FORTUNE UNVEILED
As a member of acclaimed underground duo, Abstrackt Keal Agram, Lionel Pierres was fundamental in developing a new voice for French music throughout the noughties, blending hip hop and electronica with more esoteric soundtrack sources and found sounds to create a series of three albums that continue to inspire and inform producers and musicians throughout the underground.
When the band ended in 2006, Lionel was already clear on where his music would go next. With Pierre Lucas (formerly of Snookut) having already joined the Abstrackt family in 2003 and Herve Loos waiting in the wings to take up drumming duties, Fortune was already more than an idea in Pierres’ mind.
Having spent the previous years in an instrumental duo the first principle of Fortune was to allow Lionel to return to vocal duties, a position that, pre Abstrackt, had been his first experience of being in a band. English was chosen as the language of Fortune, the formative influences that the trio brought to bear on the project being English and American bands. Lionel’s work with Abstrackt wasn’t completely ignored though, the new band would channel those hip and hop and electronic influences through conventional pop song structures to create a new electronic music that owed as much to Pavement and Grandaddy as it did to the production genius of Pharell Williams. Perhaps it is this melting pot of diverse and distinct influences that delivers the age related reactions to the music that Lionel notes:
‘One day I’ll have a forty year old guy comparing’ Highway’ to New Order or The Human League and the next day a twenty year old guy thinks the same track sounds like Glass Candy or Hot Chip!’
Having established a writing core of the trio, Lionel coming up with the basic songs, Pierre weighing in with the arrangements and Herve coming up with the rhythms, the three became four with the addition of producer Pierrick Devin, of Cassius fame and the man behind the desk for the recent Phoenix album. Switching between home recordings and a fortnight in a country studio some way from Le Mans, the quartet put together debut album, ‘Staring At The Ice Melt’. In their search for the perfect pop song, tracks were rejected and the guiding principle of making music that was ‘simple but not easy’ saw different approaches depending on the track, as Lionel explains, ‘Gimme’ and ‘Highway’ involved a lot of work from Pierrick, discovering sounds and editing the track together whereas other tracks were tracked live to catch the groove and the energy’.
Given such an open approach to recording and a ruthless policy of canning anything that didn’t meet their own high standards it is little surprise that the finished album at times seems like a compendium of some of the finest (and most diverse) moments in pop history. From the lugubrious bass and bleeps of forthcoming single ‘Under The Sun’, all Chic style groove and handclaps to the rock stomp of ‘Bully’, the downbeat synth pulses of ‘Tonight’ to the new wave choppy guitars of ‘Mission’, the album defies easy categorization aside from the simple but effective label of great pop music.
Having launched their new project alongside Hot Chip and VV Brown at this year’s Cannes Film Festival and with a fondness for non conventional gigs, witness a recent show at the world famous Galerie Emmanuel Perrotin for Art Basel, Fortune are that most interesting mix of high art and mainstream pop. Little wonder that Thomas Mars of Pheonix has praised them as his favourite current band, proclaiming -that “Their music is almost like a candy shop, everything is very sweet, the whole thing is very fresh. It’s like a mix between classical music and modern pop music’.
- whilst recent Bond baddie Matthieu Amalric has also nailed his colours to their mast with talk of joint projects in the near future.
Staring At The Ice Melt’ is released by Distiller Records on August 30th, 2010.
