„Fragebogen“ is a standard interview with 15 questions around music plus a special task. This time it’s the singer Cleo T. who answers them.
*** Hier geht es zur deutschen Version des Fragebogens ***
First cd: The Jackson Five – ABC
First concert: I remember in 97, David Bowie performed a show in Juan les Pins, where my grandparents had their house. For some reasons, as we were the youngest, we couldn’t go, so my cousin and I sat outside and listened to all the sounds that were coming out of the arena. The music smelt like pine trees and felt warm as a summer night. I don’t even remember the songs he played that night, but I crystallized a magic moment of „Wild Is The Wind“ swaying in this summer breeze.
First childhood memory related to music: My father playing the Rolling Stones. „Satisfaction“ is definitely in good position in my childhood soundtrack.
Favourite song at the moment: I’m listening a lot to Agnes Obel lately.
A rather embarrassing song you like: I always remember this quote by Marcel Proust telling we shouldn’t despise bad love songs, tattered from overuse, because somehow they touch us like a cemetery or a village. So I might have a pretty collection of those, but I keep them on the bight side!
Favourite song among your own: „Des Orages au Fond des Yeux“, on the new record.
Favourite songlyrics: „I’m just a soul whose intentions are good, Oh Lord please don’t let me misunderstood.“
Best concert: There are so many…! I might say the Orquesta Aragon from Cuba that I saw in a festival in the south of France. It’s a piece of culture, music that truly belongs to the people, to their history. The musicians are like witnesses or guides, but what really matters is the music itself.
Worst concert: Mmm there are so many too…. ! I think when you decide to step on the stage in front of others, you really need to have a good reason for that. What Kandinsky calls „inner necessity“. If I can’t feel this, then it’s not for me.
Best concert among your own: The next one I’ll play. I believe that what comes is always better than what came before.
Vinyl, cd or mp3? I don’t listen so much to music at home. There is music everywhere around anyway. But if I have to choose, I’ll say my old gramophone and my 45 78 rpm vinyls.
Download or stream? Stream, I easily get lost in this immaterial data world. So I have to say recently I hold on to the immaterial aspects of „musics“ more than I follow musicians or artists. I have playlists of tango, cuban music or fado, any traditional music that belongs to the people and travels through space and time.
Club concert or festival? Clubs, the smallest possible.
Three songs that really have to be on your mixtape: Amazing Grace, any song by Nina Simone and „Silent is Sexy“ by Einstuerzende Neubauten. But tomorrow I might say The Dancer by PJ Harvey, any lieder by Schubert and Son Lux „Easy“.
An album you would NOT take with you to a lonely island: Any Depeche mode record.
It’s a picture of my friend and mentor Elyas Khan. We’re in the studio of my produced Rodion, in Berlin. I was really lucky to have such great artists like Elyas, and also Adnan Joubran, Tomàs Gubitsch, Prabhu Edouard, all those amazing artists who accepted to collaborate on the album. Artists with such a strong power in their direction, and artist’s „parcours“ are very important to me, like fireflies in the dark, to light us the way.
