Rinôçérôse rock

A Touch of the 80s

Paris 

27/09/2005 - 

Rinôçérôse, the group from Montpellier who scored a big hit during the "French Touch" craze with their house single Le Mobilier are back in the spotlight with Schizophonia. The group's third album may well take fans by surprise. Rinôçérôse move on from happy, upbeat electro to a deeper, darker, guitar-dominated sound. And, for the first time in their career, a guest vocalist appears on each track.

Rinôçérôse are an intriguing band, renowned for wrongfooting fans and music critics time and time again. Indeed, the group's albums have proved to be veritable lucky dips, with no one quite knowing what they will pull out of the musical hat next. In 1999, they served up a mix of dancefloor house and uplifting pop on their debut album, Installation sonore. Then three years later, they re-emerged with a much more hardcore techno sound on Music Kills Me. Now, Rinôçérôse have charged back into the music news with Schizophonia,  an intriguing guitar-based work. Patricia Carrié and Jean-Philippe Freu, the two founding members of the group, see this as a logical progression. "We've always used a lot of guitars in our work, even back in the days of 'Installation Sonore.' Back then, we were much more interested in trying to imitate synthesiser sounds, but now we're directly inspired by the rhythmics of guitar bands like The Who, AC-DC and the Cramps."

Given the current vogue for rock bands, critics might well accuse Rinôçérôse of having jumped on the guitar bandwagon at just the right time. Jean-Philippe denies any such accusation, however. "We're a bit like sponges," he says, "we listen to everything and soak up all kinds of stuff along the way. We've obviously been marked by the rock revival over the past few years, but we really don't have the same approach as those 18-20 Anglo-Saxon bands because they're discovering it for the first time round and we've already lived through the rock era as well as the electro age. There was no way we would ever have done a straightforward guitar, bass and drums thing. And I think you can definitely hear traces of electro on all our new tracks."

Back to the 80s

Electro influences notwithstanding, a discernible 80s chill hangs over Schizophonia and fans of new-wave and other post-punk sounds will feel right at home on Rinôçérôse's new album. Jean-Philippe likes to sum the situation up with a footballing analogy. "I read an article the other day where this guy was saying that it had been a lot cooler to support the French team in the early '90s rather than once they'd won the European and World Cup. As far as we're concerned, it was definitely a lot braver doing covers of Cure songs back in '96 when the 'French Touch' movement revolved around disco. And having had that past makes us perfectly legitimate today. We're not following trends!"

Rinôçérôse's rock shift has been further strengthened by the presence of vocalists on their new album. This marks a real turning-point for the group as, up until now, they had worked within a purely instrumental sphere. On Schizophonia, tracks were elaborated on machines in the studio and vocals mixed in afterwards. Guest singers include Mark Gardener (ex-Ride), Nuuti Kataja (Dead Combo) and Jessie Chaton from the Paris group Fancy. "We chose the singers after listening to their albums, but we didn't know any of them personally," Jean-Philippe explains. "What happened was we drove out and picked them up from the airport in Montpellier and they'd come and sleep at our place. It was a really interesting human exchange!"

On the psychiatrist's couch

Despite the profusion of different vocals, Schizophonia somehow manages to retain an overall musical coherence. Unlike Rinôçérôse's previous albums, however, the ambience is decidedly deeper and darker – hardly surprising, perhaps, when you consider that the main theme of the album is schizophrenia. Interestingly enough, Patricia Carrié and Jean-Philippe Freu are both psychology graduates and they continue to work in this domain in parallel to their music career. The group's name Rinôçérôse was, in fact, inspired by a painting done by Gaston Duf (a French artist working in the 1950s who was interned in a psychiatric hospital at the age of 20).

Patou is amused at the suggestion that Schizophonia is darker than their previous work, however. "It's definitely a bit happier than our last album 'Music Kills Me'," she laughs, "That was all about death! The album revolved around the disappearance of rock gods like Brian Jones." Jean-Philippe describes the atmosphere on Schizophonia as a psychological state. "Using different singers means you get a bit of a split personality, the main symptom of schizophrenia. We asked the singers to come up with spontaneous lyrics and analysing things afterwards with Patou we found we'd come up with a whole psychiatric bestiary – there's everything from paranoiacs and psychopaths to an erotic obsessive!"

Following a series of appearances at music festivals this summer, Rinôçérôse are currently preparing to tour Schizophonia across Europe. These days, the group prefer to describe themselves as an 'international outfit' rather than a strictly French band. "We haven't tried to come up with a song to fit in with French radio quotas," says Jean-Philippe, "It's not a big deal if we don't get much airplay here. What we're interested in doing is continuing to play concerts in places like Buenos Aires, New York, London and Berlin. That's a lot of fun!" Holding her fingers up to make her point, Patou chimes in, "When you add it all up, we've only played twice in Montpellier compared to five times in New York!" Jean-Philippe remembers that was when he "spent an afternoon with Deborah Harry, the lead singer of Blondie – in her hotel room, what's more!" Maybe he'll have the chance to catch Ms. Harry again in 2006 – Schizophonia is due out in the States in January 2006 and tour dates will inevitably follow!

Rinôçérôse Schizophonia (V2) 2005

Ludovic  Basque