(en français en bas de page)
CLICK HERE FOR ETIENNE’S NEXT SHOWS
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IVAN SMAGGHE:”Etienne Jaumet has recorded with just about everyone across the French, international and indie alt folk world. He has collaborated with artists including The Moldy Peaches, Daniel Johnston, Lou Barlow, Adam Green and Herman Dune. He has recorded six albums with his two bands, Flop and the Married Monk, the latter of which is still active.
For three years, Etienne and I both used a studio in the same building. He was making music that was probably closer to my heart than the music I was making. In an ideal world, this could have been the beginning of something. In the real world, all we did is exchange a “hello” in passing.
At the time, I was making some heavy electronic, ebm-influenced and now slightly dated music that I was not entirely happy with. I was also running a label in Paris, which was fine, but the sounds I kept hearing coming from the studio next door attracted me far more than my own music.
It was like Carpenter locked in the basement. There was a cacophony of crazy and exciting sounds, everything ranging from drums, synths and moogs to hi-hats. I finally approached Etienne and asked him about it. He told me it was a small project he was working on with the drummer Neman from Herman Dune whom he’d met while sharing a rehearsal studio. They called themselves Zombie Zombie. I still have the demo CDr he gave me. I thought it was kind of cool but didn‘t do anything more with it.
The person who did do more is Gilbert, the boss at Versatile. He signed the band and what followed was their first album titled A Land for Renegades. Rough Trade voted it among the Top 10 best albums of 2008, and it sold more than 500 copies in their shops. Zombie Zombie toured England, with gigs based on pure energy. It was an amazing chance for both Etienne and Neman to let down their inhibitions. Though translating the raw feeling of the live shows on a recording might have seemed like a impossible task, A Land for Renegades more than managed it.
So I watched Etienne, the indie nerd from next door, become the electronic hype of the day. I think he was pretty surprised, too, though he never lost his cool. I can’t see Etienne ever becoming big-headed, flash success or not.
But for this hard-working musician, Zombie Zombie wasn’t enough. As a matter of fact, Etienne has always worked a lot, has recorded with just about everyone across the French, international and indie alt folk world. He has collaborated with artists including The Moldy Peaches, Daniel Johnston, Lou Barlow, Adam Green and Herman Dune. He has recorded six albums with his two bands, Flop and the Married Monk, the latter of which is still active. So as Neman was away on tour a lot, the machines were beckoning to Etienne.
After some work with Cosmo Vitelli (Etienne also appeared on the first I’m a Cliche compilation), Etienne released “repeat again after me” on Versatile under his own name. Upon its release, I did not connect Etienne with Etienne. This new Etienne was like a deep house geek, not my old neighbor, the post-folk maestro. “repeat again after me” sounded like Detroit-on-Seine and I was pretty amazed that it came from someone who still considered himself a total stranger to the “techno world.” What I like about Etienne−Etienne Jaumet, what a name! who could come up with a better one!−is that he doesn’t try to fit in. And anyway, his music does the work for him.
Etienne’s next album Night Music followed in the footsteps of Zombie Zombie. A 4-minute track and a 22-minute track. Loops and hypnotism are still at the core. But now at the essence I see Steve Reich rather than Carpenter. Perhaps more mental and less physical, but still spontaneous. I find it very hard to talk about records, I’m not sure it’s even useful, but this one truly shows the mind of its creator. That is rare enough to be mentioned.
Some people will say that Etienne is a fanatic. Fanatic about free jazz and new wave (the geek factor). Fanatic about musical toys since he collects cheap synths (the geek factor, part 2). But like me at the time, they’re missing something quite essential: the difference between a nerd/geek and a guy who simply never loses his enthusiasm.
Seeing Etienne on stage is far cry from watching a nerd. Etienne turns into a fanatic, almost in a religious way, a man possessed by music. Likewise, this album is not a geek techno record. Etienne doesn’t know much about the codes and rules of the house and techno world that some people think are so important. He’s not interested. And the process that brought an artist inspired by Steve Reich to make a Carl Craig-produced record was natural, not imposed.
For years, Gilbert had tried to convince Carl Craig to do some work for him. He never succeeded. But to both Gilbert’s and Etienne’s amazement, Carl Craig instantly accepted to produce this album. It may look like the ultimate safe bet, Carl Craig being one of the very few unshakable pillars in modern electronic music-making, but Carl did a lot more than simply mix the album. He based his work on a common musical culture. Long talks with Etienne about Liaisons Dangereuses proved once again that Craig is the most European of all the Detroit producers. He ripped the heart of the record to bring it to its full electronic and psychedelic life. Without adding anything but magic, Carl Craig took what Night Music already was and enhanced it.
