Music
JEAN-EMMANUEL DELUXE Gustav Temple meets the musical impresario who revived the obscure French genre of ye-ye with such conviction that one of the tracks he championed ended up on the soundtrack to a film by Quentin Tarantino
W
e first got in touch because you recommended an artist named Bertrand Burgalat. Why did you think we’d like him? I’ve been a long-time reader of The Chap and Bertrand is a long-time friend. He is one of these French artists who is about to cross the Channel. His new album Rêve Capital was blessed by BBC Radio 6. Bertrand has his own special universe, musically and as a character. I don’t like the word ‘dandy’. Bertrand is some kind of modernist, from the original term of the word – not the mods who want to stay in 1966 their whole lives. Bertrand is the essence of a French aesthete and gentleman. He saw the Pink Floyd when he was very young and became influenced by bands
“Bertrand was one of the first people to revive Burt Bacharach but at the same time he was listening to Kraftwerk, Debussy and Ravel. He has no notion of good or bad taste. If there is a hit song he likes, he isn’t ashamed to add it to his influences from more obscure artists” 138
