Nantes, Marseille, Nice, three different shows

The Nantes Zenith is one of France's best venues, and we had an audience of connoisseurs that I liked a lot. From the stage we could feel the dynamism of that city, where concerts, expos and films do so well. Among our guests, many of our friends from Algam and La Boîte Noire, the leading musical instruments import company in Europe, as well as Joachim Garraud's family, and part of mine. We all had a warm gathering after the show.

Marseilles: Sun, the Vieux Port, relaxing time with the musicians. Marseille is the city of music and soccer, which is a hard thing to admit for a native of Lyon. Yet I said it on stage and it caused a little shock.

The show was one of the craziest since the tour began. The Dome has a pretty bad reputation for its acoustics, but Alain Courieux, Cédric and Arno somehow managed to set up their system, and we had a great sound. The show started red hot, and continued to ramp up in a stadium-like ambiance, it was electrified. The Marseille audience will be hard to beat!

Jean-Pierre Janiaud, the great sound engineer with whom I mixed Oxygene and Equinoxe, came backstage with Christophe, I was so happy to meet them again. Also my uncle Jean Nicolaï, in great shape despite his 95 years, and my dear Edith.

For Nice, I was afraid the audience would be quieter on a Sunday night, but it turned out I was wrong.. Many of the crew are from Nice, as well as the whole Arpege company, which provides our sound and video, and as I mentioned that on stage, the audience made it a point to not lag behind Marseille.

Ignace was here to fine-tune details in preparation for Bercy and the 3D film this week-end. Paul Charles had come from London to discuss the show dates for the rest of the year, which will prove challenging. Then we boarded "our" bus and spent the night watching the photos and films shot by Christine and Thomas, and arrived in Toulouse under a pouring rain.. Meanwhile my mother had arrived with Louisa and Gilles to attend the concert at the Zenith in Toulouse...

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Le Zenith de Nantes une des plus belles salles de France, et un public de connaisseurs nous attendait, j'ai beaucoup aimé. On a pu sentir depuis la scène le dynamisme de cette ville où les concerts, les expos et les films marchent si bien. Nos amis d'Algam et de la Boite Noire, la plus grosse société européenne d'importation d'instruments de musique étaient là en grand nombre, ainsi que la famille de Joachim Garraud et certains membres de ma famille. Nos nous sommes tous retrouvés après, dans une ambiance vraiment chaleureuse.

Marseille: Soleil, le vieux port, détente avec les musiciens. La ville de la musique et du Foot et comme je l'ai dit sur scène, pour un Lyonnais c'est pas facile à dire!

Le concert a été un des plus délirants depuis le début de la tournée. Pourtant le Dôme a plutôt une mauvaise réputation sur le plan acoustique, mais Alain Courieux, Cédric et Arno ont fait un super travail sur les réglages des systèmes, et le son était super.

Le concert a démarré tout de suite dans un climat électrique et n'a cessé de monter dans une ambiance de stade. Le public marseillais sera difficile à battre...

Jean-Pierre Janiaud, un très grand ingénieur du son, avec qui j'ai produit les albums de P. Juvet à Los Angeles et au studio Gang, et mixé Oxygène et Equinoxe, était là, accompagné par Christophe. J'étais très heureux de le retrouver. Mon oncle Jean Nicolaï était là aussi, en grande forme (étonnant pour ses 95 ans) ainsi que ma très chère Edith.


Nice: J'avais peur d'un dimanche soir en mars à Nice et d'un public plus réservé, j'avais tort.. Beaucoup de gens de notre équipe ainsi qu'Arpège, la société qui nous fournit le son et la vidéo, dirigée par Christian Lorenzi, sont d'ici et le public a donc mis un point d'honneur à ne pas rester derrière Marseille..

Ignace était venu pour peaufiner certains réglages lumières en vue du show de Bercy et du tournage 3D de la fin de semaine. Paul Charles était venu de Londres pour discuter du planning des concerts de la suite de l'année, très chargé.. Ensuite nous avons pris "notre" bus et passé la nuit à regarder les photos et films de Christine et Thomas, et c'est sous une pluie battante que nous avons fait notre entrée dans Toulouse. Et ce soir ma mère est arrivée avec Louisa et Gilles pour assister au concert de demain...