So there we are. By writing this bio of Etienne, I suppose that la boucle est bouclée, that we’ve come full circle. I don’t know what the moral of the story is, but in the end I’ve enjoyed talking about Etienne. After all, a beautiful story is always a beautiful story.” Ivan Smagghe
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Since “Night Music”, Etienne has been recording, playing or remixing, all over the world, solo and also with Zombie Zombie , (including their Potemkine soundtrack project) , Emmanuelle Parrenin , Richard Pinhas , Turzi, The Big Cruch Theory, Alan Howarth , Sonny Simmons , Versatile Noise Troopers (Gilb’R, I:Cube, Joakim & Etienne Jaumet), Danton Eeprom, Ilhan Ersahin, François and The Atlas Mountains, Luke Abbott, Discodeine, ARP, Man & Man, Yuksek, Gianluca Petrella, Cosmic Control, Le Cabaret Contemporain (The John Cage Project), Gilbert Artman & Philippe Bolliet, Part Company…
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Contact booking: pascal@julietippex.com
Etienne is available for / Etienne est dispo pour:
- live solo shows
- dj sets
- live in duet with Richard Pinhas
- live with Versatile Noise Troopers (Gilb’R, I:Cube, Joakim & Etienne Jaumet),
- live “The John Cage Project” with Ensemble Le Cabaret Contemporain
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NEW EP BY ETIENNE, “SATORI” (Nov 2011)
Etienne Jaumet – Satori EP (incl Jon Convex remix) by Versatile Records
1 – Satori
2 – Satori (Jon Convex remix)
Having finished recording the new Zombie Zombie album (out : april 2012), Etienne Jaumet leaves temporarily the duo to record a piece dark disco and synth wave : Satori. On B side, Jon Convex, newcomer on the Dubstep / UK Garage field and signed on Martyn’s label, delivers the goods in a clearly club oriented version.
“super etienne! ” Superpitcher
“Love 5/5” James Holden
“always love mr. jaumet’s work and this is no exception. 10/10. remix is tip top too ” Optimo
“nice and deep original” Melon
Also played by Seth Troxler, Richie Hawtin, Agoria, MANDY, DJ T, Tim Sweeney, Paul Woolford, Tiefshwarz and more…
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ETIENNE JAUMET & RICHARD PINHAS
Photos by Philippe Lebruman
One of the French 70s legend, Pinhas has been playing guitar and synths with his band HELDON but also with Magma or Pascal Comelade, as well as collaborations with authors Gilles Deleuze, Norman Spinrad or Maurice Dantec.
Influenced by the work of Robert Fripp and Brian Eno, the music of Richard Pinhas and Heldon is sui generis and innovative and has in its turn greatly influenced the field of electronic rock.
Etienne and Richard met recently and decided to play together, united despite the age difference by their love for electronic and cosmic music – “Through the mists of time”!
Hear Etienne Jaumet & Richard Pinhas’ rehearsal (2011). Recording is scheduled in November 2011
MMM répétition by Richard Pinhas
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VIDEO :
A brillant show at MOFO 2011
Dancity Festival, Umbria, Italy, 2010
Music for CSI : Miami!!
Video by www.the-drone.com
In October 2011 Etienne was invited by Elektricity Festival in Reims, FR to play 5 different shows in 5 nights in 5 different venues and line-up.
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DISCOGRAPHY:
“Repeat after me” (EP / 2 tracks)
Versatile Records, 2007 – VER054
“Night Music” (LP / CD)
Versatile Records, 2009 – VERLP021 VERCD021. Produced by Carl Craig
“Entropy” (EP)
Versatile Records, 2009 – VER064
“Satori” (EP)
Versatile Records, 2011
Lates collaboration: Gilbert Artman, Philippe Bolliet, Etienne Jaumet: “Zomlard” for the album “Veterans of the French Underground Meet la Jeune-Garde” (various artists, Les Zut-O-Pistes, 2011)
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RADIO:
Etienne Jaumet dans Movimento par Jeanne-Martine Vacher, France Culture, 2011
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PRESS:
One of the finest recent albums of its kosmische kind
In the grand tradition of the proggy excess that was rife 30-or-so years ago, For Falling Asleep – the first track of the five on this album – lasts 20 minutes and 25 seconds. It builds, almost imperceptibly, into a repetitious exploration of space that’s worthy of synth masters like Steve Hillage or German trance-rock icons Ash Ra Tempel. Even the jazz sax that arrives about halfway through reveals itself tastefully, and when it winds down for a final few minutes of deep space drone mixed with delicate harp (played by Emmanuelle Parrenin, a French folk singer who could be considered that nation’s answer to Vashti Bunyan), you feel like you’ve been spirited away to a peculiar but idyllic dimension.
