Today is my birthday. Born in 1966, 7th february, I'm 44. Every 11 years, everyone gets the same numbers: 11 - 22 - 33 - 44 - 55 - 66 - 77 - 88 - 99. When I was 25, I realized that my father turned 52 the same year. 11 years later, I was 36 and he turned 63. When I was 14, he was 41.

14 - 41
25 - 52
36 - 63
47 - 74 (†)

One day, I asked a mathematician about it and he explained this algebric suite to me. But being a-mathematic, I couldn't understand his analysis and bought an ice cream.

This is a numeric birthday for which I received 3 marvelous gifts: 3 extraordinary deaf reviews of my album Goto (written without having listened to it) by Momus, Felix Kubin and Asia Argento. And also a chocolate cake made by Florence.



"I’m just going to assume that you’ve heard of the late, great Gilles Weinzaepflen aka Toog before, and save myself from the impossible duty of trying to explain the phenomenon that was this one-man band born in the city of Mulhouse, set in between the Swiss and French border. But just in case you are completely unfamiliar with Toog, the quick scoop is that since the mid 90’s and until his recent death, this man made some of the strangest techno boogie ever heard. I, myself had the luck to appear in one of his records in 2004, "Lou Etendue", composed and inspired by the birth of my very own daughter, Anna-Lou in 2001. Goto is an even more interesting album. Discovered only recently in the attic of his wife Flor, the CD opens with "Traffic Jam", a 25 minutes guitar/sax acid-rock jam with an eerie, cavernous vibe. The CD follows with outtakes from "Lou Etendue" sessions, which may be the best of all Weinzaepflen’s work, even more atmospheric and ritual-archetypical than the finished record. One wonders if the three instrumentals ( "Alabama gay", "Are visages electric", "La Chambre noire"), are due more to circumstance than to planning, but in the end it doesn’t really matter. The most demented of all is the last song, "L’esprit de l’inventeur", a trendy psych number that starts with a three minute, atonal guitar-keyboard-tambourine freakout before breaking into Dylanesque folk rock (relatively speaking, that is) as Mr. Weinzaepflen warns against drug abuse by using Hans Reichel an example. Kind of comes off like a soundtrack for a psychedelic exploitation movie, which is probably fitting for an album that was exploitative in and on itself."

Asia Argento

And now, I reveal the unveiled mystery of my album "6633" title. It was released in 99 as I was 33, being born in 66. It's all multiples of 33, which is the age of Christ when he was crucified. 66(33) is some sort of anti-satanic number, the 33 of Jesus making the last 6 impossible.