Caravan Palace Will Swing Their Way Thru’ Montreal
French electroswing group summons the robot
Electroswing is a term coined in the mid ’90s to define quite a startling strain of music: here comes the fusion of the old with the new – a medley of swing, jazz, hip-hop, house and electronic music. As vintage melodies are revamped with the help of modern technology, the result is a sound that is both fresh and nostalgic. One group that has vigorously propelled the genre would be Caravan Palace, from Paris. Heavily influenced by artists ranging from Cab Calloway and Django Reinhardt to Vitalic and Daft Punk, Caravan Palace have made a name for themselves throughout Europe and North America with the 2008 release of their first, self titled album, Caravan Palace. Following the 2015 release of their third studio album, <|º_º|> (“Robot Face”), the group will go on an international tour in May – and they most definitely will not be skipping our glorious city of Montreal.
In 2006, the band kicked off as a three-piece with rather quirky beginnings: Hugues Payen (violin), Charles Delaporte (upright bass) and Arnaud Vial (guitar) were brought together to come up with the soundtrack to a silent pornographic film. “We were asked to create music that combines old sounds with new sounds – to us, electroswing seemed like the best synthesis of that,” says Hugues. “We were originally three jazz musicians who had our independent electronic side projects. We decided to collaborate as a group and the rest of our members were added on subsequently.” The band found the ideal female vocalist in Zoé Colotis, a comedian with vocal jazz training. And although Zoé and Antoine Toustou (trombone, machines) never had any swing dancing experience prior to joining Caravan Palace, they took to their Lindy Hop classes with great fervor and currently offer audience members expert jitterbug moves.
“We named ourselves Caravan Palace after a brainstorming session, right before the release of our first demo. There’s a pretty neat contrast between the words caravan and palace. Also, the word caravan indicates that there are gypsy elements to our music as well,” explains Hugues. Their newest album, <|º_º|>, strays a little bit from their previous work, with an even wider variety of sound samples and a little bit more funk. “<|º_º|> kind of winks back at our first album, Caravan Palace. We were trying to rekindle the fresh spontaneity of our original work. In Panic, we focused a lot more on a linear structure, trying to make our pieces sound nice. In <|º_º|>, we simply tried to integrate what we’ve been listening to in the moment, directly incorporating our daily lives into our music.” The symbols that make up the album title naturally represent the Robot, a character that has been following the band around for quite a while. Indeed, the Robot can even be found on the covers of their first and second albums. “This robot symbolizes the fluctuation of our project. On our first album cover, this naïve, carefree character calmly listens to our disc on its gramophone. The second album cover is a lot more detailed and nitty-gritty – just like the album content itself. And on the third album cover, the Robot finally comes to the foreground… This Robot symbolizes who we are, basically. We also had a merry time deciding to use symbols instead of lettering for the album title. It’s silly, it’s mysterious… And it gives you journalists a rougher time typing the name up,” jokes Hugues.
The lyrics to this album come off as surreal and abstract because Caravan Palace was not really focusing on transmitting some sort of transformative lyric message. “The words need to fit into the rhythm of the music; the language has to have its own music. This often causes altercations with our singer, who does not always want to sing n’importe quoi… But as a group, we chose to impoverish our lyrics to enrich the music,” explains Hugues. And although this group comes from France, they purposefully chose to sing all of their songs in English: “Swing is an American kind of music, and we all must recognize that English swings better than French does. Vocals are a powerful musical instrument.”
This new album kicks off with the sexy and energizing ‘Lone Digger’, enticing any listener to jump up and get into the groove. Things get a little bit melancholic by ‘Aftermath’, but the funky ‘Wonderland’ will get the audience back on its feet. ‘Midnight’ is an interesting piece that is introduced by contemporary piano playing, before a sax romantically takes on the spotlight, gradually building the song up until it breaks down into a seductive electronic beat. ‘Tattoos’ is made up of charming vocal distortions set on repeat whilst ‘Russian’ is quite a change with its incredibly tangible new wave influence. Overall, <|º_º|> plunges the auditor through a panoply of moods, instruments and sonorities that will leave your feet tap dancing for more.
Another immense part of the electroswing charm is the unavoidable ’20s aesthetic of all related events. From flapper dresses to suspenders, all the glitter and vintage paraphernalia becomes just as dazzling as the music, contributing to the suspension of each observer’s disbelief, momentarily plunging the dancer into an irresistibly glamorous old-school bohemia.
Caravan Palace will be performing at Metropolis on Wednesday, May 18th. Tickets can be purchased here.
