JOAKIM – MONSTERS & SILLY SONGS

(!K7211 CD)
Release Date: Feb. 19th, 2007
In the beginning was silence. The menacingly loud silence that one hears when the computer has finally given up and no longer makes a peep after a hard drive crash. All the tracks that were supposed to be on “monsters & silly songs” were also permanently silenced. “Dumb when one doesn’t make any backups,” realized Joakim and learned his lesson: Instead of buying a stack of storage media, he put a band together. And started once again from the beginning. A catastrophe? Not for Joakim Bouaziz. He is used to parting with ideas. Especially when he has a new one, a better one. In other words, almost always. “I jump from one idea to the next,” he says. “I simply have to try everything and see where it leads.”
That’s also why Joakim is one of the most illustrious people that the world of (not only) electronic music has produced. He started at age 6 with the piano, took lessons with Abdel Rahman El Bacha, a famous concert pianist. Later, Joakim discovered the possibilities of the synthesizer. After an experimental phase of only a few months, his debut “Tigersushi” (1999) was released, which 4Hero, Next Evidence, DJ Medhi and others, cited on “Tigersushi Remixed” (2000), and which also became the name of the label Joakim founded in 2001. In 2003, with “Fantômes” the debut successor ensues. Tracks like “Come Into My Kitchen” and “Are You Vegetarian?” become real club hits. Joakim doesn’t thereby feel that he has to adhere to dance music or any other musical style. “Making a pure dance album would almost be like composing an album entirely in F major.” And so his new album “Monsters & Silly Songs” has also turned out entirely free-spirited. He recorded it together with a live formation consisting of Mark Kerr (drums), Juan de Gullebon (bass), Maxime Delpierre (guitar), Nicolas (vocals, known as the singer of Poni Hoax) and Guillaume Tessier (with whom he also worked on his project Sister Klaus). With the post-rock piece based on a meditative ostinato “Three Legged Lantern,” the dark imposing bastard “Rocket Pearl” with its Cave-like drama, no-means-no country and disco beat, which Franz Ferdinand could never pull off in such a brilliantly ramshackle way, as well as the exalted nine-minute epic “Love-Me-2” that transgresses all style limits, Joakim wrote three pieces which he especially conceived for the live situation. “The idea of playing live changed everything,” says Joakim. He not only allows mishaps, improvisations and spontaneous ideas to happen, but intentionally looks for them. “If one now were to try to pigeonhole me as new rock, then the only thing left for me to do would be to make a calypso record.” And he could undoubtedly do so. For example, on “Drumtrax” he plays with the genre of the club track, turning the ring modulator and tempo knob. The single “Lonely Hearts” is another shimmering pop jewel: a thudding drum, two biting guitar chords, synthesizer blips and cheesy strings – here, like everywhere on “Monsters & Silly Songs,” things come together which do not belong together or which one did not yet suspect could belong together: John Carpenter and Aphex Twin, hippieness and digital culture, step pro-gramming from the eighties and modern sound design: Memory and hope for the future. Noise, drones – and again silence.