Ondioline 

Animal anonymous

There are great demo songs in my new keyboard. When I don't know what to play, I listen to these pre-recorded songs. It gives me a lot of inspiration.

I think of the demo songs musicians. They have a worldwide distribution for the music they made: the songs are travelling in a keyboard, instead of a CD. You have to buy the keyboard if you love the demo song, it is expensive. I am wondering if compilations of demo synths songs do already exist. It has a real and interesting history.

Jean-Jacques Perrey was a demo musician, he used to work for Jenny's Ondioline. We know him. But who are the others? And why do they stay anonymous?

The green door

First was a sexual fantasy written by the GI's during the Korea war, before getting an underground circulation amongst the beatnicks. It turned to a song sung by Jim Lowe, which was number 1 during 3 weeks in 1956. The X movie was shot in 1972 by the Mitchell brothers, in their San Francisco O'Farrel theatre, with the 20 years old Marylin "ivory snow" Chambers.

I would love to do a cover version of this song (thanks to the Cramps and sorry for my french accent). There is always something happening behind the green door...There are many doors, houses, windows, in my songs. But it will be the first time that the door is coloured. In fact, the green door is pink; but a pink door which is green is more mysterious.

TO

TO is a poetry magazine I was thinking about the last year, when we met in Paris with Noura Wedell, a New York friend who's a philosopher, a poet, a writer. We went to see a movie at MK2 Stalingrad, a japanese movie by Naomi Kawase. Then we sat in a bar and talked about TO, a bi/poly/lingual poetry magazine.

Now, the issue one is about to be printed, the next week. I wonder what will happen. Oh, I know what will happen: we will launch it on 17th july; some poets will read and we will have a drink. And then, the real fight will start, trying to find bookshops, make money. Why doing a poetry magazine today? I think that the answer will come out while doing it.

La porte verte 

Here comes the porno king!

Katerine phoned, asking me to come and bring Mayumi, Kahimi and other friends with, to the premiere of his premier long metrage, "La Peau de cochon". His title evokes the Balzac's book, "La Peau de chagrin", in which the hero's eponym talisman is getting smaller and smaller and eventually vanishes, like his better days. About 40 people showed up in this new and cute cinema in Pantin. Dominique A was also in the room.

Katerine's movie, shot in DV, is composed with 12 shorts, most of them are hilarious. A young writer's talking about his novel at a garden party: an army of turkeys is trained to invade the Chiapas; Dominique A plays a song from his first "album", a tape recorded in 1981 at the age of 12, a beautiful song about drawers for bad memories; a child shows an incredible drawing made of different portraits of her mother: dressed, naked, her organs map, skeleton, mummy; a diaporama made by switching on / off the room's light, with a moving guy wearing underwear.

The sketch I preferred is the one in which Katerine is telling exactly the same story her daughter told him in a train, a story about helicopters, police and idiot friends. He's using the same words, attitudes, onomatopoeias as the little girl. Eventually we find out that he's walking alone along the railway line near the house where he grew up. This is intense, moving and poetic.

All of it was funny, funny dark, sometimes rude, and not for fans only. But at the end, the camera moved too fast for our morning stomachs. We felt nauseous and decided to have a walk. We went to the Parc de la Villette, and visited a small bamboo forest, near a sound sculpture. In a cafe bar near la Cite de la Musique, we welcomed a friend who recently bought an expensive film copy of "Behind the green door". I shouted at him: here comes the porno king!

Palme aux Oeufs d'Or

Catherine Hardwicke's "Thirteen" and Gus Van Sant's "Elephant". I had a very bad impression about "Elephant", after having watched "Thirteen" first: why this movie? Where is the ethic? I only see an aesthetic.

The best metaphysical exercises have always been achieved by aesthetes. To stretch time like Van Sant does before the massacre, gives a strange depth to the shallow signs of life (walk, talk, eat, take pictures, gossip, vomit).

Metaphysic is like "a jolie femme": she may become interested if you're pretending you're not. You only reach the goal "en passant". "Elephant" seems to reach a metaphysical goal. By chance?

Now, Columbine is linked up with two "Palme d'Or" in Cannes. "Palme d'Or" is also "Poule aux Oeufs d'Or". Question: is it ethic for an artist to use real people's drama as a "material"? I also do that in my new album...

The Art of Tomorrow 

Pet portrait

I met Anne Laplantine and her boyfriend Xavier in the street, as I was walking down Montmartre, just before entering my bank le Credit Lyonnais, and bawling out the employee who wants me to pay 200 euros for the bank ordinary free service.

I sometimes get terribly angry. The last time was a few months ago, when I broke my left arch over the eyebrows at 4 AM in my father's house, as I was searching for the pipi room. Florence almost fainted when I switched on the light, when she saw my face covered with blood.

