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Album review


The Inspector Cluzo

The French Bastards


Paris 

10/05/2010 - 

The Inspector Cluzo may have a low profile in their home country of France, but they’ve been making waves internationally with their out-of-control rock act. This energetic guitarist/drummer duo come from the Landes region in southwest France and have toured 23 countries across the world. In Australia their wild stage performances have even earned them the nickname "The French bastards"! Hence, of course, the title of their new album…

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The second album from the Inspector Cluzo really cranks up the energy levels. The French Bastards combines serious riffage à la Urban Dance Squad with a Red Hot Chili Peppers style groove and the huge rock sound of a group like AC/DC – all in under 45 minutes’ playing time!

Although the duo is originally from the Landes, their influences are more from the other side of the Atlantic. Right from the opening track, TIC Theme, the scene is set: funk/rock guitar, brass and an energy that doesn’t let up over the album’s twelve tracks. Then there’s the huge stadium rock sound of The Empathy Blues, the AC/DC influenced Terminator is Black in his Back or the more funk/pop stylings of Zombie Dj’s Killers.

Although the sound is high-octane heavy with massive riffs and full-throated vocals, the album has more going for it than your average testosterone rock. Supported by Bart and Bruno, two members of the funk brass group Ceux Qui Marchent Debout, The Inspector Cluzo also brew up some phenomenal dance tracks, such as French Bastards #1. The heart of the album is F*** Michael, a declaration of love for Jackson 5-era Michael Jackson, and of hate for the media circus that surrounded the star in the 2000s. It has a hook to die for!

In addition to the music itself, The French Bastards is a fantastically well-packaged CD with superb visuals from the Taiwanese graphic artist Chaos. This entirely self-produced album also comes with the official approval of Angelo Moore, singer of the iconic group Fishbone.


F*** Michael Jackson

 
 

  par THE INSPECTOR CLUZO


Chinese tour

For the release of their second album, The Inspector Cluzo will be playing dates in several Chinese cities, including Shanghai, Suzhou and Wuhan. RFI Musique talked to singer/guitarist Malcom Lacrouts and drummer/percussionist Phil Jourdain about their unusual tour destination.

What kind of venues will you be playing at in China?
We’ll be performing at one of the country’s biggest festivals in Beijing. We were invited by Radiohead’s Chinese label, who saw us play at Fuji Rock in Japan last year. We’ll also be doing four big clubs in Shanghai, as well as some other cities in the interior, which we asked our Chinese agent to book so we could get out of the conventional tour circuits and see something of the real China.

Will you be performing a song like Giving his opinion is not a job, this is a right in China?
That song was originally called Journalism and is about a profession that is totally compromised these days. Journalists no longer have the time to investigate a story properly and analyse it, due to the way the media is financed and the obsession with huge audiences. Basically journalism is now just about giving an everyman opinion without rocking any boats. Our song reminds pseudo-journalists that giving your opinion is not a profession it’s just the right everyone has in a democracy.

As for China, we’ve toured 23 countries including some pretty unlikely destinations, and we have enough empathy and humility to not try and tell other cultures what to do. Freedom of expression is great, but it doesn’t mean a lot if you don’t have enough to eat or you can’t read or write. Then it just sounds like the concerns of the Western middle classes and comes across as rather hollow. Freedom of expression is the result of a long process of development, unlike what the Americans seem to think, in the way they want to impose it on countries that aren’t ready for it. If the Chinese eventually get the right to say whatever they want, like in France, in the name of what used to be the freedom of expression but is nowadays more about the freedom to consume (laughs), then a lot of other things will have had to change first!

The Inspector Cluzo The French Bastards (Teraterre/Discograph) 2010

Currently on a world tour. In concert in Paris on 26 June 2010 at the Solidays Festival.

Ludovic  Basque

Translation : Hugo  Wilcken