Genetic World (Télépopmusik) NNR#2
We’d hinted at it before: this “No November Rain” (1) column was indeed intended to reexamine, during a month that’s all too often depressing, our perception, and even our conception, of the world through music, artists, and the visions they’ve championed; and this second selection is obviously not, in this context, a random choice. In the post-Y2K era, as the ethereal electronic sound pioneered by Portishead and Massive Attack was reaching a wider audience, revitalized in large part by the French Touch movement spearheaded by Daft Punk, Air, and Cassius, the nightlife scene, whose dance and techno momentum was beginning to wane, a group chose a different path of evolution: a fusion of genres, including electronic, pop, trip-hop, and hip-hop, in wildly dreamlike compositions, where vocals, including the unforgettable and now iconic voice of Angela McCluskey and the flow of Juice Aleem, meet the electronic structures and textures of the French trio on the album Genetic World (2001).
Télépopmusik, consisting of Stéphan Haeri, Fabrice Dumont, and Christophe Hetier (the famous DJ Antipop), also blends acoustic instruments with unexpected orchestrations to deliver smash hits: the monumental “Breathe”, a title that now carries a very special connotation, the powerful “Free” with its free-jazz spirit reminiscent of a track by their contemporary, Laurent Garnier’s captivating “The Man with the Red Face,” and “Genetic World,” which lends its name to the album and sheds light in more ways than one on the highly successful cover art, featuring a field of wheat (genetically modified?) whose reassuring colors stand in stark contrast to the reality of the organic/genetic mix. But make no mistake: Télépopmusik does not openly address social issues on this album, which, in hindsight, comes across more as a testament to a world in the midst of profound change, genetic, of course, but one that wants to turn the page on the ’90s, that wants to dance (“Dance Me”), dream, and hope, and presents itself as a reconciliation between the human and the electronic (“Smile” is a standout example of this, with its tone that is both melancholic and luminous), taking on the air of a post-’90s reconciliation. At times, it takes on the hues of film noir music, offering another nocturnal interlude with jazzy accents, foreshadowing genre-blending approaches such as those pioneered by a certain Wax Tailor (“Trishika”).
Yet it’s impossible not to take the time to listen over and over to the prescient track “Love Can Damage Your Health,” which, not without irony, sums up Télépopmusik’s simply excellent work with its soft, poetic electronic sound, long before Spotify started offering its “chill” playlists to soothe the anxieties of a modern world of which it is the driving force, while others stripped it of its meaning by creating inhuman, repetitive, and soulless so-called “lo-fi” soundtracks to accompany you through your long nights of mind-numbing work (“Yesterday was a lie”), leaving you with the brilliant illusion that you’ve just experienced a moment of pleasure.
And it is not Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle (set to music in the famous, unpronounceable track: “δp.δq≥h⁄4π”), which marks the end of Newtonian physics (and that of the album at the same time), that will disprove the fact that Genetic World is a masterfully opened door onto the complexity of the new world, quantum, genetic, and electronic, a world that the French duo Télépopmusik sought to make creative, poetic, and human, and whose ironic fate we now assess twenty-five years later, amid ethical debates and in the midst of a world marked by neglect, violence, and dehumanization. An album that will envelop you, carry you away, transport you, and bring you back to the world, not without, along the way, altering a few residual conservative atoms, caught here and there amid some fear or inertia to which we are all subject, one day or another.
(1) “No November Rain” is a column dedicated to shaking off the gloom of fall and taking the time to listen to entire albums again—like an invitation to embark on a journey (though we never said it would be a peaceful one). Read the introductory article.
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