POLAROID - ROMAN - PHOTO (vinyl)

Description

What can you say about this album? It’s always difficult to talk about songs... I wanted to have a concept album with tracks that could be played on the radio, in clubs, and that would make girls dance and make fun of boys. The main subject of most of the songs is about—around stories of girl/woman-boy relationships, with the exception of “Thriller” and I’m not so sure about that either, because in the story of this thriller, the hero was led to his tragic end by a woman). In every respect, it was an album for girls, where they had the first and best role: they are all charming, cheeky, insolent, bold, funny, endearing, loving... T. Müller, the driving force behind the RUTH project, was no newcomer when POLAROÏD/ROMAN/PHOTO was released in 1985 with its title track. His older brother Patrick, and one of their cousins, introduced him at a very young age to contemporary and experimental music. He thus began early on to tinker on his own with sounds on old tape recorders, but it was in 1977, at Arts Appliqués where he was studying, that T. launched his first band ARCANE with some friends. Their sound was strange, a mix of saturated guitars and tape loops in feedback that would leave no discographic or stage trace... Alongside ARCANE, T. was already working solo on his concept project ILITCH, an experimental and innovative project, whose first album “Periodikmindtrouble” was released in 1978 on the Oxigène label. Despite modest sales, this first record opened the doors to recognition and a major critical success in the very closed and elitist circles of experimental and underground music. Since ILITCH’s musical direction was too restrictive for Thierry’s thirst for experimentation and curiosity, he developed in parallel with writer, actress and photographer Murielle Huster a Punk project called RUTH ELLYERI (an anagram of T. Müller, in full Ruth M. Ellyeri), intended to embody one of his schizophrenic facets and allow him to broaden his field of expression to other musical styles than those attributed to ILITCH. From this project came the cult punk track “Mescalito,” which would later appear on the mythical and sadly very rare 125g 33 1/3 rpm compilation (1979) on the Oxigène label (the first “French punk” sampler). At the end of 1978, he met P. Doray, another champion of French experimental music, at the Oxigène label headquarters. He moved in with him near Rouen, in an isolated farm with a makeshift music studio. They worked on their respective projects and met from time to time for joint experiments including CRASH (in homage to J. G. Ballard). As early as 1982, an early version of the track “Polaroïd-Roman-Photo” came to life under the project name RUTH. - - “I wanted to make a track to make girls dance while making fun of boys. I plugged a little homemade clock into my Farfisa organ as a sequencer, I had a little Roland synth-guitar, I fed the organ into it, that’s how it started.” - Philippe, amused by the idea of working on a more pop project, then offered to write the lyrics. T. worked on other tracks for an album and asked friends to write other lyrics for him: E. Nono, visual artist, wrote the lyrics for “Mots”, F. Lapierre wrote the lyrics for “Misty Mouse”, for “Tu m'ennuies”, she provided vocals on those two tracks and the first version of “Polaroïd-Roman-Photo”. Later, T. would settle in at Studio Anagramme to record the acoustic sounds. At the end of the sessions, T. and Philippe were not too enthusiastic about the mixes of “Polaroïd-Roman-Photo”, which they felt lacked “flamboyance”. They decided to record a new female vocal with a professional singer, and sound engineer P. Chevalot offered to mix the track at Synthesis studio “so it would really hit”. With his tape under his arm, and with the help of J. Pasquier (S.C.O.P.A. - Invisible Records, where ILITCH’s second album, 10 Suicides, was released), he set out to approach record companies. “I practically went to all the ‘majors’ and got turned down every time! The only place where I found someone interested was RCA. It was F. Fottorino who had signed Kas Product, but when it reached the big boss level, that was the end of it! There was also hope with P. Constantin at Virgin France, but without result. It was finally released in 1985 on Paris Album, a small independent label.” The album (with its title track, though a potential hit) would sell barely 50 copies in 1985. In 2004, DJs M. Colin and I. Smagghe, having discovered the track “Polaroïd-Roman-Photo”, decided to bring it back from oblivion and released it on the compilation So Young But So Cold (Tigersushi), then Born Bad Records on the BIPPP compilation in 2008. Thanks to them, a “new life” was given to the track and the album. Compilations and reissues followed, making this record a cult album. Graphic designer, T. Müller continues to produce music under his own name, under ILITCH and RUTH, on his own projects and in numerous collaborations.