Description
Tracklisting:
Side A
1 In The Class Room
2 Cross The Line
3 Sign Your Name On The Dotted Line
4 Every Other Rendition
Side B
1 We Won’t Make A Sound
2 The Petrels Are Gone
3 Joy And Deception
4 Give Chance A Chance
5 All These Songs Of Love And Death
We are presenting MULE JENNY, the new project/band by WE INSIST!’s drummer Etienne Gaillochet. This record is not released on Exile On Mainstream but available here from us due to longterm friendship and the connection to WE INSIST!.
In a setting of complete freedom and solitude, work began on these tracks at the end of We Insist!’s last tour in 2018 by means of experimentation in the studio. Songs that were always in progress, never finalised, with no strict composition method used. Moving away from the references and guidelines of We Insist! and Zarboth, each song has the capability to surprise through complex rhythms, unusual harmonies, while retaining a traditional song structure, without losing the common thread of strong vocals and melodies. There was one single constraint throughout the recording of this album: not to use MIDI and to perform everything.
Etienne set to work learning new instruments that he had always been eager to play, first and foremost the guitar on which the starting point of each song on the record was found. For arrangement purposes, a vibraphone was added to the structure, and finally the indispensable bass guitar, resulting in a record full of intricate vocals and a smoother, opulent sound overall than previous compositions. These new musical experiences and discoveries have allowed Etienne a new outlook and freshness with his life-long relationship to music.
The lyrics deal with very diverse subjects in an often offbeat and non-literal way: age, the Orient, the end of Western democracy, love, the dictator Joseph Stalin, madness, death, words…
The solo pre-mixes were then passed on to an old and trusted friend Fred Martin-Bouyer (We Insist!, Zarboth, Blair) who mixed and mastered all the tracks. Immediately, Grabuge Records decided to participate in the release of this album, promptly joined by Araki Records and Figures Libres Records. A group was quickly formed with Max Roy and Théo Guéneau of Lysistrata to adapt these compositions and play them live as a trio.
The record is released on a high quality 180g vinyl with a protective laminated sleeve and a 2 pages colour insert created by Matt Irwin (A Whisper In the Noise, WIVE). A wallet sleeve CD is inserted in each vinyl.