The Tsalounâ Sessions

From 3 to 8 August 2015, we recorded most of LOOK HOW LOW WE NOW GET @ La Tsalounâ (Les plans-Sur-Bex, Switzerland). The heat was absolutely terrible but it was an amazing week nonetheless.

Marc Champod moved part of Alzac Studio to create a new studio in a space normally used as a concert room and completely unequipped otherwise. He sweated a lot but he never swore too badly or called me names, at least not to my face. He did all the recordings during that week. Later on, from August 2015 to November 2016, he also mixed and mastered the album @ Alzac Studio (Montreux, Switzerland).

Patrick Dufresne played the drums and percussions on the record. He also spent a night with Marc and me @La Tsalounâ, we spent a good part of the night telling each other secrets about girls and other stuff… well, mostly girls.

Fabien Sevilla played the bass and double bass on the record. He spent one night on my couch because that night we decided that we should all go home to have a good rest. We didn’t really rested that much, but who cares.

Laurent Poget played most of the guitars you hear on the record and, well, how should i put it: the man played for 12 hours straight. Fuck me. He played for 12 hours, with 30mn break to eat and a 30mn break to talk a little. It was so exhausting that at one point i thought i would die, but i didn’t. My shirt was soaked with sweat because of the terrible heat mentioned before, and i wasn’t even the one playing. Marc barely survived, only Laurent looked fresh when we were through, i think he would have kept going. I still get exhausted every time i think of that session.

After that, Philippe Kronauer (who owns La Tsalounâ with his wife Cécile), Marie-Eve Flückiger (aka FAINTNESS), Marc Décosterd (co-lead on Alle Brücken) and Nils Aellen (aka SOFTEN who sings the lead on Strange Boys) came and recorded a few voices and/or choirs. That was very relaxing actually.

On Saturday, Marc Champod managed to move everything back in his car and get ready because we promised to do a show that night to say goodbye. Patrick and Fabien came back and we had the best time playing some rock’n’roll.

Before the Tsalounâ Sessions

Yet all the work began a long long time ago (years actually) and some things were recorded before the Tsalounâ sessions @ various locations.
I for one sang and choired and played a few guitars and pianos and also did all the programming. Most of those things, as well as Pierric Tenthorey‘s violin on Time On the Borderline, and Rebecca Frey‘s voices on Himmel were recorded @ This Is Not A Kitchen, This Is Barely A Room Studio (Lausanne, Switzerland).

Gone Dark was recored in 2008 in one day @ Alzac Studio. It is a very special song to me. It was the original score of the movie Retourne-toi by Marc Décosterd. I played and sang pretty much everything except the harmonica played by Jean Duperrex. Marc C. then added some programming and we mixed and mastered the song together that day. After much consideration, we decided to leave the song untouched for this record (and not to re-mix it) to keep its « freshness » and the spirit in which it had been recorded. Marc did a new mastering, but otherwise the song is as it always was and will be.

One way river is a very old song. I think it was written more than ten years ago. It was written for a band i was in @ the time. We did a few rehearsals and then everything stopped for no particular reason. I don’t remember if we had a name, but i liked that band and i kept the song.

Also, i must say that I’ve always admired Soften’s work and music. I secretly hoped that one day we would work together. I then realized – what are the odds?- that he was actually a colleague of mine. I had seen him for about two years without actually knowing he was Soften. We became friends and i was fortunate enough to work with him on the album. I actually wrote Strange Boys very much influenced by his work and hoping he would sing it (i didn’t know him back then). So that’s sort of a « dream come true », but don’t tell him, he’ll get infatuated. When he said he liked once more very much and was willing to (re)arrange it, i was thrilled and i love what he did with it.

Himmel comes from a theme Rebecca invented for a play we were in (an adaption of Shakespeare’s Hamlet). I really liked the melody and so i wrote the rest of the song. She came to my house one afternoon and we wrote the lyrics together. Fortunately, she speaks German, well, Swiss German, but that’s ok.

THE ALBUM LOOK HOW LOW WE NOW GET WILL BE RELEASED ON 21 SEPTEMBER 2017