I was furax cos she became too sick for helping me. One hour later I got terribly angry in the hospital. The doctor, after having done his haute couture job, vanished without having talked with me. I opened all the doors until I eventually found her sitting amongst the nurses. I applauded and shouted the louder I can "bravo, very good job, excellent contact".

Anne, Xavier, some of their friends and I went to "Le Palais de Tokyo" for the Martin Creed concert. A concert in which the singer sings a song that starts at 1 and ends at 100 cannot be wrong. Cannot fake feelings. Some of the lyrics are about words letters. It's a difficult question, to write lyrics in 2004; if it's becoming too hard...

Let's become a wildlife or a pet portrait painter.

These songs

When I met the french producer Marc Collin, thanks to Narumi Omori at the "Le Book" party yesterday, we talked about Apollinaire's "Poemes a Lou". He told me that he owns a 1986 rare cassette, released by the label Crepuscule (my publisher a few years ago), a cassette with Marie Trintignant reciting these wonderful poems.

Marie Trintignant and her father Jean-Louis did a "Poemes a Lou" spectacle a few years ago. It sounds like Gainsbourg and his daughter Charlotte, when they recorded "Lemon Incest". Jean-Louis is on stage (Theatre de la Madeleine) right now, reciting "Poemes a Lou" all alone. I think it's until the end of july 2004.

I asked Marc why he did this new album called "Nouvelle Vague", cover versions of 80's tracks played bossa and loungecore. He had this answer: because these songs are not songs from the eighties. These songs are great songs (XTC "Making plans for Nigel", for instance). Having been kidnapped by a specific time, these songs are timeless.

Her door is open
The sun is getting out
Like a pale mouse

It's not the man
She's waiting for
But the grey wind

Nestalgia 

Pretty Baby Boom

From one shot to another, Susan Eldridge can whether look like Brooke Shields in "Pretty Baby" or become one of the sexiest woman on earth. I have never seen that before, apart in Kahimi Karie, who also "carries" this mystery.

I remember hitchhiking with Kahimi and her friend Mayumi in the summer 2000, for watching the total eclipse in Normandy. The woman who stopped asked Kahimi "to sit on her mother's knees". Her mother was 5 years younger than her!

Thinking about these two women, I can imagine that something like a trauma happened in their childhood. Face and mind (I don't know for Susan Eldridge) have crystalized at a very young age. Beauty has been forever trapped in childhood.

I think that every man is sensitive to it. In certain angles, the woman looks like a child, in other angles, she can be extremely hot. I would call their very special beauty the "nestalgia", nostalgia of the primitive nest.

Meltdown London

Sparks played "Kimono my House" a la mode 1974, and "Lil' Beethoven" a la mode 2004. Two different shows, two different stage settings. It was worth crossing the ocean(s) to be part of this journey. For the first time since I met Momus, I felt close to other musicians.

"Lil' Beethoven" was unbelievable; I was moved like a child. Russel Mael wasn't expecting a standing ovation. He looked like drunk and he couldn't leave the stage. This wasn't a concert, this was an experience! Here is what NME online said the day after the show:

"The ambition, grandeur and wit made the Pet Shops look paltry: and it was all achieved with brains, not budget. A standing ovation greeted the finale of an epic night. "Bravo!" was spelt out onscreen; no-one argued. For fans old and new, the spectacular Sparks flew."

Oradour 

Down in the park

Today, our prime minister Raffarin is visiting Oradour-sur-Glane, with a delegation of Alsatians, 60 years after the massacre of 642 civils by the SS division "das Reich" (10th june 1944). 14 young Alsatians belonged to this division. Due to a 1942 german law, every Alsatian born between 1920 and 1924 was enlisted; the 130 000 Alsatians who were forced to enter the Wehrmacht were called after the war, "Malgre-Nous". Many of them died on the russian front, or in the russian camp of Tambov. 10 000 of them escaped.

I have met and interviewed one "Malgre-Nous", Pierre Seel, in march 2001. He was an old gay man, a sexual habit which wasn't a nazi ideal. Seel was the son of a famous baker in the city of Mulhouse. In the same park where I first kissed my girlfriend, square Steinbach, he had his watch stolen, a few months before WWII. He went to the police station and was immediately suspected of being gay. He was 16 years old.

This park was at this time, the meeting place for the gay crowd, indeed. The zealous french officer was doing a list of every suspected gay man in Mulhouse. This list was a free gift for the nazis, when they started to command the city in 1939.

The young Pierre Seel was arrested and questioned for hours, repeatedly, and then tortured during 13 days and 13 nights. The nazis sent him to the alsatian camp of Shirmeck. In this camp, he witnessed the assassination of his boyfriend, Jo. He was put a bucket on his head, and the SS released their trained dogs, who teared him up to death.

