The end of the world party of Sèxe Illégal

Sèxe Illégal turns its back on the comedy industry for good, but hasn’t finished making people laugh as yellow as the Amazon logo.

Dominic Late
The Press

Should we laugh or cry? Cry? “It’s true that the party at the end of the world is a funny premise for an album,” screams Mathieu Séguin, alias Paul Sèxe, the (very) bearded half of Sèxe Illégal.

It is here, in a gray street in Ahuntsic, in their rehearsal studio that looks like a rustic chalet – “the only chalet we can afford” – that the duo recorded their fourth album alone, Spätkapitalismusik. A German portmanteau meaning “music of late capitalism”, because it is precisely the project of this concept disc to oppose to the dystopian present in which we (sur)live a soundtrack to which to dance, rather than to defend themselves.

On what is undoubtedly their magnum opus, Philippe Cigna, alias Tony Légal, sings in his lustful crooner voice the ravages of eco-anxiety (the very bowiesque Sixth mass extinction), systemic poverty (Minimum wage, as if Phil Collins had one day been interested in the fate of low-income earners), the destruction of the planet (Amazon (Premium), echoing LCD Soundsystem) or urban sprawl (in Ten30, “Joe Fresh” rhymes with “Children of Bangladesh”).

Thanks to the free time that the pandemic unfolded before them, the lifelong comrades were able to imagine for several months this dance-punk fresco gratinated with saxophone, which provokes laughter at the same time as a haunting melancholy, so much its observation on our overwhelmed daily lives of citizen-consumers is painfully lucid.

Of a more songwriting style, the repertoire of the pair’s previous albums, put into gear, had been shaped from break-in night to break-in night, scenes on which it is difficult to lug anything other than an acoustic guitar. .

“We wanted to explore sounds more, to stop placing ourselves in categories,” observes Mathieu. I think there’s something fundamentally funny about the album, but we’re not trying to make people laugh at all costs. Sèxe Illégal used to create humor in the form of songs. He now lays pure earworms, at the heart of which humor is less politeness than the impoliteness of despair.

End of humor?

The publication of Spätkapitalismusik, which is only on sale for the moment on the group’s website, also marks the end of a complicated relationship between Sèxe Illégal and the fun industry.

“Comedy is a very popular art in Quebec, which unfolds around the big stages, television and advertisers. After several years of trying to find our place there, we realize that no one found their account,” wrote Sèxe Illégal on his Facebook page last Tuesday, specifying that if he abandoned the circuit of major festivals, comedy cabarets and mass culture, he had no intention of stopping inventing new opportunities to spread laughter.

After 15 years of playing troublemakers, Philippe Cigna and Mathieu Séguin have grown tired of being perceived as bugs by the decision-makers in an environment that is certainly less homogeneous than when they started, but where a certain conformism still reigns.

“The big wave of denunciations didn’t help either,” confides Mathieu, whose alter ego never hesitates to mock the turpitudes of his (former?) colleagues in his interventions on social networks. “We were constantly reacting to the environment, and it was exhausting, continues Philippe. The world of humor has its faults, but it’s up to me to leave if I don’t like it, to be there. Why would I continue to work to get to TVA, if I don’t want to be at TVA anyway? I will never be the guy who goes to The true nature. » “However, we are very much in touch with our emotions! », Intervenes Mathieu.

Seize the means of production

Tony Légal and Paul Sèxe also had enough of coming up against audiences that their universe was disconcerting more than anything else, which could happen frequently in a place like the Brothel. A reaction that is not so difficult to explain, insofar as all comedians in Quebec continue to be placed under the same broad umbrella, without distinction for the kind of humor they practice. Mathieu offers this comparison: “Imagine that you are going to see a music evening, where there would be a girl all alone at the piano, throat singing, death metal and jazz fusion! »

Philippe points out that while there is a new generation of humor – “people trying to get into the mainstream” – there is no underground, or at least not in the same way as in music. A void that allowed them to fill their podcast, you are fooling me, a furiously dadaist proposal, rallying 2000 fervent Patreon subscribers. The project will also have allowed them to leave their narcissistic rock star personas in the locker room and speak more clearly about their left-wing values.

After being dumped by his team, Sèxe Illégal now leads his career in total and perfect independence. “We were already communists, but there, we seized the means of production”, rejoices Philippe, who has obviously read a certain Karl. “Rather than getting bored with the big circle of TV, radio and festivals to see if everyone can like us a little bit, we have a more niche audience that really likes what we do. So much the better for those for whom it works, the game of the general public, but the others, what do we do, apart from panicking and trying to get hired for a milk ad? We might all be dead in 10 years, can we at least have some fun while we wait? »

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