Sébastien Tellier on the Making of Sexuality
Oct 13, 2008 5:58 PM, Tony Ware
Photo by Laurent Bochet
In 2001, Parisian paramour Sébastien Tellier released L’incroyable Vérité, a work of romantic yet reserved orchestration. In 2004, he followed it up with the more lively message-infused Politics. Over time, Tellier garnered a reputation as an artist offering fluid melodies and pliant instrumentation, part of a synth-pop continuum drawn from Jean Michel Jarre, but with an oversexed persona at times threatening to reach that of a lothario just short of Eurobeat pleasureman Günther & the Sunshine Girls (he of the “Ding Dong Song”). Tellier’s music, however, was always more than a quickie and placed him more akin to the gently quivering bedroom pop of Junior Boys.
The end result of Tellier’s latest studio dalliance is his fourth full-length, Sexuality, released internationally on the Air-associated label, Record Makers, and now available domestically online or through American Apparel. Working with many types of synthesizers—the Moog Memory Moog and Access Virus spotlighted specifically—Tellier passed instantaneously from song to song in the creative process with the aid of an automated SSL console. And you know a lot of thought goes into a concept album; this isn’t mere fooling around, this is baby making! Here, Tellier discusses the love poured into vintage pop homage “Divine” (the album’s first single) and “Sexual Sportswear,” Sexuality’s sole instrumental track.
“Divine”
When time came to compose Sexuality, Tellier cuddled up for the first time with an outside producer: Daft Punk’s Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo. “Guy-Man was there for every step of the recording,” Tellier says. “To produce the tracks, we always started with a rhythm he created in the morning before I had arrived. Then together we would choose which synthesizer to use at which time.” When it’s noted that “Divine” comes across as a jaunty romp in the vein of Cliff Richard & The Shadow’s 1961 side “The Young Ones” (perhaps best known as the theme to the 1980s British surrealistic sitcom), Tellier responds, “This song is a nod to the Beach Boys and Juicy Fruits. I wanted to do some beach music because the beach is a highly sexual place!” Intending to mix tradition and innovation, Tellier and de Homem-Christo took the rules and threw them into disorder to invent a new music, says Tellier. It’s the sound of rolling atop clothes strewn in a heap, the sun-dappled hook-up transposed to a steady drum-ridden bop and grind with breathy vocals acting as flirty accompaniment.
“Sexual Sportswear”
Providing Sexuality’s foreplay, this teaser track was released as a single in Fall 2007, laden with endorphin-transmitting arpeggios. Across seven minutes, the quietly sexual song becomes increasingly crushed out, increasingly moist with rippling low end. When asked what aspect of synthesizers he considers most like sportswear, Tellier muses, “The heat of the analogical sound, for example of a [Roland] Jupiter-8 played on the bass; I have never heard anything more beautiful.” Once it hits its stride, however, the track maintains a sublime stroke, as if composed in time lapse. “The general signature of the album, and of these two songs, is the abuse of sustained arpeggiator by extra-large tablecloths,” says Tellier semi-cryptically of his 44.1 kHz fling, which was mixed down even as it was being made. “This technique is the one I count on most to be as faithful as possible to the true direction of the song,” comments Tellier on his means of keeping it in the moment. And what might be the best means by which to experience Sexuality’s release? “One must be in love, wait until twilight and open a bottle of champagne,” Tellier concludes.
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