69 BATTEMENTS PAR MINUTE (vinyl LP 33T + Carnet de création 32 pages)

Description

In 2010, she became the very first singer-songwriter admitted to the highly prestigious Villa Medici. This caused some teeth-grinding: representatives of contemporary music sent an open letter of protest to the Minister of Culture (1), while online the controversy was accompanied by insults... Reactions all the more curious since Claire Diterzi is the opposite of easy listening: a seeker who dares to break down barriers, innovate, and take risks. She is even without doubt the most singular and audacious artist in French chanson. The advantage with Claire Diterzi is that she creates by shaking up music. And since she naturally has the voice and more besides, one day she had to turn the world of music upside down. That is the case with 69 B.P.M., a total, out-of-the-ordinary and unprecedented project whose shockwave reverberates from the tiniest sound to its grand theatricalization: what and for whom do we play? What is a record for today? What is the essence of music? Entirely produced by the artist, who is now flying on her own, this new project (and above all not just an album) unleashes the right measure of a devastating energy. Shortly after the sublime sufferings of a broken woman (Le salon des refusées, 2013), the time has come for a knockout blow: I am a woman with balls and I’m here to blow everything up. It is like a second round of combat driven by a vengeful motivation — nothing less than a return to her roots for this born punk. In a new sonic environment (largely composed to the wild texts of Argentine playwright Rodrigo Garcia), more rock than pop and more pop than rock, packed with explosive hits, we find the singer’s beating heart but stronger, further: it hits, it snaps, it thunders, it screams, it pulses, it grooves (it cries and calms down too because one has to live, but it no longer dreams of love). At the head of a rock band assembled especially for the occasion, she appears as we dream her: elusive, multifaceted, both child-woman and femme fatale, smashing academicism with kicks in the ass, brilliant and meticulous, searching for her note in the angle, with no god or master, imposing her own law with an eloquent and restrained sound, between the Gibson and the Ukulele. Very generous, then. Strong and tender. Stripped down and fired up to the max — she was not to be messed with. In 2014, the composer kept a logbook sent each month or so to theatre directors. Titled simply Journal d'une création, it forms the matrix of the project: there she sets out her texts, drawings, collages and personal photo montages, memories that answer one another, correspond with one another so that “people understand what I’m talking about in my songs.” Writing provides a score for the work in progress: the songs are visual, conceived according to their place in the room, imagined according to the reactions they will produce on stage. 69 B.P.M. is being born. Music is no longer enough unto itself. Art is intended to be total: theatrical, literary, visual, sonic, cinematic too, since all the songs will have a video, and all the videos will be released in 2015. Here too, a revolution is underway: the album will exist, but last. The dematerialization of the record has begun in view of a greater investment in the stage. Music returns to its source: physical, human, alive. To discover the sound, there is no other way than to come to the concert. Is it really a concert, then? Yes, but on a stage. A concert on a theatre stage. In the same way that Rodrigo Garcia is “a stage writer” or that there exists contemporary dance and contemporary theatre, Claire Diterzi is working to make music into a visual art that exists only on stage. She dreams of herself as a singer of contemporary chanson, too cramped in the static mock-up of a record. Not only is her music visual, it is visionary: it implies a real participation from the audience, as if the “diva in eternal development,” by making us commune with her work under four forms (journal, videos, show and record), were inviting us to create our own journey under an impossible-to-contain sky. The horizon is not dead. The age of the Great Discoveries is returning and our guitar-heroine stands upright at the ship’s prow. Patrice Pluyette.