Thomas Roussel and Yannick Grandjean are SomethingALaMode,SALM for the intimate or those in a hurry, an exceptional duet, and I mean it because it is a rare thing to meet classical musicians fed on club culture – musicians just as thrilled by post romantics like Shostakovitch, Stravinski or Fauré among others as by Daft Punk ‘s Homework or Mirwais ‘ Disco Science; musicians who can launch a 2008 techno parade in front of 15,000 persons and the day after play for a happy few at the ICA in London; musicians eager to have their album mixed by Arnaud Rebotini, the dark prince of the dark touch to release it with Yellow, the historic label of electronic music with a French touch flavour.
SALM’s is a story of daring, of desire, and above all of counter-current, the story of two kids whose teenage years were as rhythmically played as a musical score – buoyant week-day hours spent at the Music School (the works : music reading, instrument practice, orchestration), the week-ends spent dancing at the An-Fer – a mythical club in the French history of electronics, the unavoidable venue for Laurent Garnier, Daft Punk, Jeff Mills and other icons of technomusic, an oasis of good music in the desert of Dijon’s clubbing in the 90s.
It is in the Eden of the An-Fer that a 15-year-old Yannick went through his electronic epiphany. It’s there that Thomas (then 18) met Jeff Mills for the first time. He shook his hand then, an anonymous fan in the DJ’s booth.
He shook his hand again 12 years later as a collaborator, embarked on the grandiose “Blue Potential” project – Jeff Mills’ classics interpreted by a symphonic orchestra at the Pont du Gard in the summer of 2006.
Mills could not believe what he heard but Thomas could : he was the arranger of this exceptional feat.SALM was born in the wake of this concert, in October 2006, after the two friends had spent years maturing the project in their minds.
One night, Thomas, the violinist, recognized for his collaborations in contemporary art, and Yannick, the cellist, first prize laureate of the School of Music, met again… around an old P.C. – caught up again in the sacred fire of “dance” music and the desire to leave the beaten paths of music, whether electronic or pop, a desire to merge all their passions into one, to evoke emotion with a fragile string or the pure sound of a synthesizer without wondering where they belonged – or if the rules of art permitted it.
The outcome? A first “electro-string” album dexterously mixing the clanging violins of “RondoParisiano”, as baroque as they come, the lofty soul of “ Little bit of feel good” and the heady pop bubbles of “5 AM” (with the young west coast rap singer K.
Flay) : twelve masterclass titles uniting a very 70s Easy Loving (Francis Lay style, enough to make Dimitri From Paris jealous) to the pent-up wrath of “Dies Irae”, a warlike march of unimaginable beauty, a hybrid both deeply melodious and radically electronic, a daring fusion of universes which have long been on a quest for each other and which, thanks to SALM, finally prove to be a match made in heaven.
