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 Two years after it first started tearing up dance floors courtesy of jocks including Dave Clarke, Erol Alkan and Ivan Smagghe, Vicarious Bliss’s disco stomper ‘Theme from Vicarious Bliss’, is about to get a full release, courtesy of leftfield clubsters Skint Records.
The track first appeared on super-hot French label Ed Banger (run by Daft Punk manager Pedro Winter and home to the mighty Justice and is the brainchild of Englishman in France Andy. Built around a stomping take no prisoners beat (on our favourite mix by Lifelike), the track is also distinguished by its complex, stream of consciousness style vocals including such lines as ‘the grass is always greener on the other side, or maybe it’s the sheep who’ve been telling me lies’, which fit neatly with Andy’s background as exiled Brit from Manchester.
“I returned there last year for an ‘In The City’ (music business festival) with the band I’ve just produced ‘I Love UFO’ and was pretty horrified by the sort of continental culture upmarket sandwich bar type rubbish that seems to have sprouted up in Manchester city centre,” says Andy, “But that seems to be happening everywhere unfortunately; all that giving you your change back on a little silver platter; no thanks.” Otherwise, he reckons little has changed back home, chuckling “the miniskirts and oversized pasty legs, blotchy in the cold October evenings seemed to still be very much in evidence.” In fact, as far as he’s concerned, France’s grass is unequivocably greener, he suggests, declaring ‘I’d definitely say I’m almost as French as I’m English now’.
“Seriously, I think the French are on the whole much more culture-minded, young people still read a lot, regardless of their education, which is good I suppose,” he continues.
“I don’t really encounter any anti-Brit sentiment either though I do avoid like the plague all the ex-pat hangouts and Irish bars, unless it’s football, because you really do meet people that you’d run screaming from back home.”
Skrufff (Jonty Skrufff): It’s over two years since your song Theme From Vicarious Bliss first surfaced; how do you feel about it, now that it’s finally getting a full general release?
Vicarious Bliss: “It’s great that we can- hopefully- take it to another level with radio play and the video and obviously it’s setting up the album to follow, so I’m positive and I was already well happy with the way the Ed Banger release was received. Anybody that has been watching the label knows that a lot of love and effort goes into each release – the artwork, the flyers, stickers, the parties, the promos etc. It’s interesting to see things happening on a larger scale now but on some ways, you feel obviously more removed from what’s happening.”
Skrufff: The track has already been a big club hit, how much has it already changed your life?
Vicarious Bliss: “It’s a bit obvious to say it but it’s enabled me to continue what I love doing; ie, making music or messing around with other people’s music. I suppose it’s meant that Vicarious Bliss alson now exists as something concrete, as opposed to being some ridiculous idea running around in my head. It’s also great to get opportunities to work and play with people you admire and realise that other people enjoy what you do.”
Skrufff: The song is quite existential in its lyrics, talking about topics such as the ‘grass is always greener on the other side, or maybe it’s the sheep who’ve been telling me lies’, how did they come about?
Vicarious Bliss: “They are very stream of consciousness and stupid really but the more you hear the track, the more it kind of means something, er, or not as the case may be. It’s quite difficult to be ridiculous without being crap and I think the song achieves that, ie being ridiculous not crap. Plus, there’s a hell of a lot of lyrics crammed in there when things are generally quite repetitive these days (and often all the better for it) so in some ways it could have been really, really terrible. Being more specific, there’s a girl who regularly sends me sheep cartoons on the net that she draws with captions such as ‘Maybe it’s the sheep who’ve been telling me lies’ so at least I’m touching certain people’s insanity other than my own.”
Skrufff: I understand you first hooked up with Ed Banger Records in Soho, London when you met Pedro Winter, how did that come about, was he walking out of a sex shop?
Vicarious Bliss: “I knew what he looked like (he still claims he’s actually taller than me) so he wasn’t hard to spot, especially as he was still in his ‘trucker cap phase’. I have no idea what type of shops he was browsing round in rainy Soho and quite frankly, I’d rather not know.”
