Performed, arranged, and produced by Nicolas Repac
Najet : lead vocal on «La nuit mène une existence obscure»
Marguerite Ferrère : lead vocal on «Tant qu'il y aura des étoiles»
Recorded and mixed by Nicolas Repac at home between march and september 2003
Mastering : Lionel Nicod at Translab Studio
Executive Producer : Laurent Bizot
Samples
Billie Holiday
The end of a love affair (E.Redding)
acapella version published in «Lady in satin» Columbia reissue (1997) courtesy of Sony Music
Gene Kelly
Moses supposes (R.Edens, B.Comden, A.Green)
on «Swinging in the rain»
Michel Portal
Droit de réponse (M.Portal)
on «Black musette» courtesy of Michel Portal and Label Bleu
Illustrations : Noyau
Artwork : Element(s)
Liner notes : Stéphane Ollivier
Translation : Martin Davies
Thanks to Laurent, Daniel, Najet, Stanko, Marguerite, Jean, Kathleen, Arthur, Michel, François, Noyau, Jérôme, Lionel, Stéphane
Thanks to all the minds that paid me a visit : Buck and Bubbles, Al Cohn, Eddie Condon, Duke Ellington, Slim Gaillard, Billie Holiday, Gene Kelly, Mezz Mezzrow, Michel Portal, Mills Brothers, Bill Bojangles Robinson, The spirit of rythm, Chick Webb..
And to all those awake...
(p) 2004 Nicolas Repac
He has a reputation as a musician's musician, a talented Jack-of-all-Trades as much at ease playing the guitar alongside his old accomplice, French songwriter Arthur H, as he is when tinkering with all kinds of machines by instinct, and creating made-to-measure contexts for instrumentalists like Michel Portal. Everyone knew he had a secret garden, the "song" world of a composer and performer who was difficult to categorize, a world not only lyrical but also dark and full of tender melancholy, not to mention easily surrealist (his first record of songs, La vile, which was released on the Indigo label in 1997, has a sequel in preparation in the form of a new opus, Lovni.)
But, once again, Nicolas Repac had a surprise in store, because he has turned up where no-one was expecting him: Swing Swing is a record as magnificent as it is difficult to place, with electro ramblings around jazz (its subjects and virtues, its spirit and memory), wanderings that are playful, light, fluid in gesture and crammed with ideas, discoveries and intuition; they are at once naïve and instinctive (Repac is an erudite amateur, the Ferdinand Cheval of the already-established world of electronic music), and extremely elaborate in their crushed samples, hallucinatory, rhythmic whirls and sensual, dreamlike atmospheres. There is nothing solemn or sluggish in this evocation of love; it is, rather, an unique way (though you wouldn't think so to see him at work, with that special manner he has of "settling" himself in his times with an unstable balance) of questioning what they call swing - and of offering it, in all humility, a whole range of possible futures.
