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CD
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BORNBAD 164CD
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Self-proclaimed studio rat, Forever Pavot knows exactly how to teleport elsewhere in a few chords. In L'Idiophone ("The Idiophone"), the art of storytelling takes about only three minutes to unfold. Each composition features the full soundtrack of a carefully dehydrated movie, restored to its initial volume in our stereo. The album opens with a car chase, starring a scholarly gangster, and indulging in some engineering eccentricities, such as keeping a cop's siren in harmony throughout the song -- despite the Doppler effect. Perhaps it's the bad lockdown speaking, but Emile Sornin's place is a battlefield: he's having a go at every object like family members. A clock is seemingly taking the piss at him, and it becomes the pretext for a fast-paced lesson in music theory and the effects of time on people. The album was produced in close collaboration with Vincent Taeger (drums), Maxime Daoud (bass), and Sami Osta (production and mixing), who miraculously found room for every keyboard, and then some more, for a brass and string section. Arnaud Sèche came to lay down some flutes. Voices have been mixed forward, signing the end of the mutation of Forever Pavot. Since Rhapsode (BORNBAD 066CD/LP 2014) and La Pantoufle (BB 099CD/LP, 2017), his fling with the song format has become a rather serious relationship. One after the other, Emile Sornin is writing all the volumes of his ideal library music, and it appears he's reaching the oddities section. "La main dans le sac" starts with a weird trash-metal drum burst, then sets up a slimy upside-down world climate. Cue-in the cavalry: staccato strings reveal a harmonic canvas of the purest pop, then a brass squad comes to finish the job, recalling the best moments of Bernard Estardy, baron of all sound wizards. "Au Diable" stages him playing the piano on his knees, ripped off by bailiffs. Two verses in, and the lawmen turn to demons straight out of a giallo, and burn. Nestled in a few crafty instrumentals, "Les informations", clueless vocoded banger written like TV news credits, haïku-sized showcase for Emile's taste for the daft. From the bottom of the ocean, "La mer à boire" makes him drinking buddies with François De Roubaix, national treasure that Forever Pavot comes to visit regularly to borrow gear. Notably idiophones, these humble percussion instruments whose sound is produced only by their material -- triangle, claves, bells. Emile Sornin, like these self-sufficient instruments, manages very well to produce an idiosyncratic but familiar music, colored by his proverbial spring reverb. No need to source his music in his elders': like them, Forever Pavot can write, full stop. CD version includes 12-page poster booklet.
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LP
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BORNBAD 164LP
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LP version. Gatefold sleeve; includes download code. Self-proclaimed studio rat, Forever Pavot knows exactly how to teleport elsewhere in a few chords. In L'Idiophone ("The Idiophone"), the art of storytelling takes about only three minutes to unfold. Each composition features the full soundtrack of a carefully dehydrated movie, restored to its initial volume in our stereo. The album opens with a car chase, starring a scholarly gangster, and indulging in some engineering eccentricities, such as keeping a cop's siren in harmony throughout the song -- despite the Doppler effect. Perhaps it's the bad lockdown speaking, but Emile Sornin's place is a battlefield: he's having a go at every object like family members. A clock is seemingly taking the piss at him, and it becomes the pretext for a fast-paced lesson in music theory and the effects of time on people. The album was produced in close collaboration with Vincent Taeger (drums), Maxime Daoud (bass), and Sami Osta (production and mixing), who miraculously found room for every keyboard, and then some more, for a brass and string section. Arnaud Sèche came to lay down some flutes. Voices have been mixed forward, signing the end of the mutation of Forever Pavot. Since Rhapsode (BORNBAD 066CD/LP 2014) and La Pantoufle (BB 099CD/LP, 2017), his fling with the song format has become a rather serious relationship. One after the other, Emile Sornin is writing all the volumes of his ideal library music, and it appears he's reaching the oddities section. "La main dans le sac" starts with a weird trash-metal drum burst, then sets up a slimy upside-down world climate. Cue-in the cavalry: staccato strings reveal a harmonic canvas of the purest pop, then a brass squad comes to finish the job, recalling the best moments of Bernard Estardy, baron of all sound wizards. "Au Diable" stages him playing the piano on his knees, ripped off by bailiffs. Two verses in, and the lawmen turn to demons straight out of a giallo, and burn. Nestled in a few crafty instrumentals, "Les informations", clueless vocoded banger written like TV news credits, haïku-sized showcase for Emile's taste for the daft. From the bottom of the ocean, "La mer à boire" makes him drinking buddies with François De Roubaix, national treasure that Forever Pavot comes to visit regularly to borrow gear. Notably idiophones, these humble percussion instruments whose sound is produced only by their material -- triangle, claves, bells. Emile Sornin, like these self-sufficient instruments, manages very well to produce an idiosyncratic but familiar music, colored by his proverbial spring reverb. No need to source his music in his elders': like them, Forever Pavot can write, full stop.