While the remainder of the disc features slightly more bite-sized numbers, the general commitment to lush, nocturnal machine music remains in place throughout. Jaumet has been aided here by Carl Craig, one of the most important figures in Detroit techno and whose aesthetic has tended more towards the spacious and intellectual end of the genre, rather than its harsh and pounding side. His role was that of mixer and producer, so we the listeners can only speculate on precisely what effect his handiwork had – certainly, though, Night Music is a sonic triumph, each drum machine thump and vintage sequencer sounding like they don’t have a hair out of place. It is one of the finest examples of the revival of the ‘kosmische’ micro-genre of recent times, up there with Lindstrøm’s acclaimed 2008 album Where You Go I Go Too. BBC
Etienne Jaumet, “l’homme aux synthé” est célébré par Le Monde (oct 2011) :
A revelation, and a fine one at that
If only Etienne Jaumet had been around when Ridley Scott was looking for a musical arranger for Blade Runner. At a whopping 20 minutes, Night Music’s opener “For Falling Asleep” conjures an image of a forbidding metallic metropolis, basked in neon while something sinister effervesces and billows out like steam from the city’s manholes. Apart from the synths gurgling beneath a mist of Middle Eastern influence, there’s a forlorn sax, played by Jaumet himself, that provides the key brushstroke to a neo-noir sound epic. However, it wouldn’t do for Jaumet, known as one-half of Parisian dance duo Zombie Zombie, to sound like a dead ringer of Vangelis. Rather than inflate “For Falling Asleep” with the kind of wounded romanticism of the Greek composer’s “Damask Rose”, say, Jaumet has cogitated the idea of staring into the abyss with what sounds like the kind of high-pitched vocal tremors that accompanied the ape scene in 2001: A Space Odyssey . Still, buried in this haunting landscape is the flickering ember of Emmanuelle Parrenin’s harp, a touch at once diaphanous and sullen.
“For Falling Asleep” sounds as much like Brian Eno and Silver Apples as it does Pharoah Sanders. And even though it resembles little of what Jaumet has done before, it is everything you’d expect this unshakeable analogue enthusiast, who considers his TR-808 and RE-201 close companions, to do. Jaumet’s affection for the ‘70s, something evident from Zombie Zombie’s krautrock-specked disco electro, extends to his making “For Falling Asleep” an entire A side of Night Music, with the remaining four tracks on the flipside. Still, with the help of unlikely collaborator Carl Craig, a Detroit producer, Night Music sounds as unified as a clutch of consecutive scenes of a movie.
As “For Falling Asleep” suggests, the album is hardly nightclub material. Jaumet’s Teutonic disco underpinnings are limited to “Mental Vortex” and “Entropy”. But with both tracks’ Steve Reich-inspired monotony comes a sizeable coat of Teflon. By contrast, “Through the Strata” champions the brooding Arabic-inflected mien of the album opener. With its faint echoes of a sullen Al’meh, “Through the Strata” sounds like a makeshift Moroccan bazaar set up within a manufacturing plant. It could be a potent symbol of the emasculation of an ancient culture for a contemporary one or the dogged persistence of the former in spite of the hegemony of the latter. If instrumental music is capable of strong narrative, then here is some irrevocable proof.
“At the Crack of Dawn”, meanwhile, sounds like the sonic version of retrofitting in terms of the way it summons an image of an Arabic cityscape inhabited by creatures that travel by Seeder Ramships. Here, layers of filtered saxophone, assuming the place of a mjwez or Algerian mizwid, strain over the steady march of droning synths and a sprinkling of celestial effects. The track’s repetitive though surprisingly untiring nature—one motif is recycled over and again for its near-five minute duration—suggests a meditative quality not unlike an Islamic call to prayer. It is this kind of subtlety of mood, wedded to vivid evocation, that furnishes Night Music with a sophistication very much absent from Zombie Zombie’s industrial proto-electronica.
