While it is more than common to find international bands on French radio programmes, English speaking countries are not very likely to air French bands on their radios. I will try to introduce you to several French bands. Some of them sing in English, others sing in French. Lyrics are not the only thing to take into account when listening to a song. If you focus more on the instrumental parts and the actual sounds that you hear as another way to apprehend a track, the language is not that much of a barrier.

 As I was walking around Dublin, I saw a Chinese ribbon ceremony with a few dancers and a small multi-coloured dragon. One thought lead to another, and I remembered a French band who did a song inspired by the sonorities of Chinese music. So I had to talk about Moodoïd.

Moodoïd was created in November 2010 by Pablo Padovani and is comprised of five members. Moodoïd released their first album, Le Monde Möö, on the 18th of August 2014. They clearly took the path of psychedelic pop music, with the use of several music instruments coming from all around the world (such as a saz, an ud and a duduk) and more classical instruments (such as drums, guitars … etc). The entire mashup creates a dreamy, yet festive atmosphere. Pablo Padovani directed the videos that are coming along with some of the tracks, adding an interesting visual dimension to the songs

 In De Folie Pure, we can see that bold colours are used thus establishing a link between the festival and festive aspect of the music with its video. They also decided to film the scene in the biggest Chinese shopping mall in Paris, Chinagora. The place matches the sonorities used in the song. From the musical to the visual aspects of the band, everything is logical, clean and under control.

 La Lune, another track off their album, is less festive. The tempo is slower than in the previous song I introduced you to. Voices are lower and they are stretching the word’s pronounciation, it’s all about taking their time and staying calm. The effect brought by those tricks is that of a hypnotising song. It is as if Moodoïd was trying to sneak into your mind, just like Sir Hiss in Robin Hood, the only difference being that you can actually trust Moodoïd. Once again, the video fits to the song. The fact that the same images are used several times and that the animation is made to be quite slow, result in a nice hypnotising video.

Moodoïd is composed of young people, but they surely know what they are doing.

By Defné Cetin