Stephan Eicher, like a fanfare

With his new album "Hüh!", Stephan Eicher revisits pieces from his repertoire. © Laurent Seroussi

02/22/2019

After a tour with the Traktorkestar, Stephan Eicher publishes his first record for seven years. In Hüh! , he revisits some masterpieces of his repertoire with this Balkan fanfare and it's explosive! An ideal album to fight the blues, by a singer who, at 58, still has some small jokes to make and still sings-of very good songs.

This February in Paris, the Grand Rex is almost complete. In the grand boulevards room, spectators are comfortably seated in front of a stage dressed like an old garage, with straw, a jukebox and tractor tires. After a good twenty minutes of waiting, a gypsy fanfare enters the pit by the back doors and already puts everyone standing. With his three drummers, his nine brass, so goes the Traktorkestar who has shared in recent months the poster with Stephan Eicher and happens to be the main craftsman of Hüh! , in which he revisits his repertoire with arrangements of Balkan influences.

By the admission of the person concerned, such a marriage had everything to be "a little joke" but this good Mr. Eicher seems to even get his energy from these rascals who cover the confetti scene or tie with tape their saxophonist during a solo. "I swear it's not repeated, I'm just saying on the score, 'Do what crosses your head!' or 'Make me laugh', he says, with that special accent, and at the end it becomes a skit, I just stop it when it's too dangerous ... It's punk, but with some love anyway. " With his twisted mustache and his velvet three-piece suit, one thinks of a Mr. Loyal who would present a circus act.

Yenish origins

The association between the most French of Swiss singers and the Traktorkestar was born in parallel with a long legal battle that opposed him to his record company. Under contract with Barclay, a subsidiary of Universal, Stephan Eicher attacked the multinational for breaches of its contractual obligations after the Envolée (2012), his latest album. These quarrels with the music industry punctuate his conversation; they explain Eicher's long recording silence for seven years and his near-absence in the media. So during this freeze, the singer gave two discs to Universal - without Universal's answer - and imagined some unusual tours.

In the show Stephan Eicher & Die Automaten, he shared the stage with a group of automatons. Every night, he gave life to an organ, glockenspiel and accordion of his father, acquired shortly before. It was after this "solo" tour that the idea of ​​another concert, accompanied this time by a Gypsy fanfare, was imposed, and the release on another division of Universal, Polydor, of old songs revisited on this mode. Evidence for the musician with Yenish origins (1)? Not exactly ! This concept came rather from a collaboration with the composer of Yugoslavian origin Goran Bregovic - that of the films of Emir Kusturica-, and then he took shape with the Traktorkestar, and the rapper Stef La Cheffe.

Lunch in Peace, which led him to the top in the early 1990s ? It has not been engraved, but it is shipped upon entry on stage. How long ? She takes a dance tour. No friends (like you?) ? It turns squarely into Balkan disco. The girls of Limmatquai, who marked his debut in France? Again, it's more about dancing. But what we like most is (re) discover the writings of the writer Philippe Djian in the middle of these brass.

On his repertoire in general, Stephan Eicher notes: "I made a music in my debut, but with Philippe Djian, it's the word that prevails.I have so much respect for the texts of Philippe that from from Louanges (1999), I preferred to make imaginary films For ten years I wrote a music to close my eyes Not a physical music where we say, eyes open: 'Fuck, faster!'

The annoyed song of love Louanges is also dynamited by the twelve musicians. What could have been a simple best-of in Balkan version, is actually a beautiful reinterpretation. The 58-year-old dandy comes out of back problems, but he does not lack humor. He admits, teasing: "I like to fuck shit, yes, with Universal, I think I wanted to have a judge say, 'But that's not possible, this contract!' (...) There is this image of the Roman emperors, who passed under the Arc de Triomphe on their wagons, next to them, there was a person who spoke softly and repeated: 'Do not forget that you are mortal. ' Maybe that's the role of the artist, it's a bit like the yellow vests, but they are shouting, I like the Sicilian method, more calm. "

The Eicher method, in any case, is devilishly effective and we are waiting impatiently for it. It would be scheduled for the summer, a priori. But in the age of dematerialized music, producing a disc can sometimes take time, a lot of time.

(1) Stephan Eicher started on the traces of his Yenish origins and the imprint of Yenish music in Switzerland for a documentary, Yeniche sounds, in which he participated with his brother Erich.

Stephan Eicher Hüh! (Polydor) 2019
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By: Bastien Brun

Stephan Eicher

album - World Music - French Song - Switzerland

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