If you thought GOLF had anything to do with your uncle’s favourite sport, think again. It’s a tad younger and fresher : a new French electro-indie group, ready to make your hips not lie.
As their first CD All in All is coming out, we decided to meet the up-and-coming musical artists and find out about their motivations, the story behind their band and their hopes for the future… Antoine, Romain and Samuel, let’s rock!
Where do you come from ?
One of us comes from Paris, another from its outskirts and the third from a French province. A perfect and relatively representative sample of the French population ! But for approximately 10 years now, we’ve all been living in Paris.
When did you become a group ?
We met in 2009 at a mutual friend’s party, in an apartment overlooking the Seine. We were all playing music in our little corner, really different stuff. Then we started talking about our musical references, about what we liked in one another’s style, and what we disliked. As the conversation went on, we realised that our conceptions and visions on music met and we decided to try some stuff out together. And we’ve never left each other since.
How did you come up with the group’s name ? A penchant for golfing ?
No ! Absolutely not. Not one of us has ever tried golfing actually… We even had a different name in the beginning… We decided to go with GOLF when we found the style that fitted us best. But then we didn’t want a name that would hint to that musical style, that would remove the mystery from it all… And GOLF means the same things in all languages, so it was a perfectly understandable name, also paradoxically able to confuse, to put up a smokescreen, and we liked that aspect.
It’s like taking an alternative, distinctive stance, but also keeping all opportunities open.
What do your songs talk about? Who’s the writer ?
The album’s general narrative focuses on the passage to adulthood, mirroring the time at which we wrote our songs and their abstract position in our respective lives. We were all attracted to the idea of a ‘concept album’, in other words an album revolving around one single concept, and in a way we’ve managed to achieve that ! We wanted it to be a harmony, not a bunch of random music titles put together. We kept that in mind while composing the track listing, in order to keep the sense of it all.
The songs themselves evoke ‘pop’ themes such as love, hope or solitude. But they also address some more conceptual themes like the peculiar sentiment of feeling lost and stranded, or the obsessive desire to make things count and to matter existentially.
We like to speak of our generation and what makes it different from our parents’ generation. Being born in the 80s, growing up in the 90s… We then bring together our three insights on the matter and compose. It’s complicated but it’s possible !
What groups/singers/musicians inspire you ?
That’s a hard question. For GOLF, we’ve tried to digest, break apart and then mix everything we’ve possibly heard when we were adolescents in order to create something new but also personal. Of course, we’ve ruled some stuff out… hoping the product would bring out something new and fresh.
Our inspirations are quite typical and generationally marked at the end of the day : Pink Floyd, Joy Division, Daft Punk, Blur… But if we had to mention one group we consistently love to listen to and admire, it would have to be Metronomy.
What’s the song you can’t stop listening to at the moment ?
We don’t listen to the same music, so we’d have to break it down…
Samuel : The Cure – “10:15 Saturday Night”. It’s young and cold. A testimony to adolescence.
Antoine : Alt-J – “Hunger of the Pine”. It’s so well constructed. Beautiful, powerful, mind-blowing.
Romain : Broken Bells – “High Road”. It’s like the essence of pop in one song! Recent but timeless.
Anything coming up ? Your time to shine !
Our first EP “All in All” came out on January 19th (with remixes of Tepr, Anoraak, Plaisirs & Golf). The music video of “All in All” just came out as well, and we’re so happy with it! We couldn’t think of a better visual synchronisation to the music. It gives vibrant colour to the song. It was realised by Arnaud Deroudilhe and Dessil Basmadjian who had previously realised other music videos such as Poom’s “Les Voiles”.
If we say Frenchy, you say…?
US !! We write and singing English because that language is more adapted to the Pop format, but we don’t forget where we’re coming from, and we know that our music will first and foremost be listened to by a French audience. One of our principal influences is actually French touch.
“Happy Endings”, one of the album’s songs, is actually our personal version of the Marseillaise – maybe a bit less violent…