M83: Hurry up we're dreaming (about advertising!)

There are times when TV producers and advertising people seem to be listening to the same music.

Previously Moby's Play album seemed to be a ubiquitous soundtrack to adverts, TV news and magazine features. At other times it was Royksopp's Melody A.M that was the CD that the TV producer and advertising agency executive kept on their desk.

Right now it seems to be the turn of France's M83, who seem to be soundtracking everything on TV at the moment.

Sure, they did a proper soundtrack to Tom Cruise's Oblivon movie, earlier this year, but their work being incorporated into advertising campaigns has probably given them a bigger exposure.

So even if you've not consciously been listening to one of France's biggest musical exports, chances are you know some of their music without even realising it.

For example, Persil uses Outro for their For Whatever Life Throws at you campaign.



The advanced cleaning properties of contemporary French electronica obviously attracted another with Midnight City featuring in a campaign for Ariel.




M83 are also there to help you choose which clothes you wash,  for those who buy expensive American lingerie.



My Tears are becoming a Sea was an appropriately aquatic soundtrack for the UK trailer for the film Rust and Bone (De rouille et d'os)



In another promo, Channel 4s' gritty drama Red Riding in 2009 featured the track Gone from the Dead Cities, Red Seas & Lost Ghosts album from 2003



Curiously, it wasn't the band's only association with things Red that involved Riding, the song Just a Fragment of You credited to Anthony Gonzalez from M83 and Brian Reitzell featuring in the soundtrack of the 2011 film Red Riding Hood.



Meanwhile, France's car industry was quick to get wise to the epic and technological sound of M83, using it in the Capture Life campaign for the Renault Captur.

Phoenix: Entertainment: A Take Away Show

With Phoenix's domination of summer 2013 almost complete, another imaginative video has emerged, this time showing the band playing - appropriately - at Versailles.

For most bands such an elaborate location would be strange, but Phoenix are from the neighbourhood so it's kind of their backyard.

The video shows an interesting use of a drone, a small unmanned helicopter equipped with a broadcast quality camera.

We'll be seeing a lot more of these in music videos before too long I reckon, it's certainly a better use of drone aircraft technology than any of the military applications that they've been used for.

In the meantime, thanks to La Blogotheque, another interesting video that deserves your attention.

The website says it is the first of a series of videos they have made with the band. I look forward to more.

Franz Ferdinand at the Hôtel de Crillon

With the release this week of the new Franz Ferdinand album , I thought I'd drop a mention to a great video that emerged by the Glasgow indie rock band.

The band released their fourth collection, Right thoughts, Right Words, Right Action at the beginning of the week, and needless to say they continue the European aesthetic that they've cultivated since the beginning of their career.

Franz Ferdinand are no strangers to this blog, I've featured them a couple of times before, and their involvement with all things francophone shows no sign of abating. They've performed with Jane Birkin on a Serge Gainsbourg number, and just the last weekend played at the Rock en Seine festival outside Paris.

The track Love Illumination emerged in June, the official video the following month, but an interesting video of a performance behind closed doors at a Paris landmark certainly makes interesting viewing.

The video came about as part of a project by the http://www.blogotheque.net/ website.

The idea with the series is to take an act with a reputation as a live act, and put them on in a unique location in Paris.

So far the series has featured  Foals at la Bibliothèque de l’Hôtel de Ville., Franz Ferdinand, and Suuns on the stairs of the Grand Palais, in a series of films sponsored by Converse.

The Franz Ferdinand video was shot at l' Hôtel de Crillon in Paris. The hotel, which opened in 1909 in a building that dates from the 18th century at the foot of the Champs Elyseés.

It is currently closed for renovation, and is expected to reopen in 2015.

Daft Punk: Lose Yourself to Dance

The new video for the Daft Punk track Lose Yourself to Dance emerged at the weekend, during the MTV
Video Music Awards.

While the performance by Miley Cyrus was the one that got most of the subsequent headlines, Lady Gaga and Katy Perry, along with Justin Timberlake and *NSYNC were also making a strong bid to steal the stage.