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CD
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BORNBAD 099CD
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You might know Émile Sornin as the son, the pupil, who saw fathers of his among the pioneers of baroque, progressive, and psychedelic pop; who found big brothers by heart and aesthetics in Aquaserge; the (nearly) solitary creator of the "fine retro-maniac piece of work" (The Drone), Rhapsode, in 2014 (BORNBAD 066CD/LP). After experiences in metal, garage, hip hop, he had spent a lot of time exploring, mixing together, digging, getting to the roots with the seriousness of a young man on a quest for territories to occupy. An insatiable jack-of-all-trades, he directed delirious videos for Dizzee Rascal or Disclosure when he wasn't combing the countryside to discover new instruments -- the movie Le Bon Coin Forever (2016). Here is Émile Sornin the (new) father, the dubbed artist, the one-man-studio fully aware of his essential influences (French '70s movie soundtracks -- Philippe Sarde, François De Roubaix, Francis Lai -- rather than Italian giallo soundtracks, synth pioneers such as Wendy Carlos or Mort Garson, library music à la Camille Sauvage, Claude Vasori, and Roger Roger); the captain of a dense, tight live band. The man called by producer Sebastian to the bedside of -- scoop -- Charlotte Gainsbourg's next album. The man who just gave birth to La Pantoufle. From shore to shore, Émile Sornin incorporated into his music the humor and self-mockery he didn't dare to embrace in the past. He dropped English to explore sideways his mother tongue, the tongue that says "ça lance", "ça m'est égal", and "c'est pas si dégueu". He unleashed his instrumental eloquence -- more obsessive than ever arrangement-wise, more jazz and nervous execution-wise, not balking at any dramatic effect to seize the listener's perceptions. Most importantly, he drew on his own memories and blanks ("La Pantoufle Dans Le Puits", "La Soupe À La Grolle", "Les Groseilles Au Fond Du Jardin") to give rise to suspense, fiction, and interpretations. Built as an imaginary movie in which genres collide from one scene to the next (crime film, romance, comedy, erotica, slasher -- you name it), La Pantoufle draws on childhood joys and terrors, only to reenchant them. This is how Forever Pavot takes on its role as a "Father", laying the foundations for a bright future.
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LP
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BORNBAD 099LP
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LP version. You might know Émile Sornin as the son, the pupil, who saw fathers of his among the pioneers of baroque, progressive, and psychedelic pop; who found big brothers by heart and aesthetics in Aquaserge; the (nearly) solitary creator of the "fine retro-maniac piece of work" (The Drone), Rhapsode, in 2014 (BORNBAD 066CD/LP). After experiences in metal, garage, hip hop, he had spent a lot of time exploring, mixing together, digging, getting to the roots with the seriousness of a young man on a quest for territories to occupy. An insatiable jack-of-all-trades, he directed delirious videos for Dizzee Rascal or Disclosure when he wasn't combing the countryside to discover new instruments -- the movie Le Bon Coin Forever (2016). Here is Émile Sornin the (new) father, the dubbed artist, the one-man-studio fully aware of his essential influences (French '70s movie soundtracks -- Philippe Sarde, François De Roubaix, Francis Lai -- rather than Italian giallo soundtracks, synth pioneers such as Wendy Carlos or Mort Garson, library music à la Camille Sauvage, Claude Vasori, and Roger Roger); the captain of a dense, tight live band. The man called by producer Sebastian to the bedside of -- scoop -- Charlotte Gainsbourg's next album. The man who just gave birth to La Pantoufle. From shore to shore, Émile Sornin incorporated into his music the humor and self-mockery he didn't dare to embrace in the past. He dropped English to explore sideways his mother tongue, the tongue that says "ça lance", "ça m'est égal", and "c'est pas si dégueu". He unleashed his instrumental eloquence -- more obsessive than ever arrangement-wise, more jazz and nervous execution-wise, not balking at any dramatic effect to seize the listener's perceptions. Most importantly, he drew on his own memories and blanks ("La Pantoufle Dans Le Puits", "La Soupe À La Grolle", "Les Groseilles Au Fond Du Jardin") to give rise to suspense, fiction, and interpretations. Built as an imaginary movie in which genres collide from one scene to the next (crime film, romance, comedy, erotica, slasher -- you name it), La Pantoufle draws on childhood joys and terrors, only to reenchant them. This is how Forever Pavot takes on its role as a "Father", laying the foundations for a bright future.
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CD
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BORNBAD 066CD
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"Fashion is what goes out of fashion," Cocteau used to say. Although he died without having been able to listen to the first Forever Pavot album, we must grant the poet the gift of prophecy: the classical opposition between past and future is completely stupid. On these grounds, Forever Pavot has done honorably -- create new things with old ideas in mind. One is tempted to describe Emile Sornin, Forever Pavot's leader, as an expert in demolishing walls. His got his training in the now-defunct group Arun Tazieff, where he developed techniques akin to French film composer François de Roubaix: dreaming his songs, fiddling with them track by track, stacking up sound upon sound, rehabilitating his harpsichord in this narrow world that we call pop music. Sornin's output is discreet, yet rather noisy. Fuzz guitars, wild Farfisa, bass lines mixed in the Bertrand Burgalat tradition, flutes playing, etc. There are the sounds of horseback-riding on "Miguel El Salam," "Rhapsode" has flashes of a huge indoor Western being shot by the ORTF ('60s/'70s French Broadcasting Authority TV), and songs such as "Electric Mami" sound like "Strawberry Fields Forever" sung by The Zombies. The name "Forever Pavot" "...started as a joke. One day I read too fast 'flower power' poorly-written on a school pencil case. It made me laugh," said Emile. As a fan of jazz programming and Turkish psych, he also shoots videos for others (Disclosure, Dizzee Rascal, etc.) and proves at every moment that appearances are often misleading. "I feel a bit like Stereolab or Broadcast, artists who draw from the past to make something new. Ten years ago or so, I was doing hardcore punk, then I did chiptune, pop, garage/folk, recorded on K7, and now things inspired from '60s movie music... the only guideline are my desires. Nobody will be able to get in my way if I want to make a reggae album in three years or an album of French songs. Because I'm the one who decides."
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LP
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BORNBAD 066LP
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LP version, with printed innersleeve.
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