Reportage

Rock en Seine 2019, between stars and discoveries

The Bad Eye duo on the Île-de-France stage, August 25, 2019. © RFI / Nicolas Dambre

08/26/2019

From August 23rd to 25th, the festival in Île-de-France gathered just under 100,000 spectators, including many fans of The Cure group. Beyond the headliners (Foals, Major Lazer, Aphex Twin ...), many young bands were to discover, as Bad Eye with its orientalizing pop.

The over 50s seem more numerous than usual in this hot Friday. Many took out their t-shirt with the image of The Cure . Because they came to see THE headliner of this 17th edition, for the only appearance of the British band in France in 2019.

Friday night, the 2h15 concert will live up to the expectations of the public with more than twenty titles recounting a good part of 40 years of career: A Forest, Pictures of You, Fascination Street ... Robert Smith, the leader of the group, has well sure aged, his music a lot less. He is dressed in black, he is always a man with a lot of hair, but most of all his voice is intact. The band delivers a perfect performance and ends with the moving Boys Do not Cry .

In the audience we find a fan, Silly Boy Blue , who wrote a memoir about the band. A little earlier on the scene of the four winds, the young woman, dressed all in black, also wore a t-shirt with the effigy of her idols. We let ourselves be carried away by the melancholy songs tinged with cold wave of this young woman crowned at Printemps de Bourges. Not far away was Lee-Ann Curren, a Franco-American from a dynasty of surfers who dropped the board and waves not for surf music, but for a solar pop. On the other side of the festival site, Balthazar's Belgians were back for the third time, on the big stage, just like Jeanne Added . It delivers a concert all in energy, with sound sometimes funky, rock or robotic, and the presence of the chorus Accentus.

Among the few French revelations, the penned garage-punk We Hate You Please Die or the psychedelic and sophisticated pop of Biche. For its part, Süeür, and to a lesser extent Brawl, had to be content with the few spectators who did not attend the concert of The Cure. It's the Kompromat duo that ends the evening with his martial techno.

On Saturday, the rap of Canadian Tommy Genesis and French Alpha Wann conquered more than their fans, before the soul of Jorja Smith and the return of the very funky Jungle. The French duo Polo & Pan has also maintained the groove, with its colorful electro and a show that was just as much. The evening ends with an American show by Major Lazer, stronger visually than musically.

On Sunday, you have to arrive early to discover bands like Chica (Latin-pop), Cannibale (psycho tropical rock) or Décibelles (punk in French). The duo Mauvais Eye and then Agar Agar, with its electro pop sometimes over-stimulated, sometimes under morphine, receives a very good reception. Rock en Seine ends with the techno rave of the British Aphex Twin, icon of electronic music. Less experimental and destabilizing than it was in the beginning, but still more original than many current electro artists.

© Mathieu Foucher

Three questions to Bad Eye

RFI Musique: What is your musical background?
Sarah: We do not have the same! At home, we listened to funk or oriental music. When I was little, I sang while listening to Etta James or Billie Holiday, and then became an absolute fan of Britney Spears. There is a common point between r'n'b singers like Mariah Carey or Whitney Houston and the oriental song is melisma [ a melodic figure of several notes bearing a syllable, Ed ]. Later, the cold wave uninhibited me about not having had a musical training.
Alexis: I learned the baroque flute, not to say the recorder, at the conservatory. Teen, I started on the guitar and I listened to a lot of surf music, rock and ska. By surf music I discovered the Greek rebetiko, there is a connection, as in the Misirlou popularized by Pulp Fiction . From there, I became interested in world music.

Singing in French was it natural?
Sarah: I have written and sung in English for a long time, especially when I lived in New York. With Bad Eye, I sing in French, there is no longer this distance, we are naked, authentic.

One of your titles, Constantine , is very personal, for what reason?
Sarah: This song evokes a person who comes to a certain age and who is looking for missing pieces of his identity ... That's the whole point of this group: we were the missing piece in the other's puzzle.
Alexis: We shot the clip in Algeria in Constantine, which brought us closer, while Mauvais Eye only existed for 4 months. We had met a year earlier, on the 1st of January, with a few glasses of pastis.
Sarah: In Constantine, I met a part of my family that I had never seen before, it was very strong. All thanks to the music.

Bad Eye Velvet Nights (Business) 2019

By: Nicolas Dambre

The Cure - Balthazar - Jeanne Added - Bad Eye

Rock - Pop - Electro - festivals - France - Great Britain

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