Kirstiecat | Blog

The following is the first of a three part interview with French musician Orouni who was able to answer these questions by email. Orouni’s music is both warm and inspiring and after listening to several songs of his, I quickly started listening to them on repeat rather often. Links at the bottom are provided in order so that others can listen to his songs. In this part of the interview, Orouni talks about his influences and his early exposure to music. He also shares some of his knowledge and engaging personality. And what great taste!

Kirstiecat: I want to tell you how much I love and appreciate your songs. Can you talk about what inspires you to create music and what overall helps you in terms of the creative process?

Orouni: Well first, thank you very much. Then, the answer is: I have no idea. What is special with music (I’m not talking about lyrics here) is that it is a language of its own. A figurative painter has a subject to paint. But music is not based on reality (except if you try to imitate bird sounds, or whatever), that’s why I think it is similar to abstract painting. Create something that does not correspond to anything in the real world. And this has always been a mystery to me. I can give you a few hints, though, of what “helps” or “inspires” me: every piece of music that already exists, girls, chance (sometimes my finger hits the wrong piano key and I think “hey, this is better than the original melody”)...

Kirstiecat: You have some great influences (you list Bob Dylan, Belle and Sebastian and The Velvet Underground on your myspace page) Can you talk a little more about music that has influenced you?

Orouni: Well ok, let’s start with these three influences. To me, Bob Dylan is maybe the greatest lyricist ever (I still have to decide whether I put Leonard Cohen number one or two, but they don’t play in the same category). If you consider Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited, Blonde On Blonde, and then later Blood On The Tracks, I mean this is crazy. This guy is far above anyone else. He writes crazy things, but on the other hand they are so clever. Many lyricists would be happy to write a full album just with what you have in “Mr Tambourine Man”, or “Desolation Row”, or “Stuck Inside Of Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again.” The problem is I’m not a native English speaker, and I know that even if I were, I could never write such astonishing things. So it’s more a person I admire than an influence. Regarding his music, it’s a bit different. I don’t think it influences me. I used to think it was primitive, because he uses few chords in each song, but then I dug a little bit deeper and I realized: “Well maybe you only have three chords in “Blowin’ In The Wind” or “Mr. Tambourine Man”, but listen to the melody, you would never be able to achieve such beauty with these three chords!”. He also played with great musicians (especially on Blonde On Blonde), so all in all, even the musical part sounds very good. Songs like “I Want You”, “One Of Us Must Know” (Sooner Or Later) or “Absolutely Sweet Marie” are very musical, and I guess this is also because his voice got smoother because of smoking.

Belle & Sebastian are a real influence. Tigermilk was a great shock. Songs such as “Expectations” or “We Rule The School” really got me down on my knees when I first heard them, and still do today (that trumpet solo! ... that combination of instruments!). Well first I was depressed, because this was the kind of music I wanted to play. But then I said to myself “if they do it their way, why not me?” I like their sensitivity, they are not trying to rock hard or impress people or be in every magazine. To them, I guess music matters more than anything (clothes, attitude, tabloids…). One of the things I also like is Stuart Murdoch’s songwriting. Songs on early EPs, like “String Bean Jean” and “Dog On Wheels” or then on the second album, “The Stars Of Track And Field”, “Seeing Other People”, are really wonderful. There is a melodic genius in there. Then you also have his lyrics, with that college feeling, intrigues between boys and girls, so that you never really know what’s going on but you figure it out yourself and you’re better off this way because you imagine things much more than if everything was clear. And then, you have the lush orchestration, the interweaving of the instruments, and I love that.

To finish with the influences that were mentioned, the Velvet Underground is really important to me. Maybe people will say that Orouni doesn’t sound at all like the VU, and that’s true. But if I hadn’t listened to that band, you would never have had songs like “Experiments On The Threshold Of Pain” or “I Will Never See You Again.” That noir feeling, very pessimistic. The Velvet Underground, like the Beatles or Bob Dylan, were the first to do what they did. Back in 1967, you had flowers everywhere, summer of love and all that, and they came up with that sadomasochistic banana album, like “there is no hope, guys”. Though I also enjoy happy psychedelic sounds, I deeply respect and admire the Velvet Underground because they were “against” all that. And it’s very hard and courageous to go against some fashion when everybody’s in it. That’s why they sold very few records at that time, but then in the seventies people started looking back and recognizing that what the Velvet had done was awesome. And now they are idols, because they were unique. White Light/White Heat is even more extreme than the first record, and I’ve always wanted to write a review about it, but I never found the words. It’s too big, it’s really crazy and new, and at the same time I feel they were completely aware of what they were doing.

And now we are going to play a little game, to show you that influences are an intricate subject. When I look back on The Lamppost, I see so many things that influenced me … and I challenge you to match the parts in my song with the parts that inspired me (consciously or not).

The Lamppost:

1. The “mariachi” intro.
2. The F#m-C#m-A chord progression (sorry to be technical here, but this is important to me), which is the basis of the verse.
3. The use of the word “lamppost”.
4. The first guitar gimmick (1’10-1’20).
5. The phrase “the lights go out”.
6. The phrase “bad vibration”.
7. The last guitar gimmick before the last verse (2’05-2’13).
8. The last guitar solo (2’43-2’59).

