Out may 2008 on Midinette Records: Midinette All Stars, a CD sampler with one new track by Les Poissons Autistes, called "Aucune chance pour personne", a beautiful and desperate piece based on accordion. Ohter artists included: Bacalao, Syndrome WPW, Operateur Fotokopieur, C-sium, Alpen Dynamo, Tendance Catalogue, Tenko, Herrman Kopie, James D'O, Gamma10. Buy it online here .
Out march the 15th 2008 on Everest Records: Expedition 3, a CD sampler with one new track by Les Poissons Autistes, called "Le rose de tes yeux est moins profond que celui de mon gland". What a nice title! And the music is nice too. And a lot of other cool electronic artists to discover (Seychal-Mills, Iter, Romeo, Meienberg vs Strotter Inst., Starting Teeth, Hildegard Kleeb & Pelayo Arrizabalaga, Cooptrol, Copy & Paste, BlindeKinder, Manuel Engel, Incite/, lqb, Mathon, Emanuele Errante). Listen to the tracks on the Everest Myspace page. Buy the record online here.
Out october 2007: The LUFF Audio Enforcer Vol.1. A CD-R sampler given free to all members of Les Amis du LUFF containing exclusive tracks from Les Poissons Autistes, Cécile Babiole, Laurent Dailleau, Phroq, Shadow Huntaz, Slope and The Merj Experience. Our track is called "Le Placenta qui pendouille", is 9 minutes long and is really nice... But you must pay 60 CHF to be a member... So it's also our most expensive track ever!
Our latest release, "Mal foutu", is availaible for free download on the Midinette label site. Click on the image to go to the download page.
Bio
Les Poissons Autistes (The Autistic Fishes) exist since 2001 and are a duo formed by Philippe Simon and Stéphane Babey (both born in 1972).
Unfortunately, it's not their first offence: they participated in the activities of the Swiss Dada-influenced collective Pictus Ouarg, an organisation (if it's really the right term for such a mess) active between 1989 and 1995, which illustrated itself by committing happenings, concerts, publications, exhibitions, and primarily recording cassettes of bands as improbably named as The Noisy Fucking Klub, Les Irradiés du Père Lachaise (The Irradiated Mutants of the Père Lachaise Cemetery), Comestibles Vasquez, Skrymmingues Pyjamas, De La Merde (Some Shit), The Novosibirsk Optigal Poulet Bresse Band or Légume Salade Chien Valise (Vegetable Salad Dog Suitcase). Bands in which the two of them played a throng of instruments they didn't master at all, with the notable exception of sheet metal banged with the head…
(Picture taken in Berlin, june the 23rd 2002, Colorsync Night at Neue NBI. Les Poissons Autistes sucked in front of an audience for the fist time ever)
After this saga, which probably had less to do with music than thoughtlessness, ignorance of the meaning of the word "ludicrous" and the absence of a decent retard-tracking program in the schools they went to, Simon and Babey began a career as very amateur DJ's (occasions when they could mix two discs successfully can be counted on the fingers of a penguin), under monikers as sexy as DJ's Q & Che-Meeze (untranslatable), DJ's Chenit & Meurdji (something like: Trash & Garbage, in patois of their home region), DJ's Goebbels & Branli-Branlo (a bit like Wanky-Wanko, if it means anything in English, which we doubt) and DJ's Philippella & Poulpoulpipi (another untranslatable but dirty joke).
Their parents didn't receive flyers very often.
It's only at the end of 2001 that Simon and Babey began again to create their own "music" (people knowing them well demand quotation marks when writing the word in relation to Les Poissons Autistes). Struck by a sudden inspiration during a drunken night, they plugged jacks into the inputs of a tape machine and then sucked and manipulated the free extremities of the cables to produce some particularly irritating and saturated noises. Feeling very proud, they christened themselves Les Poissons Autistes. Then, their crime accomplished, went to bed to sleep their wine off. The recording, exhumed and listened to sometime later by well-known deaf people, led to offers of live performances, although Simon and Babey had asked for nothing. Perspectives of easy glory and naked groupies fighting to join them in the backstage were sufficient to convince the duo to take up that stupid challenge. Failing to empty venues, they emptied more than a forest during summer outdoor performances that some of the participants still fondly remember as "the worst night of [their] life". These encouraging debuts persuaded Les Poissons Autistes to persevere.
