Tahiti 80

Wallpaper For The Soul

Tokyo 

16/01/2003 - 

Tahiti 80's new album, Wallpaper For The Soul, has finally hit French record stores after its earlier release in the U.S. and Japan (at the end of 2002). The French pop group have enjoyed impressive success in Japan ever since the beginning of their career. And on the occasion of a mini-tour there last December we got one of our correspondents to hook up with the Fab Four from Normandy.

RFI Musique: You've just arrived in Japan after touring the United States. How did your tour in the U.S. go down?
Tahiti 80: Well, we had a pretty hectic schedule. We performed every night for three weeks non-stop! Basically, our U.S. tour helped to kickstart us all a bit - after all, it was the first country we'd performed the new album in. We played a tour circuit that we'd already done in the past. But the great things was that even though a lot of the songs were completely new to the American public they turned out in force to our gigs and seemed to really got into the new material.

So in a way your American tour was a warm-up for Japan?
Well, you have to start somewhere! The good thing about American audiences is that they're very open and that means you get a real interaction going with the crowd. They're pretty demanding when it comes to that kind of stuff, in fact. The downside is that travelling around the States is really tiring – getting from one place to another takes a long, long time so we seemed to spend an inordinate amount of time on the road! Touring in the States is tough on several levels, in fact, but it gets you in good training.

Do you manage to get the same kind of interaction going with Japanese audiences?
When it comes to communicating - in English as we did on our U.S. tour - things are a bit more complicated. In Japan we obviously interact with audiences in English, but we sometimes throw in a bit of French too. And when we're really on form we've even been known to try out our Japanese!
The thing you have to realise is that Japanese audiences have a completely different mentality. They're fairly innocent and naïve really, which means they all start screaming the minute you unbutton your shirt and you can really hear everyone hold their breath when we jump! But apart from that I have to say the Japanese are highly educated when it comes to music and I think that accounts for a lot of our success out here. I think Japanese music fans really understand what we're trying to do with our arrangements and melodies. And that's the kind of paradox that makes it really fascinating to come out and play here.

Do you think singing in English has been an important factor in the group's success?
Well, it certainly helps sales in any case!(Laughs)The thing about Tahiti 80 is that we've chosen to play a style of music that's 100% Anglo-Saxon so singing in English comes completely naturally. It's not as if we had a whole repertoire of songs in French and had them all translated.
The French language has a certain musicality to it, but it imposes a real rigidity when it comes to singing - you can't really use your voice as an instrument when you sing in French! What's so great about pop music is that you can play with the meaning of words, but, more importantly, you can also play with your voice. I'd go so far as to say that with the sort of music we do the vocals are maybe the most important element of all because it's the vocals that carry the melody. I'm sure we'd never manage to do what we do in French! Besides, singing in a language that's not our mother tongue means we have different reflexes and stuff. Singing in English makes us a lot more inventive and creative and that's what makes it really interesting!
What audiences in the States love about Tahiti 80 is that our music sounds a bit familiar. As far as American audiences are concerned they can hear our style of music everywhere. But we've got our own way of singing the lyrics – and that's what makes us stand out from the crowd and gives our music a different edge! That's the card we've chosen to play in any case. I think the secret lies in trying to strike a balance between the fact that we're French but our sound's purely Anglo-Saxon.

How have the media in the different countries you've played in reacted to you in general?
Well, it's pretty funny really because we've discovered that each country's more or less focused on one particular aspect of the group, so that means the same old questions come up time after time. Up until recently in Germany, for instance, journalists would keep banging on about what subjects we'd studied at school and university. They really kept on about it (laughs) and when we turned round and told them that we'd all more or less opted out halfway through, you could really feel that they were...a bit, you know... Education's taking pretty seriously over there!
In Japan we tend to get pretty serious questions on the whole. Japanese journalists tend to take a very analytical approach to our work. They really try and delve into our songs and understand the whys and wherefores of everything. We're often asked very precise questions about certain tracks. As far as the U.S. goes, everything tends to be very segmented. And by that I mean when you're invited onto a show to talk about something, you've got to stick to that and stay in your place! We've had some good interviews in the States but there have also been occasions when we've felt they're just churning it out like fast-food!
Interviews in France tend to correspond to a particular format too. We often get the impression that French journalists don't really understand what we're trying to do. Maybe that's because we don't have the same musical references, I don't know. When you choose to tap into a particular musical style like we do you obviously have to go through a serious period of learning and apprenticeship. It's not like our musical influences were all lying around our noses – we had to go and dig them up elsewhere! And sometimes, to be honest, when we speak to journalists in France we feel that we're on a completely different wavelength. But having said that, we have had good interviews in France too!

What are Tahiti 80's projectsfor the future?
Well, once we've finished up in Japan we'll be setting off on a mini-tour of Europe in December (playing dates in Germany, Belgium, Holland and Austria). Then after that we'll be taking a break to open our Christmas presents! We hope to get back on the road again pretty soon afterwards, though.
We also have plans to go into the studio and start work on a new album pretty soon. We took a lot of time over recording the first one, but I think it would be good to work on future albums in a state of urgency!

Tahiti 80 Wallpaper for the soul (Atmosphériques) 2003

Cyril  Coppini

Translation : Julie  Street