However, our eyes were on a  brief clip by France's favourite robots, with a teaser for the video for the song Lose Yourself to Dance.

While it doesn't have the element of surprise that Get Lucky head- the song's familiar to the huge number of people who have either got or heard the album by now - there;s no denying that it's still a great song.

Get Lucky, of course, went on to be the biggest hit they've had so far, and has been by far the biggest single of the year and like its predecessor, it also features Pharrell Williams on vocals.

However, will there be a full-length video for the song? Get Lucky didn't have much more than a minute's worth of pictures released, which were knitted together with footage from other clips that the band released earlier to make a broadcast video. I suppose it didn't exactly slow down the sales of the song.

Hopefully we'll get a full video before too long, if only to stop the music channels repeating the visuals from the One More Time video.

Rock en Seine festival in Paris

This weekend sees the Leeds and Reading festivals taking place in the UK, but the traditional English bank holiday weekend is also the date of the Rock en Seine festival in Paris.

The event's been held since 2003 at the Domaine National de Saint-Cloud park west of Paris. With over 100,00 people in the audience and acts spread over four stages, there are over 60 acts playing.

The three-day event sees acts like Phoenix, Nine Inch Nails and System of a Down on the bill, other acts include ex-Smiths guitarist Johnny Marr, Savages and Skip the Use.

Meanwhile, Fauve, JC Satan and Team Ghost are on the bill, three highly recommended French bands.

There also seem to be quite a few Scottish bands on the bill, including  long-term francophiles Belle and Sebastian, indie legends The Pastels and more recent breakthrough act Chvrches.

Meanwhile, Franz Ferdinand play on the Friday night.

I'm still surprised more UK music fans don't make a trip to France for a festival, as at just over 100 Euros for a three day ticket it represents great value and the chance to see 60 acts including some that are playing the much more expensive UK festivals.

And it's in France, which is always a good thing.

It's a busy weekend for Phoenix, who also play at the Leeds and Reading festivals, having already played events like T in the Park and Vielles Charrues festival in France earlier this summer.

French music report on Radio 4

BBC Radio 4 ran a brief feature on its World at One programme about French music

While it's always funny to hear some of the BBC's plummy voices and polite scripting at its finest, it's heartening to hear their verdict that "Suck it no longer does."

The report features an interview with Acid Washed, and writer Stéphane Jourdain.

They make the case that modern French music has united genres, and that the crackdown on rave culture in the UK led to some of its figures organising events in France instead.

Marc Tessier-Ducros also talks about Air and his involvement with the band, French artist are able to take elements from outside their usual frame of reference to create something new, something purists of genres like German techno are unable to understand.

However, the claim that the resurgence of the French music scene is thanks to Margaret Thatcher is an interesting one, and I suspect one that will have a few music fans choking on their café au lait.

Listen to the report on this page 

Stromae: √ (Racine carré)

This week sees the release of the long-awaited second album by Belgian singer-songwriter Stromae.

The new album, entitled  "√" or "Racine carrée" (That's 'Square root' in English)

The artist, known to his family as Paul Van Haver, became internationally known following the success of his song Alors on danse.

The song reached number one in countries across Europe, including France, even making inroads in the UK where it became probably the best know French songs in recent years.

It led to collaborations with the likes of Kanye West and the Black Eye Peas, his debut album Cheese winning the best dance album award in the Victoires de la Musique in 2011.

The songs Papaoutai and Formidable have been released ahead of the album, Papaoutai reaching number one in France as well as Belgium, Formidable reaching the number one spot in Belgium and top five in France, its hidden camera video being one of the most memorable so far this year.

The album's been a critical success, and this looks set to be mirrored in the album's commercial reception.

Some critics have compared him to Brel, but this might be down to a shortage of instantly recognisable Belgian songwriters, but there's certainly something in their similarly iconoclastic approach.

Stromae's an intelligent and witty operator, who is able to wrap some clever and mature ideas into instantly memorable songs.