Between Claudine Longet and Françoise Hardy, « the appropiately named Mélanie Pain has a voice mid way between yearning hope and failing desperation » (David Sheppard).
Singer of Villeneuve who's album «First Date » was released in 2005, noticed by Marc Collin, Mélanie recorded Teenage Kicks (The Undertones) and This is not a love song (PIL) for the first album of Nouvelle Vague. In duet with Camille then Phoebe, she represents Nouvelle Vague on stage since the very first show in Paris in may 2004. For the second album, Bande à part, Mélanie recorded Killing moon (Echo and the bunny man), Dance with me (Lords of the new church), Ever fallen in love (Buzzcocks) et Blue Monday (New Order). She also recorded exclusive tracks for i-tunes store : Confusion (New order) and Sweet & tender hooligan (The Smiths). Mélanie Pain is now working on her first album , french romantic pop songs flirting with folk americana.
Discographie
- 2006 - nouvelle vague "bande a part"
- 2005 - villeneuve "first date"
- 2004 - nouvelle vague "nouvelle vague"
- 2004 - villeneuve "graceland" (EP)
- 2003 - M83 "dead cities, red seas & lost ghosts"
Liens
As singer, songwriter, Marina’s predilection for music started very early: she learns piano at the age of 12 and writes her own songs at 17. But after the French Baccalauréat, she carries on her law studies and her dream to become a singer is pending for a while.
Everything will change for her after her meeting with Marc Collin, songwriter and producer. Marc will encourage her in the creating process and for Marina it will be a self revelation.
From this moment, Marina sink herself teeth into music and composition. Her personnal style becomes more and more recognizable among many others: on original melodies, a sensual and soft voice refers to various themes such as love, feelings, childhood.
Being the mother of two children, childhood is a very important subject to Marina’s eyes, sometimes just mentioned but also more explicit as it is the case on “Astral des Fées”, which is a real musical tale dedicated to children that Marina illustrated herself.
In 2004, Marc Collin, initiator of the successful project Nouvelle Vague, asks Marina to sing two tracks on the eponymous album: “A Forest” and “Sorry for Laughing”. Thus she also takes part to the Nouvelle Vague world tour, with Camille at that time.
The Nouvelle Vague experience gives another dimension to Marina’s carrer as a singer. The Japanese record label Rambling Records, charmed by her voice decides to release her first album in Japan: in March 2005, Acidulé sees the light of day in Japan. This first album gives an amused point of view on the world, with a feigned naivety, a sensual feminity, as it is the case on “Les Fleurs”. Acidulé is also a poetic travel (“Le Temps Elastique”) through which the listener can hear the irony of a disenchanted love (“Sur les Bords de la Seine”). Marina expresses all her feelings, her fragility and melancholy in songs like “Mon Centre de Gravité” or “Raplaplat”.
Acidulé is a very personnal record from which emerges a soft and dreamlike atmosphere. Marina original melodies are emphasized by Marc electronic arrangements and the music which is a mix between modern pop and bossa nova.
The release of Acidulé is shortly followed by the one of Cinéma Enchanté, a new project which is again the collaboration of Marina and Marc around an original idea: a collection of covers from the main themes of the French Cinema during the sixties.. Some melodies, such as “Amour , Amour” (soundtrack of the movie “Peau d’âne”) remained unforgettable but others were not popular (Agnès Varda’s “Sans toi” from the movie “Cléo de 5 à 7”). Cinéma Enchanté is a real tribute to this period, more acoustic than Acidulé with more brazilian vibes and guitar.
The sixities are a reccuring theme in Marina’s artistic universe as the video clip of “Eisbar” (from Nouvelle Vague second album “Bande à Part”) can testify. On “Bande à Part”, Marina records vocals on four tracks : “Eisbaer”, “Fade to Grey”, “Waves” and “O Pamela”. On stage she sings with Phoebe Killdeer, Mélanie Pain and Gérald Toto.
The French public will discover Acidulé in march 2007, and a limited edition with Cinéma Enchanté as a bonus CD will also be released.
A few dates:
- In 2002 : few gigs in Paris, "la clef", le "marilou's bar", le "Baiser salé"
- June 2004 : sings "A forest" on Nouvelle Vague's album and "sorry forlaughing".
- In 2005 : she sings on Nouvelle Vague tour all around the world, withCamille and then Phoebe
- March 2005 : release of "Acidulé" in Japan, soon in France next october
- March 2006 : release of "Cinema enchanté" in Japan, very soon in France
- In 2006 : sings "Fade to grey", "O pamela", "Waves" and "Eisbear" on Nouvelle Vague's second album "Bande à part", and she sings on stage withthe band all around the world.
Links
It all started with mother singing my sisters and I to sleep, on full moon nights the household just wasn´t the same, a certain wildness would transpire all of us and things would stay that way until the dawn cracked us clean again...
The dance classes at an early age determined the path I was to take later on. I was fascinated with the relationship between movements and sounds and I always felt that they communicated through a language I could understand.
Tom Waits got to me at the age of 8 and I´ve been a constant listener ever since.
People are my inspiration. They are a never ending source of emotions, feelings, reactions, disturbances and surprises. If you sit long enough you will always catch a moment, just like a photographer who´s caught a story, a thought in a snapshot.
