Immortal Bashung, genesis of a posthumous disc
Alain Bashung on the stage of the Vieilles Charrues festival on July 23, 2004. © David LEFRANC / Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images
23/11/2018
Nearly ten years after his death, Alain Bashung resurrected with the grace of a posthumous album, driven by his last wife Chloé Mons and directed by Edith Fambuena. In Upstream, composed of sketches of titles, originally planned for Bleu Pétrole, is a luminous and calm disc, according to the exact inheritance of Bashung. Back to the genesis of an album like no other.
" I never told you, but we are immortal (...) Did you sometimes feel that nothing ended / And that we are there or not, even if we would be there / And you who are no longer there, it's as if you were / more immortal than me ": for two months, Alain Bashung's incarnated voice, raw, in chiaroscuro, resonates, bursts the waves beyond the worlds. Immortels, song signed Dominique A, inaugurates the eleven tracks that weave the sublime posthumous album of the French rocker, disappeared almost ten years ago. Merveille out of oblivion, In Upstream, to be released November 23, consists of drafts of titles, originally planned for Bleu Pétrole, left fallow by the singer: written pieces - texts and / or music - by Joseph d Antwerp, Doriand, Daniel Darc, Raphael Haroche, Mickael Furnon, Arman Melies, Dominique A and Xavier Dumas.
Wake up the songs
The last wife of the singer, Chloé Mons, impulses their resurrection. Today, the actress and singer explains: " Before disappearing, Alain had confided to me that it would be necessary to exhume elements.He was thinking of archives, anecdotes, curiosities among others, for his fans. I had especially in mind the twenty or so songs that slumbered in its drawers: an inert matter that only needed to be woken up ". The company took him about ten years: " The time of the mourning, before being able to draw up the inventory of these treasures, it specifies.In the beginning, I devoted only one day weekly to this dive in the past: too many emotions! And then, I had to convince his label, who feared to betray his heritage ... "
From the outset, however, Chloe, who chooses from this manna, the most obvious titles, has a clear vision of the project: " With Alain, we spent twelve years of life in music, composing, playing, listening. his visions This album had to be radical, in his image I wanted a disc with tenuous, refined arrangements, in which we feel live the source of rock'n'roll: what he loved the most in the world ... "
Thus does it present the orientation to give. According to his indications, the label, Barclay, chooses the director and arranger Edith Fambuena, who had already worked on the masterpiece Fantaisie Militaire (1998). Twenty years ago, one of the most prominent producers of the French musical world - noticed alongside Miossec, Daho, Higelin, Zazie, Brigitte Fontaine, etc. - shut up for nine months in the studio with the huge Alain. What to know on the ends of the ears and on the end of the heart, the methods and the perfectionism of the genius. So she remembers: " He gave us his voice, the text, the melody and we invent the rest." Each version that we submitted to him, we had to achieve.For listening, he had his ritual: in the morning, With his coffee, blond Gauls, and sunglasses, most of the time he stuck his ear behind the doors and popped up and said, ' I like it! '
Foundations and the frame
At first, Edith Fambuena rejects Barclay's proposal for " ethical concerns. " " And then, listening to the songs, I got that click, I could not, selfishly, be the only one who could listen Alain's voice, I thought that it would be good for his audience, this small rab granted ", she expresses.
From the beginning, she and Chloé exchange. As the singer's ex-wife tells us: " We asked ourselves these incessant questions: what would he think about it, what would he have done?" We were on the lookout for signs. listening to the heart that beats in the hollow words. And sculpts arrangements to the bone: " I did not want to be taxed to make whipped cream or aestheticism.I imagined abrupt arrangements.With his only voice, I redid instruments, arrangements, I rebuilt the foundations, changed the wood, planted nails, and built the frame, but I did not choose the colors, I did not stick to the decoration, I leave it to the As soon as I heard too much, I was going backwards, I wanted only Alain's spirit to shine, that it sounds 'blues'.
During her work, Edith Fambuena has the strange impression that Alain Bashung listens to her behind the door, that he is going to phone her: a ghost bent over her mixing desk, through an almost mystical experience, as she describes it. " He was talking to me, I had to answer, it seems crazy, it's the truth, we can not work with a deceased person we knew well without imagining him alive, I locked myself up in my studio for a fortnight, in a kind of trance state. "With her magic wand, Edith revives the songs:" For each one, I tried to find out why Alain did not want to, and to redo the decorum, to reveal each title, like a photo. "
Rock and tenderness
The disc proves indeed of a luminous and soothing coherence. Chloé admits to being happy: " It's a rock record, raw, but also endowed with great tenderness: a strong artistic gesture that sounds just like, and sounds like, this album, on the edge between life and death, is a celebration for me, and those who love it: it gives breath and life to his voice . In tune, Edith completes: " There is no war, no projection, no narcissistic desire on its tracks.I have experienced this record as a journey. " If the diversity of authors gives each piece its temperament and its beautiful singularity, the voice of Alain and the talent of the director unite everything under the strong and deeply moving spirit of Bashung. Edith Fambuena concludes: "He was a powerful creator, he did not write his lyrics or his music, but he worked on fragments of proposals, assembled them, pasted them, jostled them, he was a great sampler, Connectors, who hung the pipes, some make the walls, others make the bridges, he made the bridges. "A heritage that perpetuates wonderfully En Amont : a gateway thrown to the beyond.
Alain Bashung, Upstream, Barclay (2018)
By: Anne-Laure Lemancel
Alain Bashung
Song - France - album
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