Francois & The Atlas Mountains

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Tracklist

1 - Friends
2 - Be Water (Je Suis De L'Eau)
3 - Wonder
4 - MoitiÃ©e
5 - Remind
6 - Do You Do
7 - Otages
8 - Nights = Days
9 - Years Of Rain
10 - Pic-Nic

4...according to our Dave on Tue 02 Aug, 2011.

Downbeat balladry from Monsieur Francois and the Atlas Mountains. His sound is one of sophistication and understated lyrics. His voice is pretty good and his compositions are very moody. His band (the excellent Atlas Mountains) are great...almost like the best chamber music band you might wish to hear. It's all soft and very focused, powerful yet restrained. The album kicks off in rather subtle fashion with a track called "Water". This is a theme, ermmm..."running" through this LP. It seems to be anyway. All the tracks do have a rather "watery" quality. Francois's voice also reminds me of a lo-fi Serge Gainsbourg. His tones have a slightly scruffy quality, a bit like a disheveled troubadour (I'm probably a million miles away on this one). I would liken his songs also to a more lo-fi Gainsbourg...albeit not as sleazy. When I'm listening to this I don't feel like I'm witnessing a sexual assault like when I hear Gainsbourg...or Barry White. The best songs in my opinion on this delightful LP are the enigmatic "Moitiee" and the brooding "Nights and Days". These tracks are superb and will have many a human either in tears or utterly entranced. A record that reminds you of holidaying in Southern France. It's a very nostalgic sounding LP...not that there's anything wrong with that.

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For his third full length album, François returned to the comforts of his hometown, and recruited members of local friends Unkle Jelly Fish and Bost Gehio (an all-female polyphonic vocal group from the Basques country) to be his ʻAtlas Mountainsʼ. Plaine Inondable, (which translates as ‘Flood Plains’) refers to the townʼs winter landscape – where the Charente river often bursts its bank, completely covering the surrounding ﬁelds.

Françoisʼ previous releases often featured casio-beats, and lo-ﬁ electronics – but Plaine Inondable marks a departure from that style. Here, piano chords swell, electric guitars gently shimmer, and Françoisʼ soft croon ﬂoats throughout – his bilingual songs melding the bitter-sweet yearning of Leonard Cohen with the melodic playfulness of Serge Gainsbourg and Françoise Hardy.

The album also takes inspiration from recent compilations of African music recorded in the 1970ʼs (Ethiopiques, Mali 70) released by various European labels. The atmospheric rhythms and percussive elements, as well as some guitar parts and scales, absorb this inﬂuence:
“’Be Water’ is built on a Ethiopian scale called Tezeta, the guitar on ‘Remind’ is inspired by the style of Ali Farka Toure and Group Doueh”

The result is a conﬁdent and unique blend of styles, that dreamily infuse with one another; a semi-conscious state, which is further reﬂected in the ﬂuctuation between French and English lyrics.

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