“I would like to stay connected to my childish soul and I think a lot of times I am not. And in music there are times when I will seek it out.”. Invited to provide the first part of Sébastien Tellier’s concert organized by the Pitchfork Festival, the eternal nostalgic Muddy Monk had not performed in Paris since 2019. The opportunity for us to present this aFrench-speaking synth pop rtist with such a singular touch.
Seated on the patio of a café in the 9th arrondissement, Muddy Monk timidly sips his glass of soda. He admits, the interview is not the exercise he prefers. The scene either. And yet his concert organized the day before at the Salle Pleyel did not show anything. Almost anything.
On stage, Guillaume Dietrich (his real name) took his place between three screens specially designed by Alien le studio, a company known for its extraordinary scenographies. A kind of light cabin in which this shy man entered to put on the costume of Muddy Monk, a romantic poet who combines his crystalline voice with the vintage sound of synths. Against the light, its silhouette can hardly be guessed above the animations that scroll across the installation. Sometimes he turns his back to the room and admires the virtual view that is offered to him.
With his eyes closed, he rushes into the sound and, in passing, takes the audience with him. “The scene distresses me, I think that with my eyes closed I manage to better embody my music”, He admits the next day.
In the half-light of the room that evening, he still managed to meet the eyes of his parents, who had come especially from Switzerland for the occasion. A consecration for these music lovers who planted the seed of creativity in the minds of their children from an early age. “When I was little, my father played guitar, we sang songs at home, we listened to music too. My parents always encouraged us to learn to play an instrument”, Recalls Muddy Monk.
As a child, this little assiduous student in piano lessons preferred to tinker with batteries with pots and pans. A “home-made” relationship to music that he maintained for a long time before turning at the age of 16 to home studio production, another form of DIY. Suddenly he remembers: “A friend of mine, Shady, introduced me to computer production programs. I thought it was awesome”.
The years go by, and this lover of electronic instruments accumulates more and more machines, synths, “not knowing what to do with it”. A passion that he explains with his child’s soul: “It’s like a big machine that we pilot and which allows us to do what we want. These devices are really physical, we can wire them together, make them work together. These machines open up the field of possibilities ”.
At the time, he got into music with his friend Shady. They start by sampling old vinyl records and turning them into hip-hop beats. Muddy Monk frantically accumulates records, “Even bad records, hoping to find the right sample”, he blurted out with hindsight. “From my album Long Ride, I no longer used samples. I discovered the synths, effective instruments which allow to have a material strong enough to no longer sample“.
Long Ride, his first album, was released in 2018. On this record, Muddy Monk gets on his motorcycle and leads us on a winding road. In the air, an intoxicating scent, combining sweetness, melancholy, romanticism and solitude. Her seraphic voice guides us on a dreamlike journey where the dream caresses reality. On the synths are extended poetic texts, sometimes almost surreal. He who had sealed us with his verse and his tears in The code of his friend Myth Syzer, decides to go it alone. On the tracklist of his first album there was no guest. “I like to do this alone. By working together, I have to let go of several things ”, he confides.
A choice which makes sense so much the music of Muddy Monk is the fruit of an introspection. So when he creates, Guillaume isolates himself in his universe, surrounded by cables, great synths arranged in a comfortable and warm room. “I think it’s important to find pleasure in being in your bubble and creating things. I think that emotion also arises from this comfort. That’s why I don’t want to work with other people, it would take me out of my bubble”. And his project Ultra Tape is no exception to this golden rule. Released a year later Long ride, the five titles are rougher. And once again, Muddy Monk sends us into the clouds, between light and shadow.
Muddy Monk invited us to a completely different type of trip on November 21 on the stage of the Salle Pleyel. There, giving the premiere of his next album, Ultra Dramatic Kids, scheduled for early 2022, he offered a captivating show that took the audience to another dimension.
For about thirty minutes, which we would have liked to extend, Muddy Monk hypnotized the assembly. His slow and haunting voice echoed in the room which, transformed by a spectacular scenography, was no longer subject to the law of gravity. At times, time seemed to stand still. Sour and chimerical, the tailor-made illustrations for each song were designed by his friend Dexter Maurer, a retro-futuristic illustrator, to whom we owe the cover ofUltra Tape and more recently from TR, track from the next album.
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And suddenly, the sounds change, the voice too. It gets more serious, the synths cooler. A kind of bittersweet cocktail that ends up intoxicating us. On this project, Muddy Monk offers his audience a biting facet, unheard of for him. The voice is more energetic and less ethereal. And on the merits? “A dramatic album, a little violent, but it’s still me so it’s never very violentt ”, concludes the Swiss with a laugh.