Chateau Marmont - New Waves @ Breaking More Waves

The four men above are Chateau Marmont. They look like four hip architects or effortlessly cool graphic designers from any time between 1968 and 1977. They are actually a band; albeit an effortlessly cool looking and we suspect quite possibly intellectual band from 2010. Chateau Marmont are one of the new French electronic generation, and appear unafraid to give more than a nod and a wink to their nations pioneering synthesizer forefather Jean Michel Jarre.

Raphael, Galner, Angy and Guillame make up Chateau Marmont and to date they have released an EP and featured on the Kitsune Maison 7 compilation back in 2009. They are however probably just as well known for their remixes of the likes of Midnight Juggernauts, Ladyhawke and La Roux. Chateau Marmont have also been recently been working with sexy French songstress Alizee, producing tunes such as the downbeat Limelight, which reminds us a little of Slow by Kylie Minogue and the soft focus Les Collines (Never Leave You) which is a fantastic piece of minimalist electro pop. You can catch these songs here (a teaser) and here. However the bands Myspace currently states “We are remixing nothing anymore, we’re focused on our own material.”

This material starts in 2010 when Chateau Marmont step out on their own again with the release of the Nibiru EP. If their debut release the Solar Apex EP has Oxygene by Jean Michel Jarre stamped all over it, then for the lead track on the Nibiru EP the band have jumped from 1976 to 1978 to take influences from Jarre’s Equinoxe. It’s a sci-fi spacey ambient piece of retro-futurist electronica where distant vocoder sounds and pulsing lush analogue synths blend to create sonic soundscapes that bubble and brood ambitiously. Fantastic. We feel its time for a Jarre revival. It's been long overdue. If we can have that and then an 80's synth pop wizard Howard Jones revival we will die happy. It would make a change from reviving Brit guitar bands from the 60's again, wouldn't it ?

Here’s the video for Solar Apex