First French show in Bordeaux

Arrived from Paris before 4PM under a warm sun, soundcheck was OK, feels good to be with the crew again. Did a live interview from the stage with France 3 evening news, then got a phone call from the Maire, former Prime Minister Alain Juppé, a very nice man, apologising for missing the show but Bordeaux was playing Greece tonight, and he couldn't affort to miss it as the Maire of the city.

The arena is an ice-skating rink, pretty cold, but the concert went really well and the audience was really into it for one of the best shows so far.. A good omen for the french leg.

Later that day, Pierre fell in the street and is still in the hospital with strong pain in the right foot.. Fiona is with him, we hope that he will be able to follow us to Nantes tomorrow..

In the meantime we had dinner with Gerard Drouot, our french promoter to discuss Bercy. He and his team are very enthusiastic about the show tonight.

Good night..

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Premier concert français à Bordeaux:

Nous sommes arrivés de Paris vers seize heures par un beau soleil. Soundcheck à 16h, tout se passe bien, je suis heureux de retrouver tout le monde après la tournée allemande de ces deux dernières semaines..

Interview en live pour le JT national de France 3 puis attente habituelle sur scène pour le direct avec Samuel Etienne. Appel d'Alain Juppé, maire de Bordeaux pour s'excuser de ne pas être là, mais Bordeaux joue contre les Grecs ce soir en coupe d'Europe, et il ne peut raisonnablement pas manquer le match en tant que maire de la Ville..

La patinoire de Bordeaux est un lieu difficile, froid par définition avec une acoustique qu'il faut maîtriser. Le concert s'est néanmoins très bien passé, un des meilleurs depuis le début aux dires de l'équipe, malgré un problème de séquenceur au début de Chronologie 6 (ah les aléas de l'analogique..). Le public Bordelais était debout pour la dernière demi-heure, ce qui est assez rare d'apres le promoteur local..

A la sortie, beaucoup de monde m'attendait pour une séance d'autographes et c'est là que Pierre, membre éminent de l'équipe, a glissé sur le trottoir et s'est abimé le pied droit.. Fiona est encore en ce moment même avec lui aux urgences. Nous espérons tous qu'il pourra venir avec nous à Nantes demain..

Pendant ce temps j'ai dîné avec Gérard Drouot et son équipe pour parler de Bercy..

Bonne nuit..

Manheim, Adios Germany

The first time I went to Manheim was to see Pink Floyd's The Wall and I loved it. I said to myself, if one day I am doing indoor concerts I would like to play there.. And here we are few decades later.

This is the last concert in Germany for 2010 and we already have quite good recollections. Maybe it's the harmony in the crew. I must say that every one is top class, doing their job with dedication and talent... Everyone is improving their part everyday and we have a really good show now. I do hope that we are going to keep up like this back in France. Playing your own country is like going back to your family, warm but never easy...

Talking about family, this crew is turning into a family of its own. I feel responsible and I do care for it.. One important member is missing though, Thomas Alsina, always present for every concert since 1998. He's busy working in California on the release of yet another Apple product, but he'll be joining us in Marseille. We are all missing him.
New dates of concerts are coming in everyday from my agent in London and we have to make decisions about them. We are discussing with Alain Courieux about working with a DigiCo console for the next album and involving him in the recording and mixing process.
Peter the director for live video is doing a great job, always finding new ideas. I asked him to film some parts of the concerts. He has such a good eye. Dominique has created a new club with special backstage passes called Spam. The main character is a funny face sculpted into a potato by Domino himself.. Pierre is more and more into photography using my new Canon D7 and the results are pretty good, he knows the show by heart and he's got a good eye. You will see some of them on the blog soon. Louis from Aero prod is everywhere and it is a real pleasure to be with him on the road.

As I write this, we are on the bus, going to France, driven by Zippy. I wonder why all tour busses have such a similar style, a kind of 70's porno film type of decor, purple, black and white carpets seats and walls, with mirrors on the ceilings and glass snakes on the doors.. The Bus itself is in a dark pink robe, very chic..

And as is now usual just before going to bed, we drank sake, red wine and tasted saucisson de Lyon, the best in the world of course...
Cheers


Chris, trying to make some money



My new hair dryer



This way nobody can steal my screen



Entering the arena from the back



Souvenir de Chine



Vintage-style live video feedback



Playing Big Brother like it's 1984



I like the new oblique position of lasers



We built a teleporter for Chronologie



I even get to sit

Munich, 2:00 AM

Saturday night in Munich was great, The show seems to be consistent now... The beginning was quite religious and then became hot and groovy, we all had a good time except Julien who had an argument with his console.

