Derrière la pluie

"Derrière La Pluie" is an instrumental album, with minimal colours, set in a bluish environment. The apparent carelessness of the album plunges the listener into fifty minutes of ambiguous quietude. Ennio Morricone composes the theme music of "Derrick" whilst on Dubalgan. Lynch psychoanalyses Cronenberg to the sound of surges of post rock guitars. With this album, Lab° developed a new stage concept based on a new visual and musical artistic identity. Lab°'s VJ, a full time member of the group, filmed and directed all the scenes which correspond to each track of the record. This work is concretized by the interactivity between the images and the music. The images are mixed live on stage. Thus, it is only on stage that Lab° take their completed form. The members of Lab° (six musicians, a VJ, and a lighting engineer) come from various branches of the Parisian underground scene. They were attracted to dub by the genres production style and the artistic opening that it had to offer. Dub, born in the Sixties, decade of a new generation of recording studios, is incontestably the embryo of electronic music. The group always perceived dub as a form of expression based on experimentation and surprise. They consider that dub is not only a form of music, but also a form of mixing, and thus, of composition. In 1998, the free form improvisations soon became structured. The music created had a dub identity, supported by the strongly coloured foundations, which were the influences of the group. The integration of the mixing table and the effects into the music on the same level as drums, the bass, the guitars, and the sampler underlines this relationship. Lab°'s albums are produced by mille milliards, managed by the members of the group themselves. They are distributed by pias and various alternative networks. This choice resumes the axis of the group\ that of independence. Very little material had been prepared before the recording. The initial idea was to set up our own recording equipment somewhere and record whatever came to mind. We ended up in the lounge of the family house of one of the members of the band. The music was improvised in a very natural manner. Various sounds of the house itself were sampled, such as the creaking of the oven door, or the crackling of the chimney fire (which was burning in the heath during the whole of the recording). These sounds were then scattered everywhere throughout the improvisations. The melodies and rhythms appeared and seemed to turn up without warning. The spirit of these ten days can be found on the following tracks: SANS JAMAIS EXCLURE LE SABOTAGE, REVIENT AUX TEMOINS, DERRIERE LA PLUIE, SCREW LOOSE, LE VISAGE DANS MA BOUCHE, and DUB ET RIDICULE. Five months later, after having played a series of concerts, and having listened to the basic tracks, we booked another ten days of studio time at La Clef in Saint Germain En Laye. We were searching for more violent sounding tracks. SOLNESS had been ready to record for about a year (we had been playing it on stage since the TAFFY AP tour). EN LIGNE DE FUITE had been structured during rehearsals, and was therefore recorded quickly. THE SKELETON EYE and TVOJA SUDBINA were improvised on the spot as well as WITH A VELVET TREAD which was the only one shot improvisation of this session. Finally, fifteen tracks were ready for the album, including one vocal track. This piece (as well as three others) was left out of the album tracklist, mainly for lack of time, but also for artistic reasons. After one particular concert, a man called Fred followed us with his dog and van. He stayed with us for a few days and listened to the improvisations. After having listened to one of these pieces, he described the images in his head. He spoke of a place behind the rain. DERRIERE LA PLUIE was kept not only for the title of this piece, but also for the title of the album. Very little material had been prepared before the recording. The initial idea was to set up our own recording equipment somewhere and record whatever came to mind. We ended up in the lounge of the family house of one of the members of the band. The music was improvised in a very natural manner. Various sounds of the house itself were sampled, such as the creaking of the oven door, or the crackling of the chimney fire (which was burning in the heath during the whole of the recording). These sounds were then scattered everywhere throughout the improvisations. The melodies and rhythms appeared and seemed to turn up without warning. The spirit of these ten days can be found on the following tracks: SANS JAMAIS EXCLURE LE SABOTAGE, REVIENT AUX TEMOINS, DERRIERE LA PLUIE, SCREW LOOSE, LE VISAGE DANS MA BOUCHE, and DUB ET RIDICULE. Five months later, after having played a series of concerts, and having listened to the basic tracks, we booked another ten days of studio time at La Clef in Saint Germain En Laye. We were searching for more violent sounding tracks. SOLNESS had been ready to record for about a year (we had been playing it on stage since the TAFFY AP tour). EN LIGNE DE FUITE had been structured during rehearsals, and was therefore recorded quickly. THE SKELETON EYE and TVOJA SUDBINA were improvised on the spot as well as WITH A VELVET TREAD which was the only one shot improvisation of this session. Finally, fifteen tracks were ready for the album, including one vocal track. This piece (as well as three others) was left out of the album tracklist, mainly for lack of time, but also for artistic reasons. After one particular concert, a man called Fred followed us with his dog and van. He stayed with us for a few days and listened to the improvisations. After having listened to one of these pieces, he described the images in his head. He spoke of a place behind the rain. DERRIERE LA PLUIE was kept not only for the title of this piece, but also for the title of the album.