FLAVIEN BERGER
Humble French maestro traverses trippy landscapes and pop with bite…
“PSYCHEDELIC R&B ISN’T REALLY A GENRE, SO I WANTED TO TRY IT.”
Computer games Can rot your brain if you play them too much, but try telling that to Flavien Berger. The Parisborn musician has the Sony PlayStation gaming console to thank for his interest in writing songs.“I started out making music on my PlayStation,” he says, “on a game called Music 2000. By playing the game, I started making music. Soon I realised that I was composing.”
Flavien’s autodidactic explorations became more serious with time, as did his interest in music-making machines, but it was a decade before he plucked up the courage to play anything to his friends. Initially he began scoring soundtracks for short films, a sideline that has kept him busy since 2012. But with the release of his first album, Léviathan, in 2015 and his second album, Contre-temps, that arrived late last year, Berger has grown from cult concern into a cover star for French weeklies like Les Inrocks.
“I didn’t really want to release my stuff,” he says. “I brought out my first album four years ago and I’m 32 years old now, so releasing music has been something I’ve come to late.”
Berger is a humble soul who makes his career sound like a hobby, but evidence is to the contrary. He’s becoming a star in France, and across Europe too, and he’s still worshipped by cool underground papers like Gonzaï. It’s easy to see why. He’s a blueeyed musical maverick with flowing Viking locks and a well maintained Bavarian moustache. Contre-temps is a touched double player that throws up variegated splashes of genius, full of dreamy sonic experiments. Berger also peddles a fine line in space bossa nova. He’s not quite as well-known over here in the UK, but he recently packed out London’s Village Underground with a swinging crowd of international hipsters and whitetrousered sophisticates.
The titular Contre-temps, which, like the rest of his work oozes with jeux de mots, is a 14-minute title track recorded with avant-garde R&B chanteuse Bonnie Banane, who is one of the most interesting artists working in France today. Together they traverse a trippy landscape that’s one part D’Angelo, one part Brigitte Fontaine.“My plan was to make a psychedelic R&B song,” says Berger, “which doesn’t really exist. Psychedelic R&B isn’t really a genre, so I wanted to try it.”
Contre-temps is a labyrinthine world that only really gives up its secrets with repeat visits, though there are pop moments like Brutalisme and Maddy La Nuit to try to ease you in. When Prog suggests that the record might be difficult to get into at first, Berger sounds a little offended. “It’s not my job to sell my music – my job is to make it,” he states, matter-of-factly. “As for how accessible it is? I think what I did on this record was more pop than my debut. Simpler structures and uncomplicated words. I didn’t do it to sell records or be on the radio – I did it because we are surrounded by pop and I wanted to know what I could do with it.”
Contre-temps is pop sui generis. Ja