Back in 2003, Variety Lab made themselves known to a wider audience thanks to their first album, “Providence”. This initiated Nancy-born Thierry Bellia’s electronic breakaway, especially with the track London In The Rain, which was, at the time, included in every single lounge compilation. Five years on, here they are again with a new opus called Team Up!, a magnificent record polished with the mastery of a patient craftsman, and with a cover designed by famous French comic artists Dupuy Berberian.
Thierry, alone, put this record together, but he did not forget to emphasize his friends’ assistance in the process. Let’s just name his henchmen from the French band Orwell (Jérôme Didelot and Alexandre Longo, aka Cascadeur and winner of the 2008 Inrockuptibles CQFD prize). Making use of instruments, machines and other weird objects (for instance the Optigan, a toy devised back in the 70’s), not to mention his friends, Thierry has worked non-stop on his “Spanish apartment” project. Team Up! is a work that has been enhanced throughout by the contributions of outstanding musicians. One cannot argue with that.
Team up! is more than a mere album. Much more. It is like awaking from a soft dream. Here we have Donovan opening the doors-after months of swapping tapes across the channel with Thierry the folk legend himself flew across to Paris to offer his voice and his experience to the spacious and bouncy opening track, Is This The Last Time. On three other tracks, We Should Be Dancing, Mireia and the very rocky Not Enough, it is David Bartholomé, the lead-singer with the excellent Belgian band Sharko, who grabs the mike. And then the fantastic and frantic Bellrays’ vocalist, Lisa Kekaula, with her husky and roaring voice who sings on Let’s Boogie, a groovy and vocoded track that oozes sheer rock and soul energy from Detroit. The youngster Vincent Mougel from Kidsaredead comes in next to blow some sugary foam on the sweet candy that is Soda Pop Confusion, while Thierry’s fellow Nancy-born Mona Soyoc naturally joins the project as a next-door neighbour, and adds some sensuality to the very eighties Money, a cover version of the track by late 70s-early 80s English band The Flying Lizards, who had themselves borrowed it from the soul crooner Barrett Strong. Last but not least, the 2008 pop sensation Yael Naim offers her version of Love Is A Bird, originally a Variety Lab demo that has gradually evolved, first in the expert hands of Cascadeur, then by David Bartholomé on a Sharko album.
“Love is a bird”, a simple, and beautiful idea, that leads us strolling from one end of Team up! to the other, filled with a feeling that can be summed up as the more, the stronger, the prettier and the merrier.
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