Les Boucles Étranges | CreationForge Independent Music

Elaboration of climates, science of streched speechs, primacy of the sensory on the frontal, treatment of peripheral elements and of melodic lines on the same level : that's the vision of the Boucles Etranges, forged since the beginning of the 90's, in the agitated waters of the electronic free parties. In another life, the duo tried out pop and rock, with in the mouth a back taste of something missing.
This vacuity was filled at the discovery of electronic possibilities capable to answer questions in a different way.In 16 years of activity, the duo put the finishing touches in it's identary character, which a provided discography testifies, deliberately and predominantly constitued of maxis (on the labels : Network23, Isotope, Xpdigiflex, U238, Fantom, Subradar, HoKuspokus, Audiolab, BarbaraGood, Electro Lab Factory , War…).
Until now, the duo only accepted to engrave one cd in 2002 ( "Paysage Spatial Imaginaire" ). So the releasing of "Portail 46" means a lot : an event in the course of the Boucles Etranges and a heavy contribution for the underground music lovers.

First French to have recorded with the Spiral Tribe, accumalating several "maxis" on the english label Network 23, the Boucles Etranges made themselves a name. That the duo has found an artistic incubation field in the self sufficuient free movement is not a surprise. This environment that, at the height of it's utopia, synthetized the squatt culture, the concept of the TAZ (Temporary Autonomous Zone) formulated by the anarchist Hakim Bey, the Do it Yourself of the punk origines and the energy of the Stonehenge traveller movement, constitued for Fleur and Chris an obvious fact, and a windfall. They found in it an open minded place and a perpetual movement, as their musical ideal... Because understanding their compositions, is before all approving primarily their aversion for the organized world, the precise timing of the word time, the "millimetered" lenght of the vital space. It's also the revendication of the "let go".«By deffinition, are music pieces never have an end. It's a 110 000 % of exploration. Everything can always be left to aside, or taken back.» On the dancefloor and if they get worked up, you can get it for hours, whatever it's grade.

At free parties, then in clubs or lucrative festivals, we wait for their live improvisations, their musical approach thats extremely psychedelic, and this so particular mix between rallying tribal and hardcore obedience. Understand hardcore in the litteral sense of term, just like psychedelic, because it's definitely for them «expressing the psyche» by playing sounds that galvanize the senses.Their loops call the trance, with all it's got of unusual and hypnotic.
So, this world propels into a new mysticism, reveals to the dancer his faculties to obscure the verb and the intellect, and leaves the duo to compose with liberty to exercice their free will.
«Our phylosophy cannot be summarized. But we cannot say we never looked back. Your life, it's the result of what you have in the present. It's what defines it. Everything we own is at proximity, we know how to content ourselves with what we've got».
Between «having it» et «being it», les Boucles Étranges have decided without any qualm feelings. Since, they give everything to the alternative way of life. When it goes to some as a defect, it is the motor sine qua none of their creative mechanism. The rejection of pressures in the live improvisation : «We never listen to our records. We always put everything in a moment, the one of the live. The instantaneous, is the endless and ephemeral imprint of one single instant of life, it's celebrating the preciosity of the moment you live, without sophistication.». In live, the Boucles Étranges blossom under the impulsion of their instincts. Their energy is blended. It is carried by the public : an active, vital interlocutor.

«Portail 46» eradicated them from their reflex. The album has been realized in two times. Six music pieces (Rigolleto Egality, Fantomxx, Who Killez ET, Melo Dead, Bengalores, Spacebeans) are the fruit of these last five years. Confused period, stabbed by doubts, where the duo seriously took a new look. It was necessary to put everything back on : your urge, your goals, the "why" of all that. And also changing the material.
Fortunately, we find again all their eloquence in "Portail 46" : this abyss setting between the primary spirit of the party, the mind's imaginary and the evasion power.

The rest of the album has been recorded at some friends studio, «L'Estrade», in the Ariege, where the duo started a weeks work with MC Tablloyd : «We have discovered a real creative. He is not just an MC, he is also a singer and a musician. He seemed having a great time, he had fun singing an playing the piano... We didn't have enougth time with him. His capacities are huge». The elaborated titles were then reworked 6 months at the homestudio : «It was hell because Tablloyd improvised a lot and likes to stretch the music pieces out like us. We had hours of music in which we had to choose the best moments». Six music pieces of anthology came out of it all (Time Space,Solar Propaganda, Destiny, Accap, Kanel, Secret) where Tablloyd swings freely between the freak crooner, the asserted soul brother and the crazy preacher. On progressive melodic sketches, unstructured or not, breaked or not, he goes with his own delirious will through a dozen of different vocal colours. Between him and the French, we are further from collaboration than meeting. We can even talk about "love at first sight".

By restricting what we believe in the most (the instantaneous), by accepting to delimit the music pieces (the longest is only 7.02 minutes). Retaining the marks of the past but expressing other desires, the album announces less an enumeration of novelty(s) than a position about the future. "Portail 46" trumpets artists in mutation, that without rejecting the acquired foundations, want to try other advebtures : "are future is working with other musicians". Listening to Solar Propaganda that masterfully digests the intro gimmick of I Heard It Throught The Grapevine by Marvin Gaye suggests their very laudable possibilities.

When many have given "the keys of the van" back, they continus to "criss-cross" the roads : "The free party, you think it's dead, so you go away. And then somewhere else, when you don't expect it anymore, it's starts up as in 40. The people are twenty years old. They install kilos of sound, play music, dance. This movement seems to know how to decline endlessly", like their music. A substantive activism and a crazy myspace. A blurred discography and dates falling like ripe fruit : the Boucles Etranges remain diehard on their fields. The big class, when we know how to mesure the battle that must be delivered daily to conduct this boat to such port. That's what they're doing with this album, and with a freshness that we could, in all logic, no longer attribute to them. Because we know, the road uses too much. But with them, you can only see it by the soles of their shoes : it's that they've got enduring ideas.

Texte par Anne et Julien.