Now, seven years on, La Tordue are in the front line again fighting against the "double peine". You recently organised a major fund-raising concert, on 26 October, I believe?
The "double peine" (a law which means that someone who is not of French nationality is condemned for a crime in France and in his/her country of origin) is a sad reflection of the situation foreigners find themselves in in France, our wonderful home of human rights!… The campaign against the "double peine" is a very concrete struggle and that's what interested us in the first place, you know, the idea of trying to get rid of a totally racist law that reflects the general attitude we see around us, which harks back to France's colonial days. Burying the war in Algeria under a blanket of silence has turned it into a huge time bomb ticking away beneath our feet. North Africans are the great unwanted in our country today. We colonised them, then used them to come and do all the dirty hands-on jobs we didn't want to do. They gave everything and what do we give them in return? The gift of the "double peine", the no-right to vote and general scorn and contempt!
That's why we decided to get involved in the campaign against the "double peine". We use our song Le pétrin (from which all sales profits are donated to the campaign) as a sort of media support for the campaign and use every occasion we can in interviews to talk about it, too… All the groups and singers we contacted to sing on Le pétrin played the game too. They all threw their full weight behind the campaign. And I think Le pétrin is maybe our biggest success story to date… We're keeping up our fight during our current tour, too. We've arranged for a screening of Tavernier's film, Histoires de vies brisées, the night before our concerts in the towns where we play and someone from the campaign also comes along and mans a stand outside our concerts…

So how did it feel for such a political and socially-engaged group to sign to a big multi-national company like Sony last year?
Well, one thing's for sure, and that is that it helped us keep our heads above water because our previous record label, Musisoft, had just gone under… And if Epic hadn't waded in and offered us a recording deal at that moment in time, it's more than likely that La Tordue would have ended up as a small notice on an obituary page devoted to groups who'd kicked the bucket because they lacked a professional entourage worthy of the name!
There's no way we'd have wanted to be swallowed up by a multi-national before. But to tell the truth by that point we were thoroughly sick and tired of suffering the consequences of being with a label which yes, OK, was independent, but at the same time was totally fucked up… It's not like they were militant independents, either. They were just small fry who dreamt of becoming big cheeses one day and making bucketloads of cash… I mean, at least we get to work with people who are competent these days. Now we're in the same paradoxical situation as other political and socially-engaged groups like Zebda and Noir Désir, who've signed to major labels and who've now got the means to go out there and fight!