Rends-Toi + Cluzel
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About Rends-toi & Cluzel by David Sanson.
“As exemplified by Gainsbourg, «spoken-word», is one of the most effective ways to make French sound good, or even just «palatable» in «rock» idiom, in the broadest sense of the term. In this domain, however, it can be as tricky to free oneself from the influence of such a tutelary figure as to escape the easy route..
What strikes us when discovering the work of PLY, however, is both a density and a rawness of sound and meaning, a radical and singular approach, rubbing together language and music to articulate them through disarticulation, to unite them trough intercourse rather than marriage. This can be heard in both records, respectively made of 4 and 6 songs, the EP being a possible mirror version of the LP.
Like two facets of a symbiotic duo, to say the least… one perhaps a little sunnier and more bucolic than the other – traversed by sounds of nature, the rustling of cicadas or the chirping of crickets, extra small choirs and African kalimbas, the Cluzel EP was recorded during one summer in the Aveyron countryside (southern France).
This dense matter, this singularity, this sound that cannot be reduced to a single current undoubtedly result from the sum of influences as much as the extremely rich and cunningly polymorphic paths of Mathias Delplanque and Guillaume Ollendorff. The former grew up in Africa, studied at the Cergy Art School (near Paris) and simultaneously operated in the fields of sound creation, electroacoustic music and club scenes, sometimes under the «Lena» moniker. The latter, based in Berlin, has made two records as Tse (including La Ralentie, on which he sang texts by Henri Michaux and covered Einstürzende Neubauten), played with Colder, and published two essays on music (Berlin Sampler and Chaosphonies) under the Théo Lessour pseudonym, thus demonstrating an equal love for Berlin cabaret and Jamaican dub.
This is what can be found, either disjointed or disclosed, in these two records where, over a backdrop of a dark and spectral dub, both damp and cold, or urban environments reminiscent of the appeased but abrasive late Neubauten (Rends-toi), the suave and deep voice of Guillaume Ollendorff utters in a breath, a kind of clammy dread, a form of decadent poetry and cold-wave as close to Gainsbourg’s Hôtel particulier (especially the Rappelle-moi /Julie rock diptych) as to its possible role model, Des Esseintes in Huysman’s À rebours.
Both records are striking in their organic scope, in every sense of the term, as much in their music as in their lyrics – there are bodies and matter, flesh and tissues, in these sagacious and salacious texts, expressing desire and joy, dizziness and addiction, ecstasy and stupor. Two albums that could have been recorded on an obviously cult cargo between Ouagadougou and Berlin, whose tracks unfold like tiny and static journeys, as if one was reading through a devilishly addictive cosmic strip…”
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Rends-toi (LP)
A1.Le roi gouré / 2.Rappelle-moi / 3.Julie
B1.Rends-toi / 2.Trinklied / 3.Et puis…
Rends-toi was recorded and mixed in Nantes and La Boissière between February and August 2017.
Mathias Delplanque : Bass, electronics, various instruments, editing, mixing.
Guillaume Ollendorff : Lyrics, voices, noises, editing.
With Alice Dourlen aka Chicaloyoh (voice on Le roi gouré, Rappelle-moi and Rends-toi), Pierre Bouglé (drums on Rappelle-moi), and Anne-Laure Bourget (daf sample on Rappelle-moi).
Mastering : Norscq
Cluzel (CD)
1.Aquarium / 2.Coco / 3. Le Pays de l’alcool / 4. Sacristie
Cluzel was originally recorded in Mathias’s family house in Le Cluzel (Aveyron, France) in July 2016, then mixed and overdubbed in Nantes between 2016 and 2017.
Mathias Delplanque : Percussions, various instruments and noises, editing, mixing.
Guillaume Ollendorff : Lyrics, voices, noises, editing.
With Philippe Foch (daf sample on Aquarium), Anne-Laure Bourget (drums on Coco), and Geneviève Barillier, Maxence Flepp, Colyne Morange and Marion Thomas (voices on Le Pays de l’alcool).
Mastering : Norscq
