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Camille’s ‘a cappella’ pop
Music Hole breaks new ground
Paris
22/04/2008 -
Camille: Music-hall has this connotation of being a bit old-fashioned, don’t you think? Taking the word in its literal sense, a music hall is a place where you perform concerts. But in France music-hall also refers to a particular type of show, something that’s a bit classier than cabaret. Music-hall is a bit flashier, a bit glitzier, a bit more Anglo-Saxon really. It’s basically a mix of show, music, dance, theatre and spoken text - and it’s something that appeals to me a lot! On another level, Music Hole is an organic hole, the original void you form yourself around and which poses an endless series of questions. This is music-hall in its original sense, using the body as a basis for dance, story-telling, polyphony, singing and repetitive music…
You’re constantly experimenting with musical form, trying out new types of arrangement and playing with ways of creating different sounds with your voice. Is this some sort of personal challenge you’ve set yourself?
It’s just something that comes very easily to me. My greatest source of pleasure in life is singing and using my body to make music. I’ve never felt that there was a separation between the interior and the exterior. For me, singing comes from inside and out. Technically speaking, it’s pretty simple to record my voice and then play around with it to alter the texture. It’s the mixing that’s tricky because somehow you have to differentiate between the various textures without ending up with a confused mass of sound.
We had great fun on this album recording the body percussion. We spent a lot of time messing around working out which microphones to use, which surfaces gave the best sound, and what distance we should record from. In fact, at the end of the day I think we had a lot more fun with this album than with Le Fil. But I don’t know to what extent - for listeners who don’t have particularly trained ears - you can appreciate that apart from the body percussion and an occasional bit of piano, everything going on here is vocal.
You had one simple droning B note running through your last album Le Fil, but the striking difference this time round is that the arrangements are polyphonic…
I wanted this new album to sound very ‘pop’ and very ‘minimalist’ at the same time. I wanted the different elements to arrive one by one, then repeat over and over so that they have time to really penetrate the ear. This form of music is basically like Pointillist painting. It’s like you’ve got all these little dots that you start out perceiving individually, but then as you listen the individual dots gradually fuse into a whole.
You chose to record your new album almost entirely in English. Isn’t that a big gamble from a commercial point of view?
Looking at things from an artistic point of view, I’ve changed my basic working material. And that’s going to mean a lot of hard work, a lot of communication around the album and alot of concerts. As far as the French market goes, I think I’m presenting something different that might make people sit up and ask a few questions. But abroad this album means I’m basically starting from scratch.
I’m not that well-known outside France and because the album’s in English that means it has to compete on the vast Anglo-Saxon market with all the problems that entails. But I think that the further you advance with your work artistically, the more you overcome commercial and cultural problems. You present something that belongs to you and you alone. I don’t think what I do is necessarily French! I’ve never believed in linking my music to a specific country. I’m my own country. Certain elements of my music may be drawn from French culture, but there are other things going on that belong to other cultures and I’ve assimilated these bit by bit. My work represents the different paths I’ve travelled to date.
How did your record label react to your decision to sing in English?
Well, to start with, I thought they’d be really happy, you know, that they’d be excited about international potential, export, expansion and so on... But, in fact, they’re not as pleased as all that. They warned me that the people who buy my records are essentially French, that three quarters of my sales are accounted for in France. But personally I think it’s a big mistake to say that people who liked Le Fil liked it because it was in French. The problem is, that’s how the market works these days, it’s rare that the Anglo-Saxons put a lot of money into marketing their projects abroad. But whether you take into account the people who appreciated Le Fil abroad - without speaking a word of French - or French people back home who liked the album, I think the reason they liked the record goes way beyond the language I chose to sing in.
The thing about songs is you’re not meant to understand everything. You interpret things the way you choose. And as a listener you’re free to imagine whatever you like. People talk a lot about writing style but they forget that songs work on an oral level, too. There’s a whole subtlety to the art of getting a song from your mouth and articulating the words. It’s a language that goes beyond words. When you sing everything’s about intonation.
There’s a highly innovative track on your new album called Waves that’s actually in French where you recite your text like the shipping forecast…
Yes, that’s a good example of something based on intonation. There are all kinds of subtleties and linguistic connotations going on there where you really have to have lived in France to pick up on them. But the French shipping forecast has this very distinctive intonation. It’s totally unlike anything else you’ve heard. And you can pick up on that even if you don’t speak French.
And what about English?
I’ve spoken English a lot less in my life and so I think I have a much more direct approach to it. One of the great charms of English is that it allows you to get straight to the point!
Bertrand Dicale
Translation : Julie Street
09/05/2008 -
23/08/2006 -