Night Music is something that you would expect to be a side project given that Zombie Zombie is still very much on the go. Yet it gives some critics, notably Johnny Dee of The Guardian, some pause when thinking that all musical tangents are somehow cursed, being self-indulgent at their best and mere flotsam at their worst. For Night Music is a revelation, and a fine one at that. Estella Hung, http://www.popmatters.com
Extract from an interview with Inbox byLulu McAllister:
XLR8R’s Inbox touches base with jovial French tech-house producer Etienne Jaumet, who has just come back from sharing the deck with Dirty Soundsystem on a Cosmic Cruise around an artificial lake in Paris. Jaumet gushes about Carl Craig, compares himself to crayon colors, eats too fast… Jaumet’s Night Music is out now on Domino.
XLR8R: What’s the weirdest story you have ever heard about yourself?
Etienne Jaumet: People always imagine that I need to take drugs all day long to make my music… hahahaha!
Does the mood you’re in effect the music you choose to play, or does the music you hear effect the mood you’re in?
I don’t control myself very well, and don’t think too much. I don’t have an analytic approach to music; I just love to lose myself in the sensations and the emotions given by the music. The music feeds me.
What was your favorite song when you were 15?
“10:15 Saturday Night” by The Cure.
If you could spend an hour in any city right now, which would you choose?
Benares, India.
How would you describe your sense of style?
Old-fashioned modernist! Or post-traditionalist, if you prefer.
What was it like working with Carl Craig?
He don’t need anybody! He only does what he wants to. He knew so well the music and the sound! He’s a master!
What did you always get in trouble for when you were little?
Eating too fast. It’s still the same.
Which other artist would you like to work with next?
Brian Eno.
© Caroline Andrieu – www.untitled-07.com
BIO EN FRANCAIS:
ETIENNE JAUMET a commencé sa carrière de musicien dans les années 90 avec Flop et toute l’équipe des Disques Bien et le groupe Married Monk. Mais c’est en devenant “l’homme aux synthés analogiques” de Zombie Zombie qu’il se révèle. Avec Cosmic Neman (également batteur de Herman Dune), Zombie Zombie sort deux albums influencés autant par le kraut-rock experimental des années 70s que l’avant-garde newyorkaise à la Suicide et enchaine des dizaines de concerts dans le monde; Rough Trade nomme leur “A Land for Renegades” disque de l’année.
Le premier album solo d’Etienne, “Night Music”, (Versatile 2009), est mixé par Carl Craig et apporte à Etienne la consécration. Etienne a déjà mis en transe des dizaines de scènes européennes de Cork à Riga.
Depuis “Night Music”, Etienne a enregistré, joué ou remixé en solo ou avec Zombie Zombie , (ainsi que leur cinemix Potemkine) , Emmanuelle Parrenin , Richard Pinhas , Turzi, The Big Cruch Theory, Alan Howarth , Sonny Simmons , Versatile Noise Troopers (Gilb’R, I:Cube, Joakim & Etienne Jaumet), Danton Eeprom, Ilhan Ersahin, François and The Atlas Mountains, Luke Abbott, Discodeine, ARP, Man & Man, Yuksek, Gianluca Petrella, Cosmic Control, Le Cabaret Contemporain…
Dans la foulée des aventures cosmiques made in France signées Joakim, Turzi ou Krikor, on recense également celles d’Étienne Jaumet, moitié du duo électro-krautrock Zombie Zombie, qui ose un album-concept classieux et personnel pour son premier effort solo. L’illuminé y exprime toute sa tendresse (voire son fétichisme) pour la poésie naïve et les échafaudages alambiqués des sorciers électroniques allemands des années 70 tels que Klaus Schulze ou Manuel Göttsching. Comme pour coller à la tradition des albums planants de l’époque, Night Music s’ouvre sur “For Falling Asleep”, une pièce de vingt minutes qui entremêle volutes analogiques, chœurs façon Gorecki pour 2001, Odyssée de l’espace et strates d’échos à la Terry Riley, avant de s’éteindre sur quelques frôlements de harpe. En face B, Jaumet enchaîne une série de vignettes tout aussi crépusculaires et hypnotiques, dont la sublime “At The Crack Of Dawn” sur laquelle il couche son saxophone pour le plus bel effet. Produit très adéquatement par Carl Craig, Night Music est une œuvre d’esthète, sincère et intimiste, rétro mais contemporaine, qui n’est pas destinée à briller de mille feux dans l’instant mais à durer dans le temps. (Thomas Corlin – Tsugi)