Skrufff: What happened next?
Vicarious Bliss: “Everything went really fast, Pedro was really still just setting the label up. The ‘Never Be Alone’ release was just starting to roll and it was totally obvious that something big was going to happen with Justice. I very quickly met all these really different, strange and wonderful characters that make up the crew. In fact, the Headbangers artistic director seems to have great fun, probably in a sadistic way, drawing everybody together for flyers and covers because we do look pretty strange altogether. There’s an Asian pin-up, geography teacher, Russian mafia hitman, disproportionate redhead,/bald girl and so on.”
Skrufff: How much do you believe in serendipity?
Vicarious Bliss: “Loads, though I believe that you can influence luck with a bit of savvy and maybe hard work. It’s weird because the track was originally going to come out on another now defunct label and I learnt a week before meeting Pedro that it was folding. I should have been in a totally depressed ‘Oh no, back to the drawing board’ type mood but I wasn’t. It’s as if I knew that it’d all fall into place regardless. I kind of knew that we’d end up licensing it out too.”
Skrufff: your biog talks of hanging out at “a chateau somewhere deep in theFrench Dordogne countryside, with bottles of Bordeaux lying empty on the table”: sounds quite decadent: how does France compare to Manchester in terms of opportunities for fun?
Vicarious Bliss: “Firstly there’s France and then there’s Paris, when you get 100km out of town, everyone’s up for it. The capital can be very blasé and parties that look good on paper die a death because it’s the same faces talking about where they’re going to go tomorrow. Every so often we’ll do a party in a sordid bar or something and it’ll be miles better than Saturday down at which ever big club. To be honest, I can’t remember that much about Manchester because I’ve lived over here for a while now, and because of what Manchester did to me in my late teens between 1990 and 1992 – or maybe what I did in Manchester.”
Skrufff: Dimitri from Paris talked recently about the French and said they make the best seductresses- how much would you agree?
Vicarious Bliss: “Well he’d probably know more about that than me, the Sacre Francais, but from personal experience I would probably have to agree. French girls seem to know what they want and how they want it, without being demeaning to themselves. However, as far as the men are concerned, the whole ‘Latin lover’ bloke thing is utter bollocks – it’s definitely the ladies that have the upper, er, hand – let’s leave it at that.…”
Skrufff: You biog says you were born 1658 kilometres away, above a tandoori restaurant in Manchester’: why did you decide to leave Manchester for Paris?
Vicarious Bliss: “I’d actually left Manny a while before coming here. I spent a lot of time over here on and off when I was really young and when I quit my studies, it was obviously really that I was going to live here. Wine, women and song or something.”
Skrufff: are French people ruder than the Brits?
Vicarious Bliss: “that depends what you mean by ‘rude’. If it’s saying what you think in a restaurant, traffic jam, shoe shop, high level political TV interview, then ten years ago I would have said /Blimey, they’re rude here’. Now, I’d say it was their kind of directness as I’m so used to it and it’s probably rubbed off on me a bit. I’m now more offended by grey socks under sandals or people changing under an ill-fitting towel on the beach, ‘Toddler in plumbing axe murder affray’ on tabloid headline hordings, everything on Channel 5 etc, etc, whenever I go back. No. seriously, it takes all sorts and thank God all these differences exist, and everyone knows that the Germans are the worst on the beach anyway.”
“Theme from ‘Vicarious Bliss’ is out soon on Skint. As is Daisy Daisy – “Michelle Plays Ping Pong’ Vicarious Bliss remix out soon on Sunday Best. Vicarious Bliss vs Sebastien Tellier “La Ritournelle’ (reprise) out soon on Arcade Mode.
http://www.myspace.com/myvicariousbliss
http://www.edbangerrecords.com
http://www.skint.net
Article by Jonty Skrufff
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