Then we were all invited by Klaus, the german promoter and his wife for dinner to celebrate this german tour ending the next day at Manheim. Everybody seemed working well all together, and Klaus said he really would like to put together a 2011 tour in the country. They're nice people to work with and we'll be back then...

Pierre has done a lot of photos tonight with his new camera and turns out to be quite good at it..

Tomorrow we leave quite early to Manheim, good night.

Adagio

Those who already saw the show know that the new Adagio track is entirely about numbers, demographics and the pressure we impose on natural resources. Those numbers are dizzying. Every week, world population increases by over 1 million. It's hard to realize, that's a new large city every week, 1 million extra people to feed through agriculture, to provide with energy, health care, sanitation.

The slightest quantity becomes impressive when you multiply them by a population. Five little grams of toothpaste every morning seem innocent, yet multiplied by Europe's population, that's 2000 tons of toothpaste that flows to the rivers daily, along with 600,000m3 of urine. 12 billion dollars spent every year on dog and cat food. For every american person to eat a steak every day, that's over 100,000 cows per day. That same day, China consumes 68,000 fully-grown trees in the form of disposable chopsticks.

But there's hope: every single hour in the world, probably over 20 million people are making love, of which about 10,000 "succeed". During this hour, the earth has travelled over 100,000 kilometers in our solar system, at about 30 kilometers per second, and people will have exchanged over 8 billion emails, of which a good proportion is spam, and the rest contains the ideas of tomorrow, love declarations, lawsuits, and my words to all the people who subscribe to this blog via email.

Intimist Bamberg

Probably the smallest venue of the tour but one of the best sound so far.. All my choruses with the Moog Liberation and the AX-S sounded really great and the bass and drum sounds were quite precise. Everyday it seems that we are progressing by doing solid sounchecks where I check every track, sound-wise and visual-wise.

Christine Ferreyra has done really good photos soon published on the blog...

Tomorrow, en route to Munich... Good night..

Great audience in Leipzig

It is a privilege to play the city of Bach.. After a perfect sound check and some adjustments that I wanted to make with Olivier and Ansar for the Lights and Lasers, the concert started on time. Everybody was in a good mood. The photographer, Christine Ferreyra, arrived today. She has done amongst the best photos of the previous concerts and it is great to have her around for a few days..

The concert went rather well, with good energy on stage, I got a few problems with my in-ear monitors, and Francis had MIDI issues on his Synthex right in the middle of RV2, despite that the audience was really grooving up until the end.

Tomorrow, I would like to add some new video on Oxygene 4 which I originally planned..

I decided to add new tracks (apart from the Adagio I am playing at the Statistics moment) after March because I really want to focus on the sound, performance and visuals first. Fans will have quite a few surprises during the year anyway.

By the way, thank you for your great comments since the beginning of this leg of the 2010 tour, I really appreciate, and I'm trying my best to improve the show night after night.

A night in Stuttgart

After two days off, I came back to Germany by train with my friend the musician/producer/dj Joachim Garraud. We spent a lot of time talking new instruments, new plug-ins, tours, new media and future projects... It is always a rare pleasure to spend some time with Joachim.

Then I arrived in Stuttgart for soundcheck. I met Eric Mandel from the french sunday paper JDD, a nice guy with who we talked about the tour and lots of other things.

Stuttgart has a reputation of being quite austere like some cities of south Germany, but it is not necessarily true. Tonight I had a good time on stage and for a tuesday night quite a warm audience. The concert went rather well and we seemed to have now found a consistent level of energy..

Next stage Leipzig..  

End of First Week

Yesterday was the fifth concert of the 2010 Tour, after general rehearsals in Belgium which went quite well considering the amount of work done.

I worked a lot on this project to get closer to what I have been having in mind for quite a while. First of all, I rearranged existing tracks for the instruments the four of us use on stage. I also spent time on the mix with Alain Courieux to get every part of the music we play as clear and precise as possible, and with Julien and Vincent to get the best possible sound in our ear monitors, an essential ingredient to play in the most natural way. Then we worked hard with Cedric Courieux and Arno to adjust our new L acoustics PA system for each venue. I did practice quite a lot as well, especially the new Theremin part and my various solos. All that was previously rehearsed in the studio with the musicians Claude Samard, Francis Rimbert and Dominique Perrier. I really wanted that, beyond the technical aspect of the music, every one would express every emotion in each track, our eight hands playing with the same feel.