The rest of the world:

A. Andmoreagain by Love.
B. Several songs by Calexico.
C. St. Francis Dam Disaster by Frank Black.
D. The Beach Boys.
E. Not Ready Yet by Eels.
F. The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin’ Groovy) by Simon & Garfunkel.
G. Sitting By The Riverside by The Kinks.
H. A song on the album The Libertines.

So, whether or not you found every connection, now you can say The Lamppost is a total ripoff

If you don’t like games, I can give you a few hints for free: Mojave 3 and Michael J Sheehy for “Danish Country Waltz”, Leonard Cohen for “Back To The A”, a phrase taken from Mozart’s concerto for piano no 21 (yes I swear!) for Almen KirkegÃ¥rd “Lullaby”, Bright Eyes for “I Will Never See You Again…” When recording “In The Old Days Of Our New Life,” the Zombies’ shadow was floating over me (Odessey and Oracle is simply astonishing), and for “Inside The Museum” (well, first the title is inspired by Visions of Johanna, by Bob Dylan), the electric piano must have been unconsciously inspired by Syd Matters (I saw them in concert many times).

I also feel things coming from Sodastream, Hefner, The Ladybug Transistor … and The Delgados (The Great Eastern is maybe my favorite album of all time).

But let’s get away from indie pop. I am also influenced by flamenco (Almoraima by Paco de Lucia is amazing), and more recently, Rodrigo & Gabriela released a great record (Tamacun). I wrote an instrumental track that I now play in concert, very much inspired by this kind of Spanish guitar playing.

I’m also sensitive to fado (Portuguese folk music), I like when you have several acoustic guitars. Madredeus are awesome, and their concert in Paris last winter was such an experience.

I had a period where I was a lot into Tropicalism: Caetano Veloso’s 1968 album, same thing for Gilberto Gil, and I’m also a big fan of Os Mutantes’ first two albums. All these musicians showed that you could develop a particular form of pop in your country. So I took it as a good sign.

Kirstiecat:I’m always a little curious about the background of various musicians and artists. Were you always drawn to music? As a child, did you always have music around?

Orouni: I often read some interviews where the guy (or more often the girl, I don’t know why) says “Yes, my father played the trombone in a local band, my mother was a piano teacher, my uncle worked in record store and our dog played the drums, so we always had music around the house”. No, I was definitely not that kind of kid. But there was some musical background, that was maybe incomplete, and I guess that’s why I wanted to go further by myself.

My father loves Mozart and many other baroque/classical composers, so I got a lot of that when I was a child (and I’m very happy with it). Also French artists, like Charles Trénet, Bobby Lapointe… He played the piano, we had (and still have) one in our family/holiday house. I guess that was my first contact with music in the active way. The funny thing is that I touched a piano before I touched a guitar (I started taking guitar lessons when I was 15). I didn’t have a clue how to play because I didn’t have any knowledge of musical theory, so I would just try to find which keys to press in order to play nursery rhymes, or simple melodies. I remember that at that time I found it easier to play with the left hand, and today I still have a bit more fluidity with this one, though I’m right-handed. So everything was based on visual memory: hit this white key here, and then this black key over there… I also remember that when my father would play some tunes on that piano, I was fascinated. So I started to look at what his left hand was doing, because it seemed to me that it was less complicated that the right hand part. Once I had figured out the left hand part and when nobody was in the house, I would try to find the melody. Then I remember that I used this left hand part with a melody I had imagined, and this must have been one of the first tunes I ever composed.

So that was the father part. My mother had an important role too because she offered me the guitar she had when she was a teenager. She had taken lessons but soon she had given up. So one day she had found that guitar, she came to me, gave it to me and asked “don’t you want to take courses?” and I said “yes, why not”. So then I took classical guitar lessons for two years, and after this, that was it, I could fly with my own wings. I had learned the basic chords. Then I transposed what I knew from guitar in order to play chords on the piano, but I still play the piano very primitively.

I also remember watching the charts with my sister in the 80s, but I was not really enthusiastic. I was like “Come on, why is this song number one, it’s such crap!”. But she listened to things like Queen, so that was ok. At that time, I didn’t listen to any music at all. I was a nerdy boy, concerning music. But things were meant to change: one day there was a kind of catholic camp that I went to, and I was in a group with people who were in a special class, where they learn music several hours a week and spend your time between highschool and conservatory. These guys kept playing and singing Let It Be, and it was a kind of revelation for me. I don’t really know why, because now I don’t consider this song to be fabulous. But there must have been something in the melody, or in the lyrics (back then I thought Paul McCartney sang “When I find myself in times of travel”) that made me think “Well ok, music is cool”. And then I went on a school trip to England and a friend of mine lent me a cassette with the blue compilation of the Beatles’ greatest hits from 1967 to 1970, and something went click in my mind. There was no going back. I knew I could not live without Penny Lane any longer, I loved this song too much, and I still do. Back from the trip, I bought this blue double CD, and then on summer holiday, in the family house, I went completely crazy, because Beatles vinyl records had been gathered by my parents all over the years, and they were in the room where I slept There was Revolver, Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, The White Album, Abbey Road and Let It Be. I listened to them on and on all summer long, and at some point I knew every Sgt Pepper’s lyric by heart. And there were also Bob Dylan’s vinyl records …

So I guess that’s it, I started very late with music, but I tried to catch up very fast.

Official Orouni site
Visit Orouni on myspace
Listen to In the Old Days of Our New Life
Listen to Inside the Museum

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 6th, 2006 at 6:46 pm and is filed under Interviews, music. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.