Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
- Hi, do I need to call you... "master" ?
- haha, Yes!
- Guro ? Sebastien ? - Actually, you can call me "mum"
- That's who I am for the Blue Alliance, the movement I am creating
- I am a "mum", I am not a chief, I am not a leader, I am not a guru
I am not a philosopher, or a god unfortunately
I am a mum, I am uprising things...
- We are now going to talk about "My god is blue", but we are quite sad today
the last track talks about you leaving to heaven after having delivered the message
So it's a shame, it's the last time we gonna see you on earth ?
- Maybe not, I am going to stay a little bit on earth, so I can organize things and i want to continue music as it's what I like doing
The last track of the album "yes it's possible" is speechless, there is no vocals, but if you can feel the notes
you can understand that everything is possible and we can go back to the stars as we come from the stars
we are all born in the stars on a scientific point of view,
I tell in the album, I am born in the stars, it's a reality, one day, like all of ours, I will go back to the stars with my family
- Now tell us mum, why we can't have an album of Sebastien Tellier without a concept around it ?
- well, it's not impossible, but I like concept, I like playing piano, guitar, I like to compose
When you are infront of a piano, or with a guitar on your lap, there is an imense space, there is a desert infront of me and I can create whatever I like
regae, rap, funk, Benin music, everything is possible
and this liberty is huge, so I am getting lost, so I need to create a little path, the start of a track and then I can create an overall goal
There was sexuality, politic, and now it's spirituality, arousal,
What I want with Alliace Bleu is to concretise liberty, I want to film free people, that's what I want to do
Why am I saying that, I can't remember ?
- On the fact that you are creating something around a concept
- excuse me mum, there is a problem, how can you have liberty, when we know behind a concept,
politic, sexuality, or today with spirituality, behind we know there is a project of emotion, sensibility, it's a bit contradictory
- Not really, because emotion, well, a good movie, a good album, they all can have the title "emotion"
but the fact that is good is when there is emotiong, feeling etc.. I could have done, first album "emotion"
second album "emotion 2", "emotion 3", why not .. but this is not interesting enough
what we say about music is that it's half notes, half a haircut, in music, image is as important as the music itself
when I create a concept, I believe in it, it's things that I think about, they are my center of interests
But it's also a big decorum for my notes, all of that is just a decor for people to listen my music
It's like if I was an island and my concepts are the mermaids that bring people at me, for people to come on my island
in me also, that's what I do, I create light for people to come towards me, when we say "I saw light and came in", I create light so people can come in me
- The goal of the musician is to be loved, it's really egocentric, but with the Blue Alliance, it's "love yourself" or "I give you love"
less centered on you finally. - I try also not to be too central, even if I am the mum, I want to make things that can live without me
that would be interesting, what I hope for my faithfuls, is to be free, be dependent of what I am, what I say and how I dress
I think, in the end, artists want to shine, in a certain way, we want to destruct the world to recreate it as we want - like a Lego box ?
- Yes, why not ? an artist think like a kid, he is selfish, it's the highway of his own volition
that's who I am, I am my own path, I don't worry about others people's paths exept my family and my closed ones
but I try to think that the world does not exist, the only world that exists is mine, I encourage everyone to be the king of his own kingdown
then me with the Blue Alliance, I want to create an adult theme park, people can send me money, give me cars, but I will give them back hapiness
people will be able to live their fantasm, it will be I hope the first place of liberty of the planet.
- we have already seen writers becoming guru of a cult, that happens. - Mine is not a cult
- It's not a cult, not a philosophy, not a religion, it's a movement. It's true that philosophy also deal with the Human, but the Blue Alliance is far beyond that
We are interested in the black matter, why universe keep growing, why the stone was rigth before us all
the stone that knows how to be eternal, that knows how to travel in space, the stone that is a symbol of stability
why stone is cleverer than us ? Our reflexion goes far beyond the philosophy...haha whatever !
It's under religion but above philosophy.
- Let's talk about music. - yes, that's what I do, I am a musicien, I love music more than god - that's it, god is in the music sometimes, and devil as well
- yes, I like the mechanism of faith, believing in something that might no exist, that's beautiful, that's the soul of a kid, when we believe in santa, that's wonderful
I remember my parents brought me on a restaurant of the latin district, the room was underground and you could hear the subway, so their was a lot of noise
people of the restaurant told us there was dragons behind the doors, I was happy to believe it, the day someone told me the truth, I was disapointed
the life was just less good, same as before but less good.
- what is the same disapointment when you learnt about ... - for santa ? - for santa of course. But a sound or an instrument had amazing frequencies, but once in studio, the magic was over
- That's true, the more you know about behind the work, the less it's magic. I hate watching making-of movies, I think medias kind of destructed show-business, there are so many making-of, how to do an album, underside of theater, how is an actor 20 minutes before the first etc..
eventually there is no magic, you have to create something else to recreate magic. The show-biz as we know it now has nothing magic, we know very well that singers are just poor-guys as all the others,
actresses have psychologic problems like all the girls that fail their life ...
chimicals things that we try to discover with the blue alliance, on a scientific level, the link intelligence/pleasure, we have to understand, that's why there will be a part of the domain call pigland (cochon ville) where you can drive fast,
break doors, insult people, to release tension. People that do sports, after 1h30, it's not the same kind of reflexion on life
I know when I come back from sport, in the street I roam, I think about people sewing, I appreciate curtains of shops, I am in another world
it's all kind of stuff, I just speak now of things I think about but all of that will be in a book called the blue book. My bod is blue is a sensation,
something that you can't explain, the basis of my belief, it's a feeling of life, a squirming, that's the album, the real work
After that, I will create other work around, to explain better my idea as this is not easy in an interview...it's quite complex for me, I am not really clever
It's a belief that is above me because it was given to me by blue god, I need time, I need to be on my own to explain corectly, on day the blue book will explain everything and I hope we will understand better.
