{"product_id":"cha-cha-guitri_french-synth-wave-st-etienne-1981-vinyl_2014_lad","title":"FRENCH SYNTH WAVE - ST ETIENNE - 1981 (vinyl)","description":"When you're 20 in Saint-Etienne in 1981, you're glad not to end up in a mine or on an assembly line. And if you have no interest in football, you form a rock band, which you impulsively name Chacha Guitry! The future belongs to Serge and Dominique, to Charly and Marie, two young couples who met in high school and share a fascination for a certain modernist utopia: that of the avant-gardes of the beginning of the century, of Bauhaus, of Moholy-Nagy, of Marcel l'Herbier's films, but also that of the Trente Glorieuses, of domestic arts, of the triumph of consumer society over civilization, of objects over people, of the clear line over artistic blur. While they started like everyone else with flute and acoustic guitar listening to King Crimson, the arrival of synthesizers on the European musical landscape completely redefined their direction: they cut their hair, put on ties, replaced Indian tapestries with Venetian blinds. It was around an EMS AKS synthesizer, a Roland SH101, and a Roland TR808 drum machine that the four friends gathered in their home-studio to compose these electronic and exotic, carefree and joyful nursery rhymes that are the hallmark of Chacha Guitry. The group thus chose to climb the sunny side of New Wave, the one taken by the B-52's or Isabelle Antena, rather than its dark side, cluttered by the heirs of Joy Division. The boys programmed the machines, the girls created geometric and minimalist costumes with whatever they had on hand (paper rather than fabric). From this furiously arty endeavor, which elevated DIY to a credo, emerged two prototype albums in the form of cassettes (one of them inserted into an ice cube-shaped plexiglass cube) that compose a wonderfully artificial tropical panorama: the sea is plastic, the palm trees plywood, the naiads silicone. Instead of ukuleles, Chacha Guitry's chic and synthetic tracks: eyes fixed on the beauties of today, \"La lumière blanche,\" \"Beau rivage,\" \"L'Art Nägre,\" \"L'Avis des animaux\" (a cover of Martin Denny's \"Quiet Village,\" which served as the theme song for the TV show \"La Vie des animaux\"), all hymns to love, lightness, and domestic comfort. There would be two concerts in Saint-Etienne and one in Lyon. Faced with the difficulty of performing live, Chacha Guitry hired a fifth member: a Revox tape recorder that played the soundtrack while the band (dinner jackets and bow ties for the boys, keyboard-patterned paper dresses for the girls) sang and played percussion. In 1985, after trying to conquer Paris, the group broke up in \"Sainté\" without remorse: looking back at the journey they had made, they realized that they, too, had just invented the 80s.","brand":"Cha Cha Guitri","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":55310350909784,"sku":null,"price":23403981.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0898\/4943\/0360\/files\/3521381529708_3c41e9f6-2e50-4e65-9c0c-3ee65dbf2cf1.jpg?v=1760317174","url":"https:\/\/vinyles.com\/en-us\/products\/cha-cha-guitri_french-synth-wave-st-etienne-1981-vinyl_2014_lad","provider":"Vinyles.com","version":"1.0","type":"link"}