RFI Musique - - Interview - Tahiti 80

Tahiti 80 - back to pop!

New album Activity Center

Paris

03/10/2008 -

French pop foursome Tahiti 80 have become huge stars in Japan, selling more records there than at home. The band, who have just got back together again after a series of solo adventures, have now released a fourth album entitled Activity Center. RFI Musique talks to Xavier Boyer (vocals, guitar, keyboards) and Médéric Gontier (guitar and vocals).

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RFI Musique: Your last album, Fosbury, found you delving into your soul influences. Activity Center, on the other hand, appears to signal a return to your pop roots…
Xavier: We maybe pushed things a bit too far on Fosbury in terms of production and the mix of different musical genres. But this time round we've really followed the entire new album through from A to Z. That didn't happen with Fosbury at all, because that album was mixed by our collaborators, N.E.R.D. Activity Center is an album that's a lot more focused on us. It's about us going back to songwriting basics and composing and recording the old-fashioned way which pretty much goes against our habit of honing things to perfection and working towards a very polished sound.
Médéric: People have often been surprised at the difference between Tahiti 80 in concert and the Tahiti 80 they discovered on our albums. I think the new album goes some way towards reconciling the two. In any case, we've simplified the arrangements a bit and Activity Center is much more raw and direct.

Between Fosbury and Activity Center Xavier branched out on his own and recorded a solo album under the pseudonym Axe Riverboy. How did the rest of the group react to that?
Xavier: Well, after Fosbury, we weren't too sure what direction we should move in next. At the same time I was really keen to see what I was capable of on my own. We've known each other for such a long time now. We basically learnt to play music together. And we've been part of Tahiti 80 for over fifteen years now… I guess we wanted to find out whether we could actually exist on our own independently of one another. In any case, I think getting a bit of distance from the group allowed me to explore a number of different directions that we ended up using on Activity Center.
Médéric: Xavier's solo project gave us all the freedom to go off and get involved in other projects. The thing is, when you're in a band everyone's got a different musical side to them that they can't always express as much as they'd like.
Xavier: Pedro went off and did electro-dub with MaRadioStar and Médéric experimented with a lo-fi electro sound with Rainbow Dogs…

What do you think of the current French pop scene? Do you like what artists like Sébastien Tellier, Air and Phoenix are doing?
Xavier: We feel especially close to artists that we've recorded in our studio, Tahitilab. We feel close to artists like Fugu, who comes from Nancy, and Calc from Bordeaux. I think we set the same high standards in terms of songwriting. I don't actually think we've got much in common with an artist like Sébastien Tellier, though. The way he draws on film music from the '70s and '80s, the way he plays the French dandy card à la Serge Gainsbourg… I'm not really sure we make the same kind of music!
Médéric: When I listen to Tellier or Air and then hear re-reissues of Gainsbourg albums or film music from the '70s and '80s, I think the influences in Tellier and Air's work are very clear. They both rework a lot of themes and orchestration ideas from that period. I think there's a great deal of affinity between Tahiti 80 and a group like Phoenix, for instance, but we've never actually met them.

How do you account for Tahiti 80's surprising success in Japan?
Xavier: Basically, we were lucky enough to be promoted by Cornelius, who's a big star on the indie scene in Japan. He used one of our songs on a compilation just before we released our debut album, Puzzle, in 1999. What was surprising was that we soon came to realise we were doing better in export sales to Japan than we were selling records back home in France! After that, a singer called Kahimi Karie asked us to produce a series of songs for her. Then our single Hard Beat took off on the radio and in the charts. We ended up doing a lot of television, appearing on MTV and NHK and then a lot of credible rock mags started interviewing us. Since then, we've managed to keep our original fans and add a lot of new ones. These days, Tahiti 80 get mentions in the general press and in fashion magazines - and our songs have even made it onto the karaoke circuit!
Médéric: We've tried to analyse the reasons for our success in Japan, but we've never really got to the bottom of it… Maybe our first album just came out at the right time when British pop was on the wane and the French Touch was generating a buzz around French music.

Where does the title of your new album come from?
Xavier: It's the name of a Fisher Price toy for kids! The Fisher Price Activity Center is this big plastic panel for kids complete with moving wheels, dials, dingers and all sorts of special sound effects. We figured our studio looks pretty much the same with all our consoles and all the instruments we've amassed over the years. We can just turn up and record ourselves there whenever we like. And we felt the title suited the way we produced the new album, all four of us tucked away behind closed doors.

Why is it that the only things that seem to come up in your songs time and time again are "love" and "girls"?
Xavier: Because they're the only real things in life! (Laughs) No, seriously, we wanted to reminisce about our adolescence a bit. Basically, it's about us looking fondly back on our pre-Tahiti 80 days. There are also a few songs on the album that evoke real-life experiences we've been through as a group, about us taking time off to explore other things. Whistle, for instance, is a song about something Voltaire evoked in his writing: that urge to go off and look for something at the other side of the world whereas things are actually perfectly fine where you are…