The other endeavour for this 2010 project was also to design a scenography which could convey the magic of my outdoor concerts, with each song building its own visual world. With Ignace d' Haese, the lighting director, we drafted specific color schemes for the cyclo behind us and I asked him to consider the instrument on the stage like "actors" in a play.. I also made the decision to include video backdrops but to avoid any directly narrative content so that the music should let every one create their own story in their mind. With Hugo and Ansar, the Laser team, we improved the laser harp and thought through ways to use the laser on stage and in space with a 3D approach. That gives the feeling of total immersion into the show for the audience, and will come in handy when we film the concert in 3D in Strasbourg and Liege.

Once we put the last touch to the music in my studio in France, I could focus on the scenography in Belgium. For the first time I decided to inject some live video throughout a few songs, to share some close-ups with the audience, as the way we are playing the instruments is sometimes quite "special". All the live feeds are intentionally in black and white to match the vintage look of the analog synthesizers and to provide a better contrast with the high-tech look of the scenography. Peter is doing an excellent job catching the best angles of the performance. To that effect, we put eight cameras on stage, including a mini cam on my glasses to give a dynamic first-person point of view.

The last general rehearsal went rather well which is quite unusual.. Then we left Belgium for Katowice in Poland, by bus. In fact, I asked Chris Rowley our great production manager to travel as much as we can by bus. In these days where the sense of geography and distances is becoming more abstract because of planes and communication technologies, it is a great experience to go through each continent by road.. And I just love the community spirit and those moments we share with the musicians, Chris, Pierre, Louis or Fiona, drinking sake, discussing future shows or making music..

The first concert in Katowice was exciting because of the Polish audience, always warm and so special to me. Technically, we had all possible problems. It was difficult to install the whole production in time, then something went wrong in Julien's console and suddenly the mix we had on stage was awful. It was a nightmare to play with such a mess in our ears. We knew from the beginning that this hall was the most difficult of the tour... But again, the audience was great and gave us the energy to fight.

During the day off, we decided to visit Auschwitz, which is only 20km away from Katowice. I thought a lot about my Mum, a great figure in the french resistance. She was caught three times by the Germans, and was sent to Ravensbruck, another horrible deportation camp. Everything has been said about the camps, but when you actually see one for yourself, it is beyond all description. The most striking thing to me is to measure the ability of some human beings to be as systematically, massively and madly destructive. It is something that every teenager should see. You feel so sick afterwards.. Thank you Mum for having taught me tolerance after all you have been through.

Then, we set off to begin the German part of the tour to Braunschweig. This second gig went much better, more or less at the level of the general rehearsals.
Hamburg was the first large city, with a lot of media presence, plus my agent Paul Charles and Gerard Drouot, the french promoter.. It was much tighter this time, the show starts to sound the way I want, still some visual glitches to improve. I think that Paul and Gerard understood what I am aiming for with this project..

We left for Berlin, always challenging and difficult like every capital in the world. Not only is it the capital of classical and electronic music, but it has also been the heart of european culture for centuries.. It is always something to play Berlin.
Fortunately, the concert went really well, the audience was so great, a mixture of young musicians, people closing their eyes to focus on the sound, girls dancing, others taking pictures. They were all so enthusiastic, it was a huge encouragement for all of us..

Yesterday night was Oberhausen.. I think for the first time, we delivered what I had in mind, all week we have made the few necessary adjustments on stage and visually and the result was an incredible feedback from the crowd. Everybody stood up for the last 45 minutes, and we delivered such an energy on stage that everyone went really crazy.

I hope we can keep this level of quality next week and maybe even improve it. Then when I will feel we "have" the show, I shall be able to introduce some new songs, but first we need every one in the crew to become in total control and confidence...

Next step Stuttgart.. Stay tuned.

Road Movie

It is now a ritual, Saturday night we boarded "our" bus and took possession of our cabins like passengers of a steamship. By the time we were done making ourselves at home, the lights of Antwerp were gone and we were cruising eastward towards Katowice, and it felt as if the previous tour had never stopped. Claude is dozing in his front seat, Francis probably fell asleep watching a movie at the back, Chris and Dominique explored the kitchen for some sake and went to bed. As to me I am enjoying the hypnotic highway from my room. For a whole month we will live in this ship in apnea from the world, emerging every morning in a new city so different from the others. We're a circus and Europe is our playground.