INTERVIEW. Three years after “Matahari”, the French group L’Impératrice unveiled its second album, called “Tako Tsubo”, on Friday March 26, 2021.
“Tako Tsubo is the broken heart syndrome, this idea that sometimes an emotion, positive or negative, comes along and upsets everything, even also things as in place as a beating heart.” Tako Tsubo, it is also the name of the second album of L’Impératrice, to be released this Friday, March 26. The French group returns after Matahari and three years of absence, “it was time!”, sums up Flore Benguigui, the singer of L’Impératrice. A “break-up” record, carried by the singles Crazy, Voodoo?, fear of girls and Hematomalatest single.
“There was a desire to create a break with what we did before, whether in color, in the atmosphere. Compared to Matahari which is a very nocturnal album, there, we really wanted to move on to something more colorful, to go a little further in harmony, to bring back a lot of experiences, of life and to integrate them into our songs” , explains Charles de Boisseguin, leader of L’Impératrice, evoking for example the tour in the United States, Mexico or Turkey, “where we have a really present audience”.
A break therefore, first in the themes evoked – resolutely current when the texts speak of social networks for example – but also in the music. “The structures of the pieces are less classic, we are less the “verse-chorus” model, there is more relief, to image this syndrome of Tako Tsubo.” An album name of course, but which evokes a real pathology, called broken heart syndrome, studied by Japanese researchers and, coincidentally, which has seen the number of cases explode since the Covid-19 pandemic.
Far from the idea of wanting to break the hearts of their audience, the six members of L’Impératrice want with Tako Tsubo show that today they are “much more free in the way they compose”. “We take on our references, our influences, what we like and have fun a lot more”, underlines Charles. Composed of thirteen tracks, this album is a concentrate of emotions. The melodies, mixed by American producer Neal Pogue (who has worked with Outkast, Stevie Wonder, Tyler, The Creator, Kaytranada with whom he won two Grammy Awards, Earth, Wind and Fire, among others), are sublimated by the voice. by Flore Benguigui, who wrote the texts.
The six members of the group, Charles de Boisseguin, Hagni Gwon, Flore Benguigui, David Gaugué, Tom Daveau and Achille Trocellier, do almost everything as a team. “A collegial work, insists Charles. If there are one or two who do not feel the piece, we will put it aside immediately. There is a consensus which is very important.” And Flore to compete: “It’s sure that all six of us have different tastes, even if we agree on most things, there may be pieces where we don’t agree, but if there is a real divide on a song, in general, we don’t go there.”
Precisely, here is a piece which will have been unanimous in the group, but also within the public of L’Impératrice: Hématome, the last single unveiled before the release of the album Tako Tsubo. This piece, written in 2019, reflects L’Impératrice’s desire for rupture. Co-written with rapper Fils Cara, it evokes the paradox of social networks, “that we cannot escape”, underlines Flore. “There is something desperate, it is someone who has given up. When I sing ‘I would like to leave, but I have nothing to flee’, it’s this idea that with social networks, you can’t escape. Today, we are completely invaded, even if we wanted to, we could not avoid them.”
The idea for this song, which evokes the influence of social networks and sometimes their harmfulness, came to them after “a rather unpleasant experience”. In 2019, L’Impératrice resumed for Virgin Radio, then for Konbini, the song With ammonia of the NLP phenomenon duo. “We had the misfortune to touch PNL, we little white French people. And we got lit, lynched on the networks. So we realized that people released a certain violence, without filter, without restraint or reflection . And that’s the trap of social media. I felt like I had committed blasphemy,” Charles recalled. “Obviously, it makes you think, at a time when we have to go through social networks. All of this creates a kind of dystopia and that’s what we wanted to talk about at the base.”
To picture the song HematomaThe Empress unveiled the (superb) animated clip, directed by Roxane Lumeret and Jocelyn Charles, featuring a love story confronted with the virtual world of the Web, all illustrated by a moving creature totally lost in a world whose codes she does not master.
Before HematomaL’Impératrice, to announce the release of their second album, unveiled another single, called fear of girls, as well as a clip à la Tarantino, where a woman with hooked nails and an impeccable hairstyle cuts with a chainsaw any man in her path. “I don’t know if being called L’Impératrice made us a feminist band, but the idea was to write a song that talks about this hot topic, taking a slightly lighter and more ironic angle and above all to make fun, to denounce all these somewhat silly stereotypes that we stick to feminists”, underlines Flore. fear of girlsa tangy and disco piece, reflects, beyond its text, the music of L’Impératrice, whose inspirations are multiple, but which made its success in France, as well as abroad.
With its pop-disco-cosmic music, L’Impératrice has managed to make a name for itself all over the world. “We have a slightly exotic, French side, with this French touch thing, in our sounds, we can have this heritage,” Charles points out. About French touch, the musician clearly claims inspiration Daft Punk, a pioneering duo of the genre, recently separated. A news that created a global shock wave and, of course, impacted the leader of L’Impératrice: “I was very sad, because I feel so close to their music, to a point where I had the impression of understanding them perfectly when they released a song.”
And to analyze: “There’s something a bit hurtful to say to yourself that the guys who are the reason why you made music stop everything, because a priori, they are tired, they have done their time and that they’re a bit depressed about what’s going on today. It’s a bit strong message, but a bit depressing. These are guys who have always led by example, who have always been innovative… Once you’ve finished leading by example, or you consider that you’ve finished leading by example, there’s a bit of a pessimistic and depressing thing about saying to yourself ‘go ahead, I’m out ‘.”
“We are a live band”, underlines Flore. It took almost two years for the band to go on tour again. A salvo of concerts in 2022 which will take them to France, Germany, England, Sweden, Finland, Poland, Denmark, Portugal, but also to the United States, Canada and Mexico. The Empress will be passing through the Zénith de Paris on February 28, 2022.