Pierre Seel wrote a book about his life. About the difficulties of being recognized as a victim of the nazi persecutions against the gay people, after the war. A book about his private difficulties. He tried to become straight after the war, getting married, having children... Then getting divorced and going back to his real self. I will listen again to the interview I did with him on a tape recorder, 3 years ago, and put it here.

- Were you more feminine than the other boys at school?

- When I was studying at "L'Ecole des Freres" in Mulhouse, there was sort of a distrust towards me. As I say in my book, my classmates put dead birds in my stand, so that my screams drew punishments towards me. I couldn't adopt the boyish "football" mentality, that was impossible.
Hopefully, I had a young friend who was like me.

- Do you think that the nazis wanted to make a "real man" of you by sending you to the war?

- When they sent me to the Shirmeck camp, it was a punishment. They wanted to cure my homosexuality. Hitler wrote that his best wish was to create "a man for the war". But war doesn't make a man of you. I was in Russia and Poland: war showed me things that I shouldn't have seen, ever. I am still having nightmares. War puts men in front of corpses and unbearable distresses. When you're coming back, you're mentally broken and physically sick.

These sufferings had a sexual consequence: the proximity of death killed all desire. I experienced it during my war years: I didn't have sex at all, I didn't want to. I was feeling no attraction towards my companions. I had no hard-on on the front. Nevertheless, I was surrounded by beautiful young soldiers. I have never been surrounded by so many beautiful boys since the war. I have to add that it was impossible to get rid of the group. My catholic faith was my only help during these years. Faith changed me, more than war did.

Giving the symbols a chance

"Le Bleu des Origines", Philippe Garrel. A B/W movie, one hour long, silent, with Nico, Zouzou, Garrel himself. The movie starts with shots of Nico standing on the top of the Opera, near the statues. By day, by night. She is a goddess amongst other gods. Nico is often filmed in this environment, statues, columns, giant stone stairs.

Zouzou is more human. She shows an old photographs album of her family to Nico. Nico cries many times when alone, but she smiles when she's hanging out with Zouzou. Zouzou sleeps, smokes, dreams, moves. Nico is like a statue, which can smile. As usual, Garrel is the most brilliant film maker, when he shoots close-up portraits of women.

Garrel shoots pain, it's what we can also see in "Les Hautes Solitudes" or "La Cicatrice interieure". Speaking with a friend after the film, I said that Garrel is filming a taboo: the suffering with no words, without hope, with no relief. It has something to do with the end of Utopia. It also has something to do with the search of oneself, the only risk in human life.

Paris India 

Doctor Tooginlove, coincoin-mag 

Japanese lover

Here is my page on coincoin-mag, as Doctor Tooginlove. I'm giving ad-vices about love and sexual life (courrier du Coeur, courrier du Cul). This first column is about should-i-accept-or-not-to-be-covered-with-chocolate-by-my-lover. Doc's answer is yes: chocolate is full of good elements for girls skin.

http://www.coincoin-mag.com/column/tooginlove/001/index.html

Marseille, 1994 

Life in a bag

It's been 10 years that I bought my GEM S2 workstation, an italian keyboard, in Marseille. I was lost in a music store near La Canebiere with my brother Julien, when he said: these sounds fit with your spirit. My spirit was more Gem-oriented than Roland or Korg-oriented.

I should have moved to computer music for years, and for years I didn't. Working with workstation is easy and intuitive. You don't need to know how does a computer work, you only have few choices. Like a "contrainte" in poetry, you choose to not have the widest choice.

Yamaha Motif ES 6 seems to be a good device for me. I went to a Pigalle store near my house, "Home Studio". I can't go to "Star's music" again and see the employee's face, he will kill me if I ask him to get headphones again.

I cannot write new music with the same old sounds. Since the beginning, sounds determined my songs, it is music made by sounds. Each sound carries a specific atmosphere and imagination follows the path. Being an electronic musician means being made by the sounds we make.

random veneziano 

Venetian blinds

Hypo's new album is, will be, for many listeners, a collection of cheap keyboards sounds and electronic bricolages. It's diminishing the artist's work. These listeners are blind.

V.R.P.

When I was selling appartments in the late eighties, my boss used to tell me that I was my own business. I had to consider that the real estate agency was nothing but a free office.

In fact it was an ideal to reach, it wasn't happening. Mostly, I was selling appartments that the company owned, not my own portfolio. It meant, a 20 per cent commission instead of a 40 per cent. But I could make a living, spare money, buy my first Korg Poly 800 II.

