JOIN USAs part of the ‘Cine-Concert’ event, DJ and sound artiste Jean Yves Leloup from Paris performed to Buster Keaton’s silent film, ‘The General’, at The Paul recently. Jean Yves Leloup is part of the duo that constitute ‘Radiomentale’ along with Eric Pajot, who is a DJ and visual artiste based in Paris.
The silent comedy, ‘The General’, depicted the single-handed efforts of a railway engineer to rescue his beloved locomotive, which was stolen by union spies from the north during the civil war in France. It was an action-packed sequence of jokes projected alongside a live mix of sounds drawn from a wide range of audio sources including movie tracks, ambient, experimental and electronic music.
Amelie Pouchol, hailing from Lyon, France, who was at the event, said, “The programme was really nice and the movie was so funny. I liked the contrast between the old movie, which was in black and white, and the electronic music, which had a modern touch to it. They united in such a big way.”
“Music is an essential means of communication, which is very powerful because it doesn’t require words to be understood. Music can convey emotions, feelings, doubts and cross-linguistic borders,” Amelie said.
“Most of the tracks played tonight were old, edited, mixed versions of music that we don’t get to hear much these days. I try to choose music containing rhythms and beats which sound timeless. I also try not to have a big gap between the sounds and visuals generated. But some differences with respect to such forms of art give rise to other literary features like irony. So it’s also nice to have a little diversity in what we play, largely depending upon the kind of festival that we perform for,” said Jean added.
“I was pretty sure that the people here would respond to the music and they didn’t disappoint. I played the same gig at a huge festival in Korea, where thousands of people laughed at the same jokes that were being laughed at tonight. Through music, we empower images, enhance emotions and try to accentuate the dynamism behind music to make it a universal language,” he added.
The end of the event also marked the beginning of a night of dance. The hall was almost instantaneously transformed into a dance floor with DJ Jean Yves Leloup on the consoles, spinning mixed versions of tracks by ‘Hosh’, John Tejata and the famous ‘We Will Rock You’ by ‘Queen’, just to name a few.