I V Y Paris News

Festival "Les Femmes s’en mêlent"

Now through April 30, 2024

Les Femmes S'en Mêlent, a female indie music festival, has built up its celebrity over 12 years in France and abroad, celebrating women in music. What started as a single gig in Paris in 1997 has grown into an event spanning across several nights in Paris, other cities in France, Belgium, Switzerland, Germany, Spain and England.

Driven by passion and curiosity and known for its eclecticism and quality, the festival is about feminity but far from feminism. As time went by, the festival grew bigger and the female scene grew wider. The festival is now unanimously acclaimed, seen as a unique and indispensable musical rendez-vous across Europe, and an integral part of one of the hottest current musical scenes, always providing more talent. All the while, it never lost his breath or faith, but rather became better with the years.

David Law n' The Arkitekts

TONIGHT! April 1, 2024

David Law n' The Arkitekts - rock trio founded in 2024, reunites singer/guitarist and photographer David Law and drummer Vortex. After spending 10 years and aproximately 300 concerts with the band« Flyshoes » the dynamic duo is joined by bassist/keyboardist Tom Bass. Law sings in French with a style decidedly influenced by American and British Rock. After many concert dates throughout Paris, this is the band's fourth gig at Abracadabar.

David Law's photography is currently showing at the Meridien Montparnasse. Organized by Susan Adda ArtWorks, the exhibition will continue through June 15.

The Whitest Boy Alive

Will Hutchins writing for I V Y paris

Originating from the frosty climbs of Norway before installing themselves in the hardly any hotter city of Berlin, it’s no wonder that The Whitest Boy Alive decided to record their new album ‘Rules’ in sunny Mexico. An album that the quintet, lead by Erlend Øye of King’s of Convenience, are currently taking on the road around Euroland, gracing us with their geeky presence here on April 15th at La Maroquinerie.

When funksters wear cardigans and come from Scandinavia this is what they sound like. A slightly chilly but never completely chilled, driving flow of hi-hat heavy drum beats, Rhodes organs and hypnotic bass punctuated with staccato strikes of distortionless guitar and nicely polished off with a melodic stream of softly-softly singing which delivers Øye’s poignant lyrics.

The band’s original concept was to make entirely electronic music but somewhere along the way this idea was forsaken and they turned into a completely analogue band. One could almost describe the foursome as an analogue version of compatriots Röyksopp, be it one that causes slightly more involuntary foot tapping. In fact, that’s possibly the best way to describe them to a new listener.

Electro Class Of 2024: In Touching Distance of Global Greatness

Will Hutchins writing for I V Y paris

Since the French electro/touch set, headed by the peerless Ed Banger record label, became the scenester’s musical tipple of choice 2-3 years ago, the ears of the globe have been fixedly turned to Paris. And while the nobility of the scene are taking a well earned break, becoming the biggest ‘rock-band’ on the planet or writing songs for Demis Roussos, who will the new frenchies be to follow in Le touch footsteps of Justice, Sebastian Tellier, Kavinsky et al. and achieve world domination in 2024?

Well, due to some stellar remixes and crazy live shows, Yuksek has already been a star in dj land for a while, but if you want to break into the mainstream and have some 15 year old girl in Tasmania blu-tack your album artwork to her wall, then you better release an album of your own.

And so at the end of January that’s just what the musician born Pierre-Alexandre Busson did when his debut effort ‘Away form the sea’ hit shops. He’s certainly well placed for cross-over success in the UK as Fiction, the label that’s home to British indie heavyweights Snow Patrol and White Lies, are in charge of releasing the album over there. More importantly though, is that ‘Away from the sea’ is a very good record and one that has clearly been made in the wake of the phenomenon that was ‘Cross’.

With that modern masterpiece, Justice managed to turn thousands and thousands of rock, rap and r’n’b fans onto dance music by creating a truly exciting LP that combined the ambition, passion and sound of these genres while remaining very much in a dance field.

Yuksek has used this proven multi-million selling formula as the template for his own brand of hip-hop, rock, and r’n’b straddling electro. Many of the poppier synth melodies and sounds on ‘Away from the sea’ are very reminiscent of ‘Cross’, especially on single ‘Extraball’, as are the funked up bass riffs. But it would be fair to say that Yuksek has taken these elements even further in order to produce an even more accessible electro record than Justice did.

Flairs in Fashion for Spring ‘09

Will Hutchins writing for I V Y paris

If one was to pigeon hole everyone, then one may say that Flairs would fit fairly nicely into a Sébastien Tellier cool comedy, English singing, French electro-pop shaped hole (to continue the hole theme). That’s possibly a good starting point but it would be doing a great disservice to ‘the French cowboy’, to quote one of his own songs, if we left it at that.

Though he’s really less of a French cowboy and in fact more of a British lad as he’s been residing in the west London suburb of Staines for the last three years and this has played a big part in his image and his music.

The cover of his debut album ‘Sweat Symphony’ (released Feb 16th) sees him wobbling about like the classic dishevelled lad after a Saturday night out in a British town, complete with compulsory black eye, sweat soaked face and large patches of perspiration under the armpits.