The artist, using his record label as a free office and a network, is doing exactly the same. He has a lot of work to do by himself. He is what I was in the real estate business, a V.R.P. (voyageur, representant, placier), something between a travelling representative, a showman and a pedagogue, selling his remedies in a covered wagon.

Already the house

We have few friends;
We don't see most of them very often.
They are busy with their occupations,
Their time table is well filled,

In this world where the house isn't given,
Where it is necessary to go to cut the beams wood in the forest,
Collect the cement sand in the gravel pit,
And the rain which is streaming down the roof

In big barrels - that's all rubish,
The house is already there, it's not to be built.
What is necessary
Is to clear the entrance path.

minimum rnr 

Rouflaquettes

A new magazine about rock'nroll culture, Minimum Rock'n Roll.
Issue 1 is about hair, rouflaquettes, poils.
I wrote a short story called "Frange", about a hairy tower.
Illustration by frau Toog.

http://minimumrocknroll.free.fr/mail.htm

my best friends (by toog) 

The swimmer

I kicked the habit after 24 years, without having "decided" to stop smoking. How is it possible?

The method I used is very simple. First I decided to go swimming 2 times a week. The first day, I swam 45 minutes with no stop. I was breathless. The next time, I decided that I would go to swim at 6 PM. For freeing my breath, I stopped smoking at 2 PM. At 8 PM, after my 45 minutes swimming-with-no-stop achievement, I was feeling better. I decided to not celebrate this small victory with a cigarette and did a long walk instead. Then straight to bed.

The day after, at 10 AM, the most poignant screams of addiction were already dumb. I decided that I would not call her back.

Four months later, I still have the feeling, some mornings, to have smoked tons of cigarettes the last night. And it's hard to follow the 2 times a week swimming program. This is my method, it's free, cheap and it works. It's not a method you choose because you want to stop smoking, it's a method you choose because you want to become a swimmer.

Body in excess

Before the screen I had hands to make a mouth to speak a body to love since the screen I only have my eyes and fingers all the rest is body in excess.

la cicatrice interieure 

Nico's powder

My friend Olivier Pierre invited me to the launch of Philippe Garrel's retrospective, Cinematheque Palais de Chaillot. A few weeks after Jean Rouch's hommage. Jean Rouch / Garrel, both in search of the primitive, inside / outside, the danger, taboo, dance, transe. Philippe Garrel was there, with his incredible chevelure grise. I didn't see his son Louis, but his father Maurice was there too.

I also saw Leos Carax and spoke briefly with him about our common friend Shazna. Carax is a very petit homme. It's hard to believe that he built a Pont Neuf in the south of France. I also saw F.J. Ossang, who directed a movie with Joe Strummer, "Mister Chance" (he's also writing for Minimum Rock'n'roll magazine). Actors Christine Boisson and Emmanuelle Riva were there for the first movie of the retrospective, "Liberte, la nuit" (1983).

Being not distracted by "the really good story", Garrel's filming has always been a painting, capturing the beauty of the presence, the very essence of being, with a mystical unawareness of the impossible, the lack, the failure, the abysses of the inside, la pente, l'absence, le creux, le vide. The script is a pretext for filming the unfilmable, the silent beauty of the self, valeur quasi-ontologique.

http://www.cinemathequefrancaise.com/

Pigs and beds

Yesterday I spoke with Ken, an eurasian man from Hamburg. Half-japanese, raised in Germany, he speaks fluent french with a german accent. Florence was in Italy the last week and heard a conversation between two black guys, who were speaking italian. It sounded strange for a French, like watching a western with John Wayne speaking in chinese for a Bulgarian.

An aphorism (made after Rimbaud): "l'autre est un jeu".

Listening to "Summerisle" by Momus/Laplantine, my first and last impression is that this is an absolute chef d'oeuvre. I only regret that this album is hosted by Cherry Red. This is my only critic to the fabulous artists who did this album. As the Lord says, don't throw your pearls to the pigs, don't hide your light under the bed! (because you cannot sleep with a pig under your bed, while playing music in the dark.)

Lou the short

Here is the cover artwork for my new album, "Lou Etendue", on Karaoke Kalk. Drawing by Florence Manlik, lettering by Remi Gerard-Marchand.

01 Opening (Toog / Digiki)
02 Ugly Ducklings (Toog / Asia Argento)
03 Par tous les temps (Toog / Digiki)
04 Les belles endormies (Toog / Digiki)
05 Terroriste (Toog / Digiki)
06 Boite a musique (Toog / Digiki)
07 A son cou (Digiki / Toog)
08 Les 9 portes (Toog)
09 Etendue (Toog / Digiki)
10 Side love project (Toog / Asia Argento)

The album is 33 mn and 08 seconds short.

Lou Etendue artwork (Karaoke Kalk)