Belgian artist Noé Preszow.
-
Pierre Cattoni
Noé Preszow, 26, is nominated in the “male revelation” category at the next Victoires de la musique.
His album,
A nous
, was due out on Friday but was postponed to April 2 due to the health situation.
“I'm a pretty tumultuous person in crisis.
The moment when I write and record the songs is a moment when I come together ”, explains the Belgian artist to
20 Minutes
.
You may not yet know how to pronounce Noah Preszow's surname (you have to say "prèchof"), but it shouldn't be long before you become familiar with the name.
The 26-year-old Belgian singer is competing in the male revelation category at the Victoires de la Musique this Friday.
His first album was due out the same day but, due to the health crisis, it was postponed to April 2.
What does it matter: if he was preselected, it is because the first songs he spread,
To us
- which gives the record its title -
Que tout s'danse
or
The world upside down
did strong impression.
Interview with a sensitive artist and, as he defines himself, "a little crazy".
Your album should have been released this Friday, it was postponed to April.
Better to wait?
(Beat) Actually, now it's done.
Once something is done, I don't go back to it.
For me, it's been four years since this album should have been released.
To us
, I wrote it four years ago and several other songs date from that period.
There aren't that many more recent than that.
I have been ready since the age of 20 and I am 26. If there is a regret at the level of temporality this is where it plays out, because we are not young forever, and not in a six week delay for an album release.
How would you present your music?
I would say that I do French song but… how to put it… with action (laughs).
Today when we say “French song” we immediately tend to imagine something a little sinister.
I've listened to a lot of stuff, in every way, whether it's rock or hip-hop, and that makes my music tinker with it.
The heart remains of the French song but… nervous.
Come on, we can say that: I do nervous French songs!
At what age did you start music?
I started playing the violin when I was 3 - I wanted to.
I listened to a lot of French songs that could be described as “protest” and also Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, so I started playing the guitar.
Since childhood I have always played with recorders, loved to record my voice and after a while, rather than speaking alone, I started singing.
My first songs were improvised directly on the recorder, I wrote them after.
In the song "The empty pockets", you quote Lou Reed, Barbara, Brigitte Fontaine, Jacques Higelin… Is this your musical Pantheon?
I don't think I would make a song with my own references, because that would be a bit like shooting myself in the foot.
Those who are quoted in
Les Poches vides
are the artists of my father's youth, but indeed, they are people I love.
Barbara, Lou Reed, Ribeiro, Lavilliers, Higelin, Fontaine, Simon and Garfunkel… It's a fairly fair mix, after all… I tell you the opposite of what I just told you.
But in my personal Pantheon, there are also the Waterboys - a group that relied on me a lot - the Beatles, Indochina, the Cure or Louise Attaque.
They were important because they were not listened to at home.
I believe that, as for everyone and for any artist, life begins when there is a kind of break with what rocked us and which rocked our parents.
Your song, "To us", came out a year ago, just before the lockdown began.
Is it the business card that allows you to present your world and your concerns?
It's exactly that.
Where this song is true to who I am is that it's a bit mysterious and ambiguous.
For me, the "we" does not exist.
My culture is still the first person, I have always liked intimate works, especially in poetry.
So, it's a song about what is happening today, about a form of new energy to draw on, a break to make with many things, including the ubiquitous screens, but there is this tension between the "us". "And the" you ".
The end of the song is very important.
She is not there to give herself a clear conscience but because this “you” is central in my life and my songs.
Your album goes back and forth between you, your intimate questions, your memories, and the universal.
Were you afraid to deliver an album that was too self-centered?
It is a commonplace to say that intimacy is universal, but, indeed, I was very much occupied by my family history which joins the history of the world and in particular that of the exiles today.
I did not set a set of specifications by telling myself that I had to talk about myself but not too much.
Each artist has his share of subjects that concern him, for me, the question of borders and exile is capital.
I imagine that there is a lot of unconscious in what I do.
In "The Upside Down", you also evoke police violence.
How was this title born?
I was born in demo, I have that culture.
Power relations, order, authority, uniforms, I have always seen them up close, with my children's eyes and that has never ceased to accompany me.
Concretely, for this song, I had snippets of lyrics, including the chorus.
When I was finishing the album, coming back from a demonstration [The “great health demonstration” brought together 4,000 people in Brussels on September 13], I ran into two friends for whom things had gone very badly. .
While they had come to demonstrate for health, they ended up in the hospital.
There was something completely absurd and extreme violence in the fact that it happened after confinement.
It came like that, I found it important to put this song about police violence in the album.
In your songs, you talk about what makes you unworthy, however, your anger remains contained, there is no scream, an explosion of rage in your album ...
It's just.
I have an ambiguous relationship to this observation, it makes me wonder about myself.
I am quite tumultuous and in crisis.
Everything I do has a certain tension.
The moment I write and record songs is a moment when I come together.
It's special because we could say that the artistic path is the opposite: the moment when we explode.
Me, it's life and the world that drive me crazy.
On the other hand, on stage, the one where we sweat, I am more explosive.
In "The Pond", you wonder if you will be "an adversary forever".
Do you wonder about your ability to resign yourself to anything that makes you unworthy?
It's a special song for me, so I'm glad the message got through.
Today, I am rediscovering it.
The question is really this: will I get to the end of who I really am?
When I sing this it's because I know I'm a little bit nuts and don't aspire to a normal life because I don't understand the world as it's organized.
I do not find myself there.
It is only in the fight that I feel alive.
I'm not looking for conflict, but there is something in my life that makes me always an adversary.
Would you call yourself a pessimist?
No, I would say that I am not above that, nor below, but next to it.
I wouldn't say the glass is half empty or half full, but the glass is broken.
That the codes have to be redone.
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