as we didn't have a drummer. In the end, the idea was rather to make a record that we enjoy playing, to have the freedom to easily transpose the whole thing on stage.

You'll have to get Columbia to change their on-hold music, because it's not very good when they play it on the phones. How are things going with this legendary label?

Oh well, I'm very small at Columbia. So expectations aren't the same as at PIAS. (editor's note: Franco-Belgian label also established in the UK) with whom I made nine albums. Over there, I was a big fish, there was a lot of expectation and stress. They absolutely needed singles. Columbia, so it's really quieter. They're not worried, they let me make the music I want to make. As far as promotion is concerned, we have the support of a radio station, France Inter in particular, and it's a good thing they're there, because without them, I don't know what national media I'd be broadcast on.

I just saw your album at the Fnac in Lausanne, and some singles, there are some. The record company has put five song titles on the sticker France Inter promo on the CD. You can see the hitmaker that you are (laughs). What's more, the titles are short, so they fit perfectly on the sticker.

That's why I made them short, so they'd fit. (laughs). Of course, with Today's beers are opened by hand, It would have been a little harder to fit everything in.

More seriously, you're following what's happening strategically with CDs that are selling less... vinyl records that are blooming again. The cover of a 33 rpm, sorry 180 grams, has style, doesn't it?

Yes, the vinyl explosion is crazy. Because of the return of vinyl, we've taken greater care with the artwork with the silk-screen printing on the cover, this handmade graphic and printing work. On the whole, the album has this «handmade» feel to it, with synthetic instruments used in the old-fashioned way, in a relationship to music that doesn't necessarily only take into account this idea of looping, as has been done for the past twenty-five years in electro. With all these groups using machines, musicians are disappearing. What I've noticed is that everyone brings their computer on stage or in the studio. That's not the case for me.

As a great lover of sport and human exploits, and coming from a family of sportsmen and women, you follow national events to a certain extent. France won the World Cup in soccer, the European Handball Cup with the women's team, how did that make you feel?

Frankly, it's less important. I follow it from far and wide. I enjoyed watching Belgium win, actually. (Miossec laughs because he lived in Belgium for many years and recorded several albums there). But it's true that I'm quite happy to see the Olympics come to Paris, as it will open up new areas for kayaking on canals and other bodies of water, at La Villette for example. Today, I have the sea all to myself, as I live in Brittany, right on the ocean.

On Les Rescapés, The new album features the voice of Jeanne Added, a French singer with a background in theater and jazz, now respected for her career in indie pop with a strong synthetic bent. How did you meet Jeanne?

Jeanne Added, I love her music. I saw her eight years ago in a club in Paris. She was the opening act for a group, alone on bass, and I was impressed. I went to see her after the concert. She listened to my albums before taking the plunge. I think what Jeanne is doing today suits her very well. Singing in French suits her too, which is why she came to do vocals on the album.

Jeanne Added had played with Rachid Taha. I think you yourself must have worked with him. He died last September. Another brother of the music world has gone, after the one you served on several albums with song lyrics: Johnny. How do you feel about these two deaths?

Oh well, big music stars are special... (slightly embarrassed silence). Johnny, it's a mess...

The mess?

Yes, as always with Johnny, it's a complete mess.

And Rachid?

We left to work at his place and we didn't work at all. (laughs). There was our mutual friend Hakim Hamadouche... easy to make fun of him with a name like that, hamadouche... hamadroite... He was the oud player with whom Rachid had been associated for a long time. It's always very funny with Rachid, he's a man who has understood music, rock and Arab and Kabyle traditions better than anyone else. Brian Eno was no exception.

And what about you and your roots?

Still no Breton musicians around, but I'm first and foremost from Brest. First of all, I have to make my mother and father proud, as they're from Brest. Breton culture doesn't come into it.

Is rap an important genre for you?

Rap suits me, there's a lot of excitement going on... Much more than in rock bands. For me, Lomepal is a great revelation. He's got some killer melodies. La Squale too. He's the only guy in French rap who talks about the Algerian war with such good lyrics.

What is your relationship with Switzerland?

First of all, Stephan Eicher, we did Disappear together on the album L'Envolée, we worked at his place in the Camargue, five or six years ago. I also played with Bernard Trontin of the Young Gods and Polar. A cover of The Ballad of Melody Nelson Nelson for the Pop Sessions compilation. I really like the Young Gods. This band was a pioneer and they made me want to sign to PIAS; they were there with L'Eau Rouge and T.V. Sky when I signed for this label.

Thanks Christophe and happy birthday!

In our February paper edition Order here, David Glaser's notated extensions on each of the album's eleven tracks!

Write to the author: zieggla@gmail.com

Photo credit: © Docks / Julien T Hamon

Miossec
Les Rescapés 
Columbia/Sony Music Entertainment
2018
11 titles
34 minutes

Miossec in concert at Les Docks, Lausanne on Saturday January 26 with Baptiste W. Hamon as opening act.