Noir Désir have been extremely busy over the last twelve months. The group flew out to Morocco in December '99 to begin work on their sixth studio album (due for release next spring). But the Bordeaux four also found time to cast their minds back over their lengthy music career and put together a triple-CD 'compilation' of their most interesting work to date. On closer inspection, En route pour la joie turns out to be much more than a straightforward compilation - it's more of a Noir Désir 'encyclopaedia', featuring everything from covers of old hits recorded with other artists to complete remixes.

And - as if this were not enough - the French rock world's favourite stakhanovists have also been working on a stack of other musical projects. Earlier this year, Noir Désir joined alternative French rock group Les Têtes Raides in the studio, giving their fellow rockers a helping hand on their latest album Gratte-Poil (released on October 24th). Earlier this year the Bordeaux four also covered Les Têtes Raides's L'Iditenté. Spiced up with Bertrand Cantat's vocal charisma and screaming Noir Désir guitars, the song even turned into an unexpected chart-topper!

Meanwhile, Noir Désir's guitarist, Serge Teyssot-Gay, branched out on his own for a second solo adventure. Following his debut solo album, Silence radio (released in '96), Teyssot-Gay has taken the French music world by surprise with a serious literature/music crossover entitled On croit qu'on en est sorti (see review below).

Before this, Noir Désir also applied their Midas touch to Bashung's Climax (an anti-Greatest Hits compilation not unlike the group's current offering En route pour la joie). The Bordeaux four helped Bashung put a completely new spin on Volontaire (a song dating from the Gainsbourg-Bashung era of Play Blessures) and managed to turn the song into a quasi-hit.

Let's hope Noir Désir's magic touch brings as much luck to the double compilation album Tibet libre (due for release at the end of January 2001). This time round Noir Désir frontman Bertrand Cantat teamed up with the group's sax-player, Akosh Szlevenyi, raising funds for the 'Free Tibet' movement alongside a host of other leading French music stars including Blankass, Burning Heads, Matmatah, Mass Hysteria, Prysm and Tryo.

But enough of these various side projects! Let's move on to the dish of the day: En route pour la joie which, with a mega-50 tracks divided into three CDs, is a dish fit for a king. Given the sheer size and musical ambition of this 3-CD set, it seems wrong to classify Noir Désir's compilation in the usual 'Greatest Hits' category. Taking previously little-known material from earlier EPs (most notably, the 4-track EP L'homme pressé), Noir Désir have put together a complete retrospective of their career.

Interestingly enough, the Bordeaux four have also chosen to include songs recorded with other artists (e.g. Bashung, Yann Tiersen and a moving tribute to chanson hero, Jacques Brel). En route pour la joie also includes its fair share of remixes (most notably from the album One Trip, One Noise). In fact, it looks like the only thing missing is a reworking of L'iditenté with Les Têtes Raides!

This encyclopaedic approach to the group's career is more than justified by the Bordeaux four's musical history which began with the release of their incendiary mini-album, Où veux-tu qu'je r'garde. Produced by Theo Hakola (from Passion Fodder) and released on Barclay in February 1987, Où veux-tu qu'je r'garde made an immediate impact on the French music scene, thanks to the sheer fury of Teyssot-Gay's raving guitar and Cantat's hard-hitting lyrics.

In fact, by this stage of their career, the group had already been working together for seven years. Playing under various pseudonyms - Psychoz, 6.35, Station Désir and Noirs Désirs - the foursome had built up a strong following of teenage music fans in the Bordeaux region. What's more, Noir Désir's fast and furious mix of Rimbaud, Mallarmé, Led Zeppelin and the Doors soon went on to spread like wildfire beyond Bordeaux.

Now - thirteen years, five studio albums, one superb live album (Dies irae) and a re-mix extravaganza (One Trip, One Noise) later - the Bordeaux four are back in the music news with En route pour la joie. This Epic compilation is guaranteed to keep the Noir Désir legend burning for some time to come, featuring as it does such all-time rock gems as Toujours être ailleurs, A ton étoile (on CD 2) and Septembre en attendant and the explosive Pyromane, taken from the group's first mini-album (on CD 1).

Committed Noir Désir fans will be enticed by the wealth of new material on the triple-CD compilation. Who could fail to be tempted by the fabulous A ton étoile (taken from Bernard Lenoir's 'Black Session' recorded with Yann Tiersen) or Back to you and Là-bas (songs which were previously only available on the EP L'homme pressé)? And, if those fail to grab you, there's an excellent new version of Lazy (remixed from an old '96 demo), a live version of Drunken Sailors (recorded in concert at the Elysée-Montmartre in 1989) and a brilliant reworking of Lennon's Working-class Hero (taken from a fund-raising album for immigrants).

Music fans who have not necessarily followed Noir Désir since their debut will be attracted by the reassuring round-up of hits: Tostaky (1992), L'homme pressé (1996), Aux sombres héros de l'amer (1989) and En route pour la joie (1990). In fact, this historic triple-CD compilation appears to include something for everyone. Let's face it, with Cantat's vocal charisma and Teyssot-Gay's legendary guitar riffs, this album deserves to go down as a landmark in French rock history.

Jean-Claude Demari

En route pour la joie triple CD, Barclay 2000
destination.noir-desir.com

Georges Hyvernaud's writings transport us to a fixed time and place: the heart of a German prison camp in 1943. But, while Hyvernaud (born at the beginning of the 20th century) concentrates on one particular prison, Serge Teyssot-Gay gives the author's words new meaning, transforming prison's painful experiences into one long, dark night of the soul. Mixing emotional vocals with mournful synthesisers, plaintive guitars and moody, drawn-out tempos, Teyssot-Gay writes a sensitive soundtrack to man's eternal suffering.

Rock/literature crossover is hardly commonplace on the French music scene. In fact, only one glowing example stands out to date - No-One Is Innocent's rage-filled reworking of a Maurice G. Dantec novel in 1997. Serge Teyssot-Gay's reworking of Georges Hyvernaud's prison literature is an altogether quieter affair, although his haunting synthesiser arrangements have a hypnotic power of their own.

Hyvernaud, a 40-year-old French officer held in a German prison camp in Pomerania during the war, drew inspiration from his bleak surroundings, recounting how he watched Russian prisoners burying the dead (Le camp des Russes), survived the stinking trip to the prison cess-pit on a daily basis (Les cabinets) and mused on man's complicity in the course of history (Tout le monde est dans le coup).

On tracks such as this and Dix mille écrans, the haunting arrangements come into their own. Listeners will find themselves faced with the disturbing situation of listening to Hyvernaud's horrific experiences, while tapping their feet to Teyssot-Gay's beat. What better way could there be of driving the full horror home?

Jean-Claude Demari

Serge Teyssot-Gay On croit qu'on en est sorti Barclay 2000