April March & Aquaserge: Des Tics et Des Tocs

I mentioned  Des Tics et Des Tocs by April March & Aquaserge  last year, and it's nice to see a video (more a short film even) emerge to illustrate the song.

It's a suitable  video full of retro charm for the song , while I missed on giving it a mention when it emerged at the end of last month, it certainly deserves your attention.

Best to not quite believe the translation subtitles though.

California-based April March has released several albums so far, her song Chick Habit ( a version of Gainsbourg's Laisser Tomber les Filles) appearing the soundtrack for Tarantino's Deathproof

She teamed up with Aquaserge in Paris in 2007, a band featuring Tame Impala drummer Julien Barbagallo, Melody's Echo Chamber collaborator Benjamin Glibert and former Stereolab member Julien Gasc.

Director Jonathan Caouette said: ""It’s an homage (in some ways to an old Scopitone film, but a mildly surrealistic one ) It has an existential slant to it. The subtitled lyrics are not the actual lyrics. We shot it in my neighborhood in NYC in just one very HOT day.

"The cast and crew were all enormous troopers in the heat. I was thrilled to work on this and I could not have done it without Elinor Blake, Benjamin Schoos, American Apparel,my kick arse choreographer Ovi, my terrific editor Casey, Carry Curran, and ultimately, my friends at Cowboy Bear Nijia. I consider it, in some ways, my first official music video."

April March and Aquaserge: Des tics et des tocs

A great track by April March and Aquaserge, who despite their Rive Gauche retro vibe are in fact a cross trans Atlantic collaboration involving a singer from California and an international band of psychedelic outsiders

April March is a songwriter, singer and francophone from California whose real name is Elinor Blake. She has released nine albums during her career so far, performing in both English and French.

One of her songs, Chick Habit was featured in Tarantino's film Death Prooof. Chick habit was in fact an English translation of Serge gainsbourg's Laisse tomber les Filles, which featured on her 1995 album Gainsbourgsion!, a collection of her interpretations of Gainsbourg's work.

She teamed up with Aquaserge in Paris in 2007, a band featuring Tame Impala drummer Julien Barbagallo, Melody's Echo Chamber collaborator Benjamin Glibert and former Stereolab member Julien Gasc.

Gasc said: "A friend invited us to play as her backing band for the evening."

"I remember Elinor in her fuchsia dress. I thought that she was so classy and splendid in her way of being, moving, of dancing, of singing. She's a muse, our intellectual other half. We're eerily similar in our tastes: music, the arts, literature, cinema, food. We had to do a record together, that was obvious.”

Their forthcoming album was written and recorded between Blake's US apartment and the band's Vallesvilles barn near Toulouse in the French countryside.

On recording there, Blake said: "On warm days we'd have the barn doors to the studio wide open so when I recorded my vocals it'd be to a random audience of birds and chickens."

The album April March and Aquaserge is released on May 13.