2 by Sūtra

Other platforms: https://bfan.link/tic21

On 17 May 1998, in the French newspaper Libération, Didier Lestrade reviewed “Suicide Sūtra”, the debut album of the duo Sūtra, consisting of Thomas Bourdeau and Patrick Vidal:

“Perhaps the most intelligent album of the new French wave. Because it mixes house influences and pop neurosis, […] Sūtra offers a truly raw poetry in its lyrics, an undeniable musical generosity (they don’t stick to one style […], no, they truly innovate).” Further on, the journalist is annoyed: “Isn’t it incredible that Sūtra is signed abroad? […] Truly, truly, truly the album of the month.”

Patrick Vidal started out as the lead singer of Marie et les Garçons, a Lyon-based no wave punk band from the late 1970s. The group had a single produced by John Cale, then recorded a dance-rock album in New York with underground disco legends, which foreshadowed the Madchester sound. Vidal became a DJ in the 1980s, first as a resident at Les Bains Douches, then a pillar of the Parisian club scene. Thomas Bourdeau, on the other hand, started as the bassist of the Nantes-based rock band Les Claques de Velours, which he founded in 1989. He approached Vidal a year later at a concert of the latter at the Rex Club, to suggest making music together. Sūtra was born of this encounter.

Released on the London-based label Other, “Suicide Sūtra” is barely mentioned in the history of French touch and was mainly supported by the British music press. “Tricky Situation”, the single extracted from it, was reviewed by The Face, which praised it as “brilliantly funky French disco”, while DJ Mag certified it as “for the ‘proper‘ house music lovers”. Muzik dubbed Patrick Vidal “godfather of French house”…

Mirwais, a former member of the band Taxi Girl, produced, programmed and mixed the album. On this occasion, he practiced his house and disco skills, thanks to the loops and samples brought by the duo. In France, few had the chance to listen to the radical and avant-garde result of this unique collaboration, and Sūtra has not become a prophet in its own country. Mirwais, on the other hand, bounced back by producing his album “Production”, then Madonna’s single “Music”, which relaunched the “Queen of Pop’s” career, as well as the two albums that follow.

On the eve of the 2000s, Sūtra embarked on the composition and production of a second album, soberly entitled “2”, with the help of Stan Loubières who programmed and mixed. For the visuals, the band remained faithful to the creators of the first album cover: photographer Alé de Nicolaï, and graphic designers Laurent Fétis and Gilles Beaujard. This largely unreleased album is now finally available in a remastered version, on the Micronautics label.

The number 2 can be interpreted as an invitation to sharing and collaboration between Sūtra and the artists, performers and creatures of the night who accompanied the band throughout the 90s. These nocturnal companions were breaking new ground in a nascent queer culture, and exploring gender identities through trashy or glamorous poetry readings over Vidal’s mixes. The concept was inspired as much by the Beat Generation as by the Jackie 60 parties held every week in New York, and was deployed in emblematic places such as Lili La Tigresse and the Beaux-Arts in Paris, on Radio FG and in exhibitions (“Féminin - Masculin, Le sexe de l’art” at the Centre Pompidou in 1995, “Bite génération” in Nantes in 1997…).

The adventure takes a twist after Bourdeau reads an extract from Pierre Guyotat’s “Éden, Éden, Éden” on Radio FG. A police officer in the line of duty listened in and alerted his superiors, who lodged a complaint. In 1998, the Public Prosecutor’s Office ordered the group and the radio station to pay a dissuasive fine of 90,000 francs (around €20,000), for broadcasting messages “of a pornographic nature susceptible to be heard by minors”. The time had come to record the album.

After the introduction “Thank You For Shopping Today”, a stroll through a ghostly shopping mall in the spirit of Bret Easton Ellis and J. G. Ballard, the first guest is transgender African American artist Miss Honey Dijon.

A young DJ from Chicago at the time, she injects “classic house” energy and vocal effects into one of Sūtra’s signature tracks. The two words she hammers out sound like a credo, a prayer and a dancefloor profession of faith: “Music & Life”, what else…

Twenty years on, Honey Dijon has become a household name in the USA. An ardent defender of trans-identity rights, a muse for luxury and fashion brands, she took part in Beyoncé’s latest album, “Renaissance”. It’s even rumoured that Honey Dijon will collaborate with Madonna. The coincidence is extraordinary.

Pascal Saint André, aka La Bourette, queer poet spotted by Guillaume Dustan by night, jewellery designer for Ungaro by day, puts his voice and words to the next track, “Vous ne saurez jamais” (You will never know). A hypnotic dub reggae loop supports reveries of a fantasized end of evening, of the wear and tear of an era, of the irony of a love story.

Jenny Bel’Air, physiognomist at the Palace and the Bains Douches in the 70s and 80s, ringleader of the Parisian underground, heroine of a book by François Jonquet, offers her version of “A Winter Morning In NY”. Under the snow, in the streets of New York, questions arise about the notion of identity or a lost love: “Come back to me, the half of me badly begun. I’m nothing but an imprint of life…”

Drops fall… Rain or tears? Flamenco singer and painter Julián De Moraga follows with an improvised seguiriya over a throbbing bass line. “Las alas de tus sueños” (The wings of your dreams) is a tormented piece, where the Spanish singer’s emotion is laid bare.

“Le corps électrique” is an instrumental tribute to Walt Whitman’s poem “I Sing the Body Electric”. Violins and a balearic beat lead naturally to the dancefloor.

The album concludes with a fundamental question: “Love/Not Love”. With or without love, the question constantly arises.

Leftfield by design

Sounds by Daft Punk, DJ Pierre, Adamski, Blaze, John Tejada, Kings Of Tomorrow, Timmy Regisford, Honey Dijon, S3A, Ark, Cosmo Vitelli, Moisees, Mirwais, The Micronauts, etc.

micronautics.net
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