The Troublemakers story began in Marseilles in the late 90s when a trio of musical troubleshooters - namely Lionel Corsini, Arnaud Taillefer and Fred Berthet – got together to form their own group. Right from the beginning of their career, the Troublemakers forged their own distinctive musical universe, which was basically a fusion of their three different backgrounds and personal influences.

Lionel Corsini, the oldest member of the group, was born in 1972. Young Lionel grew up immersed in music from an early age. His father was a DJ who worked the turntables in one of the biggest nightclubs in Marseilles, so Lionel spent his childhood and early teens surrounded by 12 inches and vinyl LPs. Following in his father's illustrious footsteps, Lionel went on to hone his own DJ skills, spinning the turntables at Le Trolleybus, a hip nightclub on Marseilles's old port. Working under the pseudonym DJ Oil, Lionel worked a range of different rhythms into his musical mix, experimenting with everything from funk, jazz and r’n’b to hip-hop, Latino sounds, electro and acid jazz.

Arnaud, who is three years younger than Lionel, followed a different route into music, His passion began the day he discovered Miles Davis. By the age of 14, Arnaud had developed some quite-out-of-the-ordinary musical tastes, delving deeper and deeper into the jazz universe and opening himself up to electro at the same time. Despite his growing passion for music, Lionel decided to pursue a career in the visual arts and he went on to enrol at the "Beaux Arts." Between the age of 18 and 25, the young film music fanatic spent most of his time poring over video cassettes. The formative influences of his teenage years were films by Hitchcock, De Palma and Tarantino. Arnaud also went on to study at the local music institute, graduating from the Conservatoire with a degree in electro-acoustic music. After college he went on to set himself up as a "techno” graphic designer. Music thus remained a guiding influence in his work.

As for the third troublemaker, Fred Berthet, he became involved in the electro scene in the early 90s. Fred, who was born in Paris, was in the vanguard of the capital's electro scene, being one of the first pioneers to organise techno events on the club scene. In 1993, he went on to set up the group Pelican and released a 2-track EP on the Omninsonus label. The turning-point of Fred's career came in 1997 when he decided to leave Paris and relocate to the south of France. A year later, working in collaboration with a friend, Antoine Boulé (under the name Venus Attack Project) he went on to release a second maxi single on the famous Chicago-based label, Guidance Recordings. Continuing his DJ activities on the club scene, Fred also enjoyed a parallel career, organising 'computer-assisted music' workshops at the "Friche de la Belle de Mai" in Marseilles. It was here in 1999, in the course of one of his sampling workshops, that Fred came into contact with his future troublemaking colleagues, Lionel and Arnaud.

Sound and Vision

The trio decided to pool their individual talents and collective musical passion and team up together as a group. And thus the Troublemakers were born! The threesome soon went into the studio together to begin work on a first album, but their avant-garde tracks found no takers amongst French record companies who dismissed their work as on the one hand, "lacking genius," and on the other not being "commercially orientated enough." Fortunately for the Troublemakers, their sound was picked up on by the cutting-edge American label Guidance Recordings (who had produced Fred Berthet's first project). In 2000, the trio went on to release their debut album entitled "Doubts & Convictions." The result? A distinctive but hard to define sound partway between electro and jazz. In fact, the Troublemaker sound is a rich melting-pot of styles, each member of the group throwing in his own personal influences. Lionel brings a soul and funk sensibility to proceedings, Arnaud adds a cinematic edge and Fred takes care of honing the tracks into a smooth final mix.

Thanks to Guidance's distribution networks, the Troublemakers' album was rapidly released in the United States and Japan. And the French trio soon found themselves embarking upon a major American tour where they perfected their live skills and displayed a real talent for performance. On stage, the core troublemaking trio were joined by a group of musicians playing real instruments. These included French flautist Magic Malik. The presence of live musicians brought a new edge to the trio's concerts, injecting vibrancy and energy into what would otherwise have been a totally static performance. The Troublemakers also introduced a cinematic element to their shows, mixing their music against a backdrop of images projected by a VJ.

With "Doubts & Convictions" generating promising sales abroad, the Troublemakers released their album (boosted by two previously unreleased bonus tracks and a remix) in France in 2001. Two years later, MK2 Music, a French label specialising in film music, invited the trio to produce the second instalment of their Stéreo Pictures series. Stéreo Pictures revolved around an innovative concept, giving 'carte blanche' to the artists involved to come up with the soundtrack to an imaginary film. On Stéreo Pictures Vol. 2, the Troublemakers gave free rein to their collective imagination, reworking old film soundtracks to create an entirely original ambience which plunged listeners back into 70s cinema classics via a happening mix of soul, jazz, funk and r'n'b.

Fred, whose interests lay much closer to the electro scene, decided to leave the group in 2004 to pursue his own career. Meanwhile, Lionel and Arnaud redoubled their forces to get an ambitious new project off the ground. The idea was to fuse sound and vision closer than they ever had before, producing an album 'soundtrack' to a medium-length feature film written by Arnaud. This innovative project would doubtless have proved far too avant-garde for major labels, but fortunately for the duo the legendary jazz label Blue Note stepped in to support the project.

Arnaud's film "Express Way" was released as a DVD in May 2004 and sold together with the Troublemakers' new album. The film, shot in dilapidated alleyways and the poor run-down neighbourhoods of Marseilles, was an atmospheric piece. And one rendered all the more poignant by the Troublemakers’ 70s-influenced soundtrack (authentically mixed with 70s equipment!) Lionel and Arnaud surrounded themselves with real musicians in the studio, working with 'cellist Vincent Ségal and guitarist Sébastien Martel (renowned for their work with alternative pop star M) and their old friend, Magic Malik, on flute.

The Troublemakers have established themselves as the inventors of a new genre, poised at the crossroads of music and film. "Express Way" is a multi-sensorial experience to be savoured with the eyes as well as the ears!

October 2004