- Are you still in contact with blue god or was it just a revelation and the album came after that?
- Well I had a blue trance, I drank a magical potion, I went mad, I have a passion for hoodoo so I am used to trance,
short time before, I got married in Benin under the sign of hoodoo, fantastic ceremonies, I love transe, and i saw when I was a teenager, a documentary "les maitres fous" where everyone just got crazy in a village, I loved that.
I noticed some truth with blue pixel, with blue shapes, of course that don't really exist, just in my mind. And the next morning, once the trance was over, I told myself "olala, ..., what a night ! I need to drink orange juice or take vitamins because I am blown-out"
And it's really when I came back to paris, I tried to compose on piano, and I thought about this night and I really understood what I had lived.
Blue god never get in touch with me, I just think of him, I remember him, it's like a girl you meet in a bakery 20 years ago. It's the same thing, I think of him, but I guess he has forgetten me a long time ago
- Can the tracks of the album represent a fragment of the truth that you are trying to re-create ?
- I would have liked with "my god is blue" to recreate this trance from start to end, maybe I missed things, but each song is a part of this trance.
For example, "russian attractions", I was like on a rollercoaster and I understood the world.
- "Against the law" is really intense
- "against the law" is really good, is a way of saying No by saying Yes, it seems crazy, sounds like Jean-claude van damme saying garbage
but to refuse the world, to escape by saying yes. Like the movie "yes man" with Jim Carey, a genius !
- Those rhymes that go from english to french, it's like Van damme himself !
- Yes exactly ! What I like, we will see that in the booklet of the album. I always like Boeing 747 doing aerial ballet...I do imagine that I am above the clouds, above mountains, that's how I write text
French is the top of the mountains, so we understand "eternal life", "blue pepito" etc... but under that, there is a world, and that is English or German, it depends.
so I write texts, most of them are in a foreign language, but when it needs to be close to me, I use French, what I like is to create the sensation, it's when I go above poetry, the musical word
we imagine something, it's not a precise text, it's not like "I gave a rose blablabla", people I like are rené char and Arteau and they don't talk above rose, anyway...
- is it a challenge to add a complexity but still make it sounds like pop ? It's a bit like the beatles.
- It's an invitation, I made a first album very dark on my family, on my sadness, and eventually people said "well Done", when I talk to people like Xavier from Justice, people that make modern art like Xavier Veilhan
it's their favorite album, but I did not sell it a lot, it's really dark and sad, no-one is coming to me, I want to exist, as a great musician , not like someone in a cave, I need light, that's why it has to be easy for people to eat, like a chewing-gum
or a lollipop, if I give them as well a DVD to see, it's not possible, I want to give something simple to the world, ok it's deep, but it's easy to consume.
I want people to get married on my music, I want childbirths on my music, baptism, bachelor parties, parties after exams, it's not like you put the album in your record library to show off and never listen it.
I want to be listened like we can listen to Queen or Annie Cordy
- Lot of respect for Annie Cordy who is "Knight of the French Arts and Literature Order "
- Well that's normal, I don't know her, I don't know who she is, it's just a name that came back in my head.
- There is a notion of space in the album, imensity, we think about nature, wild, desert. - Makes me happy to hear that, that's what I wanted to do !
- So for this album, you wanted lots of space. - I wanted relief, I wanted plains, lakes, big dams, summet, plateau on montains, to go to the stratosphere, above it, and we come back to space.
also an album that feels like a rollercoaster, sometimes you are high, sometimes down, I always wanted that. Mr flash who produced the album helped me, alone it was more difficult to create the relief, there was some relief before but instead of the "Mont Blanc" it was just a hill,
instead of a lake it was a pond, there was everything but Mr flash helped me dynamize the album. I remember in studio for the song "magical hurricane", we tried to adjust, the song is in a jungle, someone is singing, we were trying to adjust the degree of humidity,
to be more or less humid, we played around nuances, like a fake nature, like in Avatar, just reconstituate nature, I really liked that.
- what is the last album you fell in love with lately ?
- Clearshift, or something, I can't remember, what's the name - shalift (???), they even did the support act for my previous album
the thing is when you have a support act, you are getting ready, so you can never really see the support act. One day, I listen to the album of this group, fantastic, what a sound, fresh pop, I talk about them to my record company
and they said, "yes it was your support act for one year and a half". Once again, I looked like a weirdo, but no worries.
I also really like singers from Benin, one is called Elia sophie (??), you won't find her at wallmart, on the internet you can see her clips, it's fantastic, for people who like african music, drums, guitar, it's fabulous !
- Thanks mum, and we hope you gonna stay on earth a little more - A little bit, at least the time to do some more albums...