Stephan Eicher is dribbling conventions, now broadcasting his music as they are created digitally, with four new titles delivered this coming Friday, far from the physical album format expected for an artist of his rank. The four pieces are collected under the title “around your neck“, like a wink for an artist who has decided, precisely, to no longer have a rope or a bridle.
“I come out of a complex story with the record industry (a standoff prevented him from releasing original songs between 2012 and 2019), and after, when the disk Homeless songs is out (2019) we no longer had time to breathe with the pandemic“, dissects the Swiss, met by AFP in Paris. The air even became stuffy around him during the health crisis. “I lost my father to this virus, I couldn’t bury him, and my team of musicians and technicians had some dirty times as early as March 2020 (first containment) with cases of severe depression.
For his fans, and others, hearing his music now will be like coming to the surface for a breath of fresh air. “It’s not me who’s tight around your neck/It’s in the atmosphere/It’s good for us“, we hear in the title track. A text, once again put on paper by the writer Philippe Djian after his conversations with the singer, which sounds like an echo of the crises, whether health or military with the Russian invasion in Ukraine.
“Is what is happening to us geopolitically due to the outside, or to us, who have not reacted? We could have thought that several hundred thousand soldiers around Ukraine was a bit much for a maneuver...”, comments the artist with the immutable look of a musketeer.
As usual, with the melodies of Eicher and the texts of Djian, different levels of reading are possible, between universal and intimate, harshness and softness. And, this time, another artist embarks on the adventure, since Sophie Calle provides the visual. “She’s my best friend, I sent her the song + Around your neck + and I asked her to illustrate it if she knew anyone, because she has very sure taste, knows photographers“, he begins.
“But she really likes around your neck and she told me Don’t do anything, man! (laughs). I told him I see hands, it’s a violent and tender title and there she tells me that she works around the hands of her father, deceased, like mine“. She then shows him one of her creations, a photo of hands, which therefore serves to illustrate around your neck.
These four songs will not be without a sequel. There will be “other families“of pieces, warns the sexagenarian. “There, everything is written on the piano, the next one (lot), which we finished in Brussels, will be very rock. There will be another one, soul, and then I still have my synths for an electronic part. Perhaps all this, at the end of the year, will give a collection“.
“Pressing a record is 3-4 months, there with the internet, I want a parenthesis, I record it today and I deliver it tomorrow, it makes me financially critical but super-happy for the artistic“, he insists.
Money is not a driving force, anyway. These artists, who, during their lifetime, sell their rights for fortunes – like Bob Dylan – leave him wondering. “Me, if I sell my rights it will be for the community, to support music schools: If lunch in peace can afford a conservatory, that’s fancy“.