I´m killdeering away... just like 'out in the shed' or 'out of his mind' when he´s had a few too many in the beautiful book 'The man who fell in love with the moon' by Tom Spanbauer. I think we all belong to that detached parallel world where anything can happen.
Influences: silence, Mr Jones who lives on the 4 ^th floor at n45, the lady from the bakery store, tall Juliet from Louisiana and everybody on the A list at 'Will Pass' driving School.
I describe moments I think I´d like to share, feelings portrayed so clearly when it´s obvious we try to hide them. There´s something about being shy, moments of pure delight, things we really shouldn´t talk about, a situation of despair...
There´s always something in people we miss, we just don´t see or look for it. I don't know it´s probably something we don´t want to recognise.
I´ve always admired people who can write and I have a fascination with words and lyrics, the way they are such obvious simple things and yet they become alive with complexity and full with feelings depending on the way you place them or order them and with which tone you pronounce or accentuate them. Words are alive as much as we are and they allow us to share and communicate our feelings in our own personal way which makes it so exciting and huge a world to explore.
Links
Gerald Toto projects an unparalleled voice: feline, sensuous, deliciously ambiguous, male and female in the same inflexion. This exceptional voice, unlike any other among the new singing voices of the French speaking world, naturally finds its kinship among the Brazilian songs, by its intimate unsettling tone. This knowledgeable experienced nonchalance is constantly harnessed in its delicious rippling, evoking now and then the Caetano Veloso's sweet tone.
This discreet congeniality is nothing of a surprise. That's because Gerald Toto's subtle music, West Indian from Paris , is undoubtedly wrought by its West Indian origins, but is far from the clichés of the contemporary West Indian music, frozen in its sunny folklore like never before. If Toto's music belongs without any doubt to a Creole aesthetics by its cross breeding, this is how it makes honey out of everything that's around, this is how it seizes all the genres which make today's popular music (Nu Soul, R'n'B, pop, jazz, folk, Caribbean music) in order to integrate them into a heterogeneous, hybrid universe, constantly wrought by the otherness but without any collision or tension – convinced that a fragile harmony will necessarily uprise from this cluster of disparate influences – that an ultra contemporary beauty is at work in this type of syncretic adventure.
It must be said that for Gerald, the notion of opening to the difference means much more than an esthetic principle; it is an authentic rule for life.
Author in 1997 of a first remarkable and remarked record, “The first days” issued at Warner stating immediately the fundamental laws of his universe (sensuality, swaying rhythmic turneries, soft enthralling ballads…); composer and artistic manager, in the same breath, of a first opus clefs of Faudel's discography (he is the author of the emblematic “I love you so much”). Gérald went on accumulating the most diverse experiences, indulging himself in a wicked pleasure of preferring the intricate ways to the beaten tracks of the music industry, the artistic and human experiences to the standardized career projects. During the past years, with a lot of talent and relish, from Smadj's electro-orientalising (enriching the ethnic grooves of resolutely jazzy vocal improvisations) to Marcel Kanche's, Lili Boniche's or Zora's very different and singular universes; he performed within all contexts, in the M's or jazz musician Roy Hargrove's openings; he recorded for the No Format labels with Lokua Kanza and Richard Bona, an amazingly fresh and inspired record, he went on buckling down to the elaboration of a musical inspired by the work of the African American film director and writer Melvin Van Peeble – Gérald Toto is today a complete artist who arrived to his full maturity.
Released in March, 2006, new album "Kitchenette" marks the return of Gerald Toto solo. This new complex seducing record, extremely refined in its making – is brilliant proof.
We can find in it pell-mell: languid ballads (“Par temps calme”, sublime opening song, poetic like a Gauguin's painting), others of a delicately spicy sensuality (“Tes dessous”), vivid Brétecher-like sketches, poetic and subtly political digressions (“No Man's Land”, “L'eau Martienne”) sensitive unsettlingly erotic portraits (“Rose ou Violet”, “Sèche”) – a whole amazingly varied range of songs, beating with delicately groovy rhythms, clad in sophisticated arrangements favouring the acoustic resonances (entwined guitars, flute, saxophone) and magnificently transfigured by the enthralling voice, angelic and hyper sexual in turn, of a Gérald Toto returning for good – at the peak of his artistry.
Discography
- 2006 - nouvelle vague « bande a part »
- 2006 - Kitchenette – V2
- 2004 - TOTO BONA LOKUA avec Richard Bona et Lokua Kanza
- 1998 - « les premiers jours » - WEA
Links
1993-1995 Artist signed to Remark Records with three singles ; « How Could I find Love », « Time For Eternity », and « Flesh And Fire », with a video for the single « Time for Eternity ».
1998-2000 Artist signed to Warner Records (WEA) with one album. Two singles with their videos came out for the songs “J’éfface et J’oublie” and “J’arrête de Fumer”.
Silja for the past four years has done different projects of all kinds. She has interpreted childrens’ songs for a children’s book out in France, as well as voices for T.V. adds, and for a movie that will be out in France January 2005. Silja has also completed four new songs with Marc Collin that you can listen to on http://listen.to/silja on the internet. The style is pop electro.