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

Description

In 2010, she was the very first singer-songwriter to be admitted to the highly prestigious Villa Medici. This caused a stir: representatives of contemporary music sent an open letter of protest to the Minister of Culture (1), while on the internet, the controversy was compounded by insults... These reactions were all the more curious given that Claire Diterzi is the opposite of easy listening: a researcher who dares to decompartmentalize, innovate, and put herself at risk. She is undoubtedly the most unique and audacious artist in French chanson. The advantage with Claire Diterzi is that she creates by shaking up music. And since she obviously has a voice and more, it was inevitable that one day she would turn the music world upside down. This is the case with 69 B.P.M., a total, unprecedented, and extraordinary project whose shockwave reverberates from the infinitely small sound to its grand theatricalization: for what and for whom do we play? What is the purpose of a record today? What is the essence of music? Entirely produced by the artist, who is now flying solo, 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), it's time for a punch: I am a woman with balls and I'm here to smash everything. It's like a second round of combat with a vengeful motivation - nothing less than a return to her roots for this born punk. In a new sound environment (and largely composed to the wild texts of Argentinian playwright Rodrigo Garcia), more rock than pop and more pop than rock, riddled with explosive hits, we find the singer's beating heart, but stronger, further: it hits, it claps, it thunders, it screams, it pulses, it grooves (it also cries and calms down because life must go on, but it no longer dreams of love). At the head of a rock band assembled especially for the occasion, she appears as we dream of her: elusive, plural, both child-woman and femme fatale, smashing academism with a kick in the ass, brilliant and controlling every detail, finding her note in the corner, without god or master, imposing her own law of an eloquent and contained sound, between the Gibson and the Ukulele. Very generous, then. Strong and tender. Refined and fully charged - you shouldn't have messed with her. In 2014, the composer kept a logbook sent almost every month to theater directors. Soberly titled "Journal d'une création," it forms the matrix of the project: she presents her texts, drawings, collages, and personal photomontages, memories that echo and correspond with each other so that "people understand what (she) is saying in (her) songs." The writing provides a score for the ongoing work: the songs are visual, conceived according to their place in the hall, imagined according to the reactions they will produce on stage. 69 B.P.M. is being born. Music is no longer enough on its own. The art aims to be total: theatrical, literary, visual, sonic, and cinematic too, since all songs will have a clip, and all clips will be broadcast in 2015. Here again, a revolution is underway: the album will exist, but last. The dematerialization of the record has begun with a view to an overinvestment in the stage. A return of music 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 stage. A concert on a theater stage. In the same way that Rodrigo Garcia is "a stage writer" or that there is contemporary dance and theater, Claire Diterzi works to make music a plastic art that exists only on stage. She dreams of being a contemporary chanson singer, too cramped in the static blueprint of a record. Not only is her music visual, but visionary: it implies a real audience participation, as if the "diva in eternal development," by making us commune with her work in four forms (journal, clips, show, and record) invites us to create our own journey under a sky impossible to contain. The horizon is not dead. The time of the Great Discoveries is returning, and our guitar-heroine stands at the prow of the ship. Patrice Pluyette.