When I learned that the standard-bearer of Les T\u00eates Raides, a flagship group of the French alternative scene since the mid-1980s, was launching a new album, the enthusiasm clicked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But a dark cloud full of doubts appeared over my head when I read somewhere that this was an album that paid homage to the artist’s \u201cSlavic roots\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Did the interpreter of the captivating\u00a0Ginette<\/em>\u00a0go there with a felt support, even indirectly, for Putin’s barbarism in Ukraine?\u00a0After all, there are still some, on the left, to support it out of loyalty to communism, campism, and\/or primary anti-Americanism…<\/p>\n\n\n\n Quickly, I regained my enthusiasm when I learned that the 12 Russian poets mobilized for this project (Mayakovsky, Pasternak, Essenin, Akhmatova, Harms, Blok, Tsveta\u00efeva, Bunin, Voloshin, Khlebnikov, Zdanevich and Mandelstam) were translated by no other than Andr\u00e9 Markowicz.\u00a0Publisher and poet, the latter is also a translator, notably of Dostoyevsky, but it was as a great defender of the Ukrainian cause that I discovered him on his Facebook page, where he publishes luminous, literary, and captivating political chronicles.\u00a0To those who criticized him for participating in this project highlighting Russian poets after the Boutcha and Mariupol massacres, he moreover replied: “(…) the poets, the writers whom I translate and whom I love, they all, in one way or another, fought against the moloch of the Russian state,\u00a0whether it is the imperial, Soviet or Putinian state.\u00a0They have all, personally, been crushed by this State (\u2026).\u00a0Because there is, in this poetry, all the human fraternity, and all the indignation, and the beauty, and this fragility so powerful that it is stronger than anything (\u2026).\u00a0\u00bb<\/p>\n\n\n\n And it is true that the deep and incantatory voice of Christian Olivier is perfectly suited to this exercise. Indeed, the one who sang Pr\u00e9vert with Yolande Moreau on an album released in 2017 plunges us here into the heart of the Russian soul.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If the first extract\u00a0Le \u00e7a est le \u00e7a<\/em>\u00a0from the album of the same name is inspired by the verses of the satirical poet and master of the absurd Daniil Harms, the conceptual work, of music by Olivier, immerses us in an atmosphere very more tragic, which sways between the pre-revolutionary euphoria of bright tomorrows and the fear of losing one’s skin.\u00a0Very well rendered in\u00a0What is beautiful what elevates, for example<\/p>\n\n\n\n Moreover, the titles alone are very evocative of the general atmosphere: \u201cThe revolution in the heart\u201d, \u201cThe ax\u201d (magnificent clip), \u201cIn the blaze of snow\u201d, \u201cAt the bottom of hell\u201d , \u201cOrder No. 1 to the army of art\u201d, etc.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Quite far from the festive-melancholy atmosphere and the musette circus of T\u00eates Raides to which fans are accustomed, this album acts as a “cinema for the blind” with its revolutionary atmosphere where words are magnified by the spoken\/sung voice of Olivier an atmosphere that is both tense and feverish: metal guitars, vintage piano, accordion, electro, in a production signed \u00c9dith Fambuena (Bashung, Higelin, Miossec\u2026).\u00a0Excuse me a bit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Born 4 years ago, so before the Ukrainian invasion of February 2022, this project also includes drawings and a 40-page booklet.\u00a0This universe has also, and above all perhaps, been designed for the stage with musicians, lighting, and film extracts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Never mind, you can enjoy it very well at home, safe from bombs, light off, vodka in hand and\u2026 gun in sight.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When I learned that the standard-bearer of Les T\u00eates Raides, a flagship group of the French alternative scene since the mid-1980s, was launching a new album, the enthusiasm clicked. But a dark cloud full of doubts appeared over my head when I read somewhere that this was an album that paid homage to the artist’s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":77,"featured_media":94981,"menu_order":0,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"generale":[],"genre":[8114],"annee":[8178],"pays":[],"label":[],"class_list":["post-94998","records","type-records","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-non-classifiee","genre-chanson-francophone-en","annee-8178"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n