St Germain return with a universe of African sounds
St Germain’s first album in 15 years brings a French touch to Africa and the blues, writes Paris Pompor.
IN THE closing years of the 1990s, a fresh sound dubbed French touch connected with Australasian record buyers, and one of its proponents, St Germain, could be heard everywhere: cafes, bars, clubs, cars, dinner parties and spas all bumped to his brand of deep, jazzy house.
St Germain – aka Parisian producer Ludovic Navarre – was already big in Britain and Europe with a million-selling debut called Boulevard (1995). Its cover showed Navarre strutting through blurred traffic looking like a determined advertising executive in white shirt, suit pants and ‘90s professional-man ponytail.
By the time follow-up LP Tourist arrived in 2000, first single Rose Rouge was drilling a hole in people’s heads thanks to the vocal sample ‘‘I want you to get together’’ lifted from Blue Note singer Marlene Shaw.
Like the bluesier second single Sure Thing, which sampled Miles Davis and John Lee Hooker, it sounded fresh and fantastic. Tastemakers, DJs and almost three million buyers agreed: Tourist was a modern masterpiece.
Then suddenly St Germain vanished. What happened?
‘‘I worked really hard to make it right,’’ Navarre says via an interpreter on the eve of his first album in 15 years. After a warm ‘‘’Allo, ‘allo’’, he has switched to French. It becomes clear Navarre is a perfectionist, valuing precision. His new self-titled album took three years to record. Work on it began in 2006.
‘‘That’s the way I work – I do things with sincerity,’’ Navarre says. ‘‘I respect the people who were waiting for the next thing, the follow-up to Tourist and Boulevard. I didn’t want to do the same old thing over again with jazz. The idea was to get into the universe of African sounds.’’
The new album is indeed full of African sounds, from Malian vocals to instruments such as balafon, n’goni, kora and soku. Far from cultural appropriation, Navarre searched long and hard for the right players to bring his lyrics and compositions to life. After several false starts, a chance meeting with a group of Malian musicians living in Paris set wheels in motion. Woven around the band’s hypnotic playing and harmonies are Navarre’s familiar dusty samples, including some from esteemed blues man Lightnin’ Hopkins.
‘‘What I like is music that has a personality and music that expresses something sincere,’’ Navarre says. ‘‘You can’t just ask anybody to play authentic blues … If you haven’t lived it, if you haven’t had some sort of hard life or suffered, you just can’t fake it.’’
It was this principle driving his search for collaborators.
‘‘I wanted to work with these African musicians because the way they play, the music, points of reference, rhythms, are all completely different.’’
Fifteen years on, Navarre is poised to relaunch himself with another quality album and a tour that will take the African group on the road from November. Is Australasia on the itinerary?
‘‘Possibly in January,’’ says Navarre. Apparently Australia was a favourite destination when previously touring Tourist for three years.
That journey included a Sydney stopover in 2001, when Navarre played an outdoor show beside Bondi Beach for the Vibes On A Summer’s Day festival.
Does he recall that balmy evening, when the sun set over hundreds of scantily clad Sydneysiders grinding to his house grooves?
‘‘Oui, oui,’’ comes Navarre’s spirited reply.
‘‘I remember in the evening waiting to go into the venue. There was a huge cloud of bats!’’ St Germain’s new, self-titled album is available from October 9.