The Axemen Cometh

The French touch is very much a Parisian thing. Most of the people involved are either producers or DJs. I like and respect a lot of them, especially Etienne De Crecy and his Super Discount series. I know they respect us as well, but we make music in a different way. The live act is the most important thing to us. It s part of our culture, when we make music we never think about DJs.
Jean-Philippe Fru, one of the driving forces behind hotly tipped and extremely-hard-to-track-down house outfit Rinocerose, is talking about the current fascination with French house music.
The act, who received across the board accolades when they released their second album, Installation Sonore this autumn have remained isolated from all the hype. Based in Montpellier, Rinocerose consist of Jean-Philippe, engineer Jonny Palumbo and Jean-Philippe s partner Batou. Expanding to a seven-piece for their live shows, the act s guitar-laden, irresistibly catchy take on house music has set them apart from their contemporaries. However, Jean-Philippe explains that the group came from humble creative origins.
Our first album was released on a small independent label, but it was a childish attempt to make house music, he comments. We weren t able to use a computer or a keyboard so it was just repetitive guitar riffs. Then we met up with Jonny Palumbo and he opened us up to the world of electronics. We may be more technologically oriented now, but we ve kept the same artistic direction.
It s this refusal to fall into categories that has helped Rinocerose remain outsiders, allowing them to use the best of rock and dance sensibilities, never falling foul of clichis in either sphere. Jean-Philippe agrees that the band enjoy the best of both worlds. We re caught between two cultures. We love house, it was the most important thing to happen in music in the last ten years, but we re still guitarists. We never thought we d be signed to a major label or touring all over Europe. We re just a pop band inspired by Serge Gainsbourg and Frangoise Hardy as much as we love Kerri Chandler, Francois Kervorkian and the whole Body & Soul sound.
The result of these disparate influences, Installation Sonore, is a uniquely uplifting piece of work. Eschewing the trainspotter US house sound, which Jean-Philippe believes still has some good releases , or the simplistic approach many of his countrymen opt for, Rinocerose have managed to avoid inclusion in the filtered disco sound, thus distancing themselves from the asphyxiating media frenzy that accompanies the merest hint of a record from France these days.
We re far away from the industry, says Jean-Philippe, and we re free from any structure to make what we want. Sure Jonny Palumbo s studio isn t Abbey Road, but it s still a good studio! We didn t get any hassle from our label, V2, either, because when we signed the contract the album was already finished, and we never want a record company to be involved.
Despite their isolation from the rest of the French scene, Jean-Philippe believes that France has a good buzz about it, the dance scene is probably even bigger than the reality. When we started in 1994 French house was still very much an underground thing, but after Daft Punk s success people started to inquire about the music we make as well. Even though it s popular now, I m not sure if it ll stay in vogue.
It s doubtful whether these trends will make any difference to Jean-Philippe and his band of guitarists. Inspired by Oasis, MBV and 60s bands like The Velvet Underground, The Rolling Stones and The Small Faces, with the latter about to get remixed by Rinocerose, the band are more interested in surfing and naming their albums after art installations than larging it in the French capital.
I m 37, so I m a little bit old for all that, he admits. As for the album title, it s named after an art sculpture, representing a chair and a keyboard on top of it. It s French for sonic installation . We called it that because we want to have a place in music, we don t want to be just another superficial band.
We want to break some rules. If French house is all about disco and filters, then we want to make music in a completely different way. Hopefully this will influence people in a new way. Concorde also appears on the cover, and that s because even though it s an old plane, it still retains a kind of modernity. People are upset by the future as we approach the year 2000. Rinocerose want to look to tomorrow and bring some elements of the past with us. It ll help understand what s going to happen in the future.
Installation Sonore and remixes of La Guitaristic House Organisation are out now on V2.