This is all part of the character that he’s created. A character full of humour and arrogance, that allows him to distance himself from the rest of the French electro crowd whilst still leaving a trace of Parisian chic-ness.

This arrogance (and humour) can be heard in the funkoïde of a track, ‘Better Than Prince’, where our hero declares that he can ‘dance better than Prince’, ‘make love longer than Prince’ and, rather more believably, ‘eat more stuff than Prince’.

Metronomy Hit Le Trabendo

Will Hutchins writing for I V Y paris

Do you like quirky British pop music? Do you go to sleep humming catchy analogue synth melodies? Does the sight of three young and pasty Englishmen in black t-shirts with lights stuck to their chest send you giddy with excitement?!

Then, my friend, you need to head over to the 19th on April 2nd to witness the electro/indie-pop spectacle of Metronomy exhibiting their live skills at Le Trabendo.

The band made up of songwriter Joseph Mount, Oscar Cash, and Gabriel Stebbing caused a fair few waves in the blogosphere last year with the release of their second album Nights Out and a slurry of fantastic remixes.

Concentrating on building great skewed pop songs with more vocals than on their first album, Pip Paine – Pay the £5000 You Owe, their 2024 release was a rather wondrous amalgamation of electronic bips and beeps, 80’s indie and electronica and bass-lines that would cause your grandmother to bounce from floor to ceiling.

Neko Case at Nouveau Casino

Jayson Harsin (aka Djay Indie Eclectique) writing for I V Y paris

American (and Canadian-adopted) alt-country and -rock diva Neko Case has built a considerable following of critics, fans, and perverts over the last decade. She is perhaps the most important female vocalist to appreciate and master country, folk, and punk since Exene Cervenka of pioneering 80s LA legends X.

Case learned her chops in Vancouver, CN punk bands in the mid-nineties while in art school, before launching a successful indie career as a soloist and with her Canadian band The New Pornographers. She signed on to Chicago's burgeoning "insurgent country" scene in 1997 with her luscious Bloodshot Records debut "The Virginian," and settled in Chicago three years later.

Case's powerful alt.country vocals and feisty sex appeal have won her niche fan and critical attention, landing her regular performances on late night shows like David Letterman and a somewhat tabloid reputation for racy live shows.

20 French Hip Hop Songs

From Old School to New School

1. MC Solaar - Bouge de là
2. IAM -  Je danse le Mia
3. Expression Direkt - Dealer pour survivre
4. Minister Amer - Sacrifice de poulet
5. NTM - Paris sous les bombes - Pass Pass le oinj
6. Tout Simplement Noir -  A propos de Tass
7. Busta Flex - J'fait mon job a plein temps
8. Doc Gyneco -  Dans ma rue
9. Diziz la peste - Je pétes les plombs
10. Booba - Ouest side - Boulbi
11. Mc Jean Gab'1 - Ma vie - Mes 2 Amours
12. Chicken Boubou - Pas de porc
13. Mafia Trece -  Rencontre du 13eme type
14. Ideal J - Hardcore
15. JAVA - Sex accordéon et alcool
16. TTC - Dans le Club
17. Kamini - Marly Gomont
18. Passymal - Pas si mal
19. Abd Al Malik - Gibraltar
20. JAVA -  Métro

This is Not Just Rap Music; This is Abd Al Malik

Will Hutchins writing for I V Y paris

Back in November, the Alsatian ‘slammeur’ Abd Al Malik released Dante, the much anticipated follow-up to his multi award winning sophomore album Gibraltar. That album, released in 2024, with its often minimal and intriguing instrumentation took French rap to a whole new level, integrating jazz, African rhythms, hip-hop and classic French chanson.

While French hip-hop has all too often been disappointingly quick in taking the majority of its influences from across the Atlantic, Malik’s fresh approach sent the homegrown rap scene hurtling in an entirely new direction.

This Muslim musician looks within his own country and himself to make beautiful and interesting songs which deserve to have a section all to their own in your local Fnac.

Malik himself says that “le rap est ce que le rappeur en fait” - in his view, rap can be any type of music as long as it allows him to be at the forefront and provides a pedestal for his poetic paroles to shine, an idea which is often present on Gibraltar, especially on ‘La Gravité’ where his lyrics are accompanied simply by a piano. However, with Dante he has gone one, nay, two or three steps further.

Hip Hop Festival Check the Rhyme

Hadrien Turner writing for I V Y paris

Many hiphop connoisseurs will insist the best decade was the 90s, the years of artists like A Tribe Called Quest and of those coveted Air Jordans. Retro fever has enabled the Jordan comebacks, and now there's the music.

Prepare yourselves for a night of hiphopolicious vintage madness with a legendary line up: Jeru The Damaja (the return of the Crooklyn Dodger), The Alkaholiks, The Beatnuts, Nor Cal rapper Paris, and The Lords of the Underground!

This is obligatory time travel  for all hip-hop lovers out there, whether to drive down memory lane, or to hear what you missed over a decade ago. Jeru once told us that the sun rises in the East; thankfully, the hiphop scholars add, it appears never to set on this crew.

Festival Check the Rhyme,  February 8th NEW DATE February 26th, 19h at L'Elysée Montmartre.