Smooth: an electro soul experience

“An Electro Soul Experience”: There’s no singing per se, but there are plenty of voices. Smooth works over selections from across the ages and sprinkles their dust into an interstellar soul fable that’s got nothing to do with the Milky Way, even though one tune does allude to our bright home galaxy. What Electro Soul does is work up quite a sweat while going down some truly mind-blowing musical byways, ones where some of soul and acid jazz’s greatest names have already paved the way.
Les Inrockuptibles

“Somewhere between the driving sounds of their darkest moods, their vitality, and a quasi-cinematic approach, Smooth offers up a sensual and contagious groove, one that runs through every song of their album “An Electro Soul Experience.”
Nantes Passion

Recognized as Best New Act in the Bourges Spring Festival of 2005 for their album An Electro Soul Experience and winner of the 2006 FAIR prize, Smooth has been inventing a new musical experience which doesn’t betray the richness of its sacred heritage—pop, soul, and jazz funk of the sixties and seventies.

The performers

Nicolas Berrivin, David Darricarère and Christophe Declerq first met in 2001 after having taken different and quite varied musical paths. The rich influences of their early careers brought them together for a project, which would inspire the name they devised themselves—Electro-soul.
After meeting Eric Laporte, (manager of the booking agency Full Force and manager of Sinclair,) everything began happening quickly.  The group performed at Transmusicales in Rennes in 2003 and opened for Eric Truffaz, Sinclair and Amp Fiddler. While performing two concerts at l’Elysée Montmarte in Paris during the French tour of “Monsieur Funk,” they proved their mettle, so to speak, in front of appreciative crowds with their sensuous, electrifying performance.
A new tour was set up with Sinclair in 2005 at Paris’s Olympia, followed by several exceptional dates during the Festival of Jazz in Nice and at the spring festival in Bourges, where they were named best new act of 2005. The trio came into their own after these experiences and, with the additional support from their partnerships with France Inter (Le Fou du Roi [The King’s Fools, a French Radio Program] and a rotation on play list for the titles Smooth and Seventies Sound,) and Radio Nova, looked towards the possibility of taking its sound abroad.
Selected as Album of the Month in Qatar and Sao Polo and chosen for “best of” compilations, Smooth showed what it was made of and was selected by CulturesFrance for a Central and South American tour.  The six week tour in spring of 2006 was a complete success with the group performing before Latin American audiences sixteen times in eleven different countries. They ended the tour on a good note by earning “Recording of the Day” honors at the Montreal Jazz Festival.

The trio provides musical illustration for engaging lyrics with percussions that remain throughout and are soulful with the hypnotic rhythms of the bass, the air-shredding sounds of the guitars, the unctuous smoothness of the voices, the psychedelic nature of some selections and the insistent notes coming from keyboard. Melodies that arouse and go to the head wrap themselves around breaks that are at times hip-hop, at other times pop, but always right up to date.
Smooth invites us to share the memory of musical forebears while casting before us the music of tomorrow and is at once both willful and respectful.

Performances and Recordings

After having performed dozens of concerts in France, the group came out with its first album in March 2005, An Electro Soul Experience, from Ministrong/Wagram, which has sold about 15,000 copies. On its latest album, The Endless Rise of the Sun, which was released in October 2008,also byMinistrong/Wagram, Smooth is once again on familiar ground, bringing together pop, soul, funk, hip-hop and electro influences from their earlier recordings.

The group offers audiences a sensual and electrifying journey greatly influenced by the music of yesterday and today, with special guests such as Sinclair, Yann Tiersen, Shabbaz, Dj Pfel and Alain Chauvet.

Cast

Nicolas Berrivin bass, sampling, programming
David Darricarère voice, keyboards, guitar, scratches, sampling, programming
Christophe Declerq drums, sampling, programming

Program

The performance will last for approximately one hour and thirty minutes
Smooth will perform cuts from their two latest albums
(The program is subject to change)

1- Intro (2”36)
2- We will show you (4”50)
3- Smooth (6”10)
4- Human Race (7”20)
5- De l’Aube (1”46)
6- Son of the 70’s (6”02)
7- What will you do? (4”35)
8- B-side (3”12)
9- Red Train (4”24)
10- Out of your Reach (6”54)
11- Gimme some / the Endless Rise of the Sun (8”20)
12- Mista green (5”55)
13- Loud (7”30)
14- I am (9”50)

Link to the artist’s website: http://www.smooth.fr/
Link to the website dedicated to professionals (music, video, press release) : www.smooth.fr/pro
Links to audio clips :
http://www.dailymotion.com/relevance/search/smooth+p%C3%A9rou+mexique/video/x2z1xy_smooth-tour-peroumexique-2007_music
www.myspace.com/smoothmusique  
http://fr.youtube.com/watch?v=Me2FfrD9DWI

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