Rhapsode

Fashion is what goes out of fashion," Cocteau used to say. Although he died without having been able to listen to the first Forever Pavot album, we must grant the poet the gift of prophecy: The classical opposition between past and future is completely stupid. On these grounds, Forever Pavot has done honorably - create new things with old ideas in mind. One is tempted to describe Emile Sornin, Forever Pavot's leader, as an expert in demolishing walls. His got his training in the now-defunct group Arun Tazieff, where he developed techniques akin to French film composer Francois de Roubaix: dreaming his songs, fiddling with them track by track, stacking up sound upon sound, rehabilitating his harpsichord in this narrow world that we call pop music. Sornin's output is discreet, yet rather noisy. Fuzz guitars, wild Farfisa, bass lines mixed in the Bertrand Burgalat tradition, flutes playing, etc. There are the sounds of horseback-riding on "Miguel El Salam," "Rhapsode" has flashes of a huge indoor Western being shot by the ORTF ('60s/'70s French Broadcasting Authority TV), and songs such as "Electric Mami" sound like "Strawberry Fields Forever" sung by the Zombies. The name "Forever Pavot" "... started as a joke. One day I read too fast 'flower power' poorly-written on a school pencil case. It made me laugh," said Emile. As a fan of jazz programming and Turkish psych, he also shoots videos for others (Disclosure, Dizzee Rascal, etc.) and proves at every moment that appearances are often misleading. "I feel a bit like Stereolab or Broadcast, artists who draw from the past to make something new. Ten years ago or so, I was doing hardcore punk, then I did chiptune, pop, garage/folk, recorded on K7, and now things inspired from '60s movie music... The only guideline are my desires. Nobody will be able to get in my way if I want to make a reggae album in three years or an album of French songs. Because I'm the one who decides.