Am 24.03.17 wird „Without Warning“ das zweite Album des französischen Electro-Pop Acts Juveniles veröffentlicht.
Das neue Album vereint zwei Synth-Pop-Generationen: Jean Sylvain, das Gehirn und die Stimme hinter Juveniles und Joakim Bouaziz, Produzent und Performer, der seit 1999 exzentrische elektronische Musik veröffentlicht.
Mit der analogen Ausrüstung und der Verwendung von Joakim Bouaziz's einzigartigen Aufnahmemethoden entstand ein emotionales, songorientieres Electro-Pop Album das wehmütig und mühelos die Geschichte von Disco, Techno und Acid House erzählt.
Juveniles - Someone Better
Die erste Single 'Someone Better' ist ein catchy, Disco-Funk-Popsong in dem die wundervolle Stimme von Jean-Sylvain Le Gouicden perfekt mit dem treibenden Bass und den Synthi/Keyboards-Sounds harmoniert. Get your disco-funk !
French duo from Rennes (Brittany) cultivate pop idealism with Yuksek-produced debut album designed to soothe lost souls and be the soundtrack of sleepless nights.
« To get back to one’s youth, one has merely to repeat one’s follies », Oscar Wilde wrote in The Portrait of Dorian Gray. Juveniles have neither lost the former, nor given up the latter. And if it is often said that boys will be boys, the two Frenchmen do not see it this way. From their beginnings on Parisian label Kistuné up to the release of their debut album this year, Jean-Sylvain Le Gouic and Thibaut Doray have used their youth and their big-time choruses as shields against boredom and as a way to avoid a much-feared coming of age.
We Are Young, they casually claimed on their debut single in 2011. The three words, just like the name of the band itself, were not insignificant. They operated like a mantra, the bold declaration of war of a duo ready to take arms and stand up for the remnants of their innocence. However, why draw big guns and sharp knives when one can use much more subtle and cutting-edge arguments? Such is the essence of their would-be eternal utopian and sensual pop that constantly plays with fire. From exuberant Rennes, the two boys’ HQ, We Are Young would travel through France and eventually leave the country to make young people who do not care about borders or nationality and refuse to go to sleep for fear they will never wake up dance to their rhythms. Juveniles have chosen fatal electro-pop as their main foreign language, specializing in eighties style. Needless to say they got a first in it.
Even though the duo are definitely looking towards Manchester, The Smiths and New Order, they started their live career in France. The performance which started it all took place at the Transmusicales festival in Rennes in December 2011. A few months later, they headlined the Inrockuptibles Festival 2012, drawing yet more attention to themselves. There, Juveniles gave an astonishingly raw and effective performance, teaming up with British band Hot Chip with whom they share a talent for making people shake their hips and calves. This is indeed the duo’s strength: they have a perfect command of live performance, which allows them to do indulge in any eccentricity they fancy. They are incredibly intense and their entire energy is aimed at getting their audience’s attention and not to let it go before sheer exhaustion, when brains are melting and legs are dead. The will-o’-the-wisp duo then turns into fiery pop masters and have only one thing in mind: they want to set on fire young people with pure dreams and careless impudence.
Who better than Yuksek could the two guys from Brittany hire to help them conquer dancefloors and broken hearts? With his second album Living on the Edge of Time, the artist who had so far been known as an electro champion showed that he also knew the language of pop like the back of his hand. This was a chance the duo — who were perfectly bilingual themselves — had to take, and so they took off to Yuksek’s native city of Reims (in the north of France) to record part of their first album with him. « We had had the opportunity to meet Yuksek before that and we just clicked. I think we have fairly similar personalities and this helped us a lot when we had to spend all these months together in the studio. We learnt a lot from him, including how to create more with less and how not to be repetitive », explains Jean-Sylvain, whose crooning voice can be equally elegant and ethereal on Juveniles.
To do more but not too much is what the duo have managed with this album. Juveniles is a combination of the band’s early pop idealism with their penchant for eighties keyboards and fatal beats that their cunning producer would not disown. More than a mere collection of pop bombs used to blow up clubs (Void), the twelve tracks of Juveniles cover all the states of mind of youth, instantly going from the most absolute bliss (We Are Young) to the deepest spleen (Washed Away). But instead of drowning themselves in melancholy, the two boys prefer to tame it and turn it into something to dance to (All I Ever Wanted). They also use sensuality as a weapon against sadness (Elisa, Adriatique), allowing themselves all kinds of eccentricities in the process (eg. the very disco Fantasy). The shadow of the Smiths is definitely looming over Weekend At Mine, while that of Blood Orange hovers over Summer Night, and that of Phoenix over Strangers. This proves that Juveniles may have been born on the wrong side of the Channel, but that they nonetheless are members of a family of French musicians who speak pop fluently and without the slightest accent. |