Taking their courage with both hands, and therefore their instruments with their feet, Simon and Babey have since then perfected their technique of sonic collage, assembling on the computer recordings of various noises made on Minidisc, instruments (trumpet, flute, accordion, guitar, bass), contact-miked objects and sounds produced by different machines diverted from their normal use (guitar effect pedals, reverb racks and other old stuff). The improvement is appreciable since now they don't empty venues any more but are kicked off stage by young people eager to dance to good techno music and take drugs.
(Picture taken during the Lausanne Underground Film And Music Festival, october 14th 2004. Stéphane Babey, on the right, performs an office lamp light bulb solo while Philippe Simon is surfing the Web to revise his first aid procedures in case Babey is struck by an electric shock)
During their first experiences, Les Poissons Autistes played with the possibilities of everyday sounds: to track down musicality or rhythm in raw noises. After that, a more melodic side progressively appeared, with the more frequent use of instruments like guitar as sonic basis, evolution in part guided by the desire to develop a more spontaneous edge in concert.
To make their music heard, Les Poissons Autistes home-burned CD-R's, then distributed them under the name of their own fictive label, Fickraum, but also for the part of the Tricycle Evolutif label in Lausanne. Several projects of vinyls for the Swiss label Mercurochrome unfortunately aborted due to the lack of money, but a trace still exists on a CD sampler released in 2004. Those rare and difficult to find releases were sufficient for Rafael Wolf to invite Les Poissons Autistes to compose the music for one of his movies. The short film was presented in official competition in Locarno in 2005 and broadcast by the Swiss public television network. In 2006, they joined the Midinette Records Netlabel, wich released "Mal foutu".
In 2007, after a remix for Magicrays, Les Poissons Autistes united their forces live with Bio and Larkian. An exlusive concert took also place in Lausanne with Consor, Opak, Seychal-Mills and POL, all five units functionning as a single band. Some recorded collaborations are in the working process with the aformentioned and with Hemlock Smith, Bio and Larkian.
(Picture taken during Les Digitales de l'Arabie, Vevey, june 17th 2006. Philippe Simon, on the left, looks with despair at Stéphane Babey, who proves to the eyes of the world that he doesn't even know how to hold a guitar properly)
RELEASES
2001 "On est trop timides", K7, Fickraum, 11 tracks
2002 "Friture sur la ligne", CD-R, Fickraum, 9 tracks live
2003 "Le monde du silence", CD-R, Fickraum, 8 tracks
2003 "Téléthon", CD-R, Fickraum, 9 tracks
2004 "Pouètch' the beat", CD sampler, Mercurochrome, 1 track by Les Poissons Autistes
2004 "Nage bête", CD-R, Fickraum, 10 tracks
2004-2005 "Domaine privé", music for a short film by Rafael Wolf, 33 minutes, screened at the Locarno International Film Festival in 2005
2005 "Sourdre", mini-CD-R, Tricycle Evolutif, 4 tracks
2005 "Fallait pas (et tu le savais)", music for a short film by Yves Bouzaglo, 2 minutes
2005 "Ramasse-poussière", CD-R, Fickraum, 11 tracks
2006 "Mal foutu", Net-release and CD-R, Midinette Records, 6 tracks
2007 "Bon pour les oreilles 2", Web-sampler, 1 track by Les Poissons Autistes
2007 Magicrays: "Take Me Home remixes", CD, Gentlemen Records, 1 remix by Les Poissons Autistes
2007 "The LUFF Audio Enforcer Vol. 1", CD-R sampler, LUFF, 1 track by Les Poissons Autistes
2008 "Expedition 3", CD sampler, Everest Records, 1 track by Les Poissons Autistes
2008 "Midinette All Stars", CD sampler, Midinette Records, 1 track by Les Poissons Autistes
FORTHCOMING RELEASES
CD-R on Deadvox (date unknown). Listen to a preview track on our player: "Motoculture de plaisance"
Full length album with Hemlock Smith (label still to be found, date unknown). Listen to a preview track on our player: "Birmingham"
1 collaborative track on the next Consor CD on Creacked Records (maybe 2008)
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