Mad Meditations

Kind of like you can count on there always being a good spread on the table if you visit your folks for dinner, you can usually count on there being some interesting meat in any interview undertaken with Sébastien Tellier. You probably know Tellier as the guy behind La Ritournelle, the romantic piano ode that quickly became a contemporary chill classic, but it's just a small sample of the nine albums' worth of eccentric, lush electronic music the French singer, songwriter and multi-intrumentalist has under his belt. The tall, dark, heavily-bearded Tellier, who counts Daft Punk amongst his closest collaborators, gets a lot of attention not just for his music but thanks to his curious persona: for starters, there's his open stance on controversial topics (he once wrote a whole album purely about sex and openly admits to smoking weed in interviews) and his stint in Eurovision (he was drunk for the whole performance, and used to be an alcoholic).

Antics aside, a recent chat with Tellier revealed him to be an emotionally and musically intelligent dude, out there making the world a more interesting place. He wasn't stoned or drunk during our slot, although the thick French accent and broken English did make it a baffling exercise at times: “Eh sorr-ee, I cannot hear ze question... where? when? oo ? what?”, enquires a manic Tellier, before we establish that on the particular day of the interview, he's at home in his studio, which he walks us through. “In my apartment in Paris I have a studio just for me, specifically for composition,” says Tellier. “You enter my apartment and go through a straight hallway, then you push a bookshelf, and this opens and leads to a secret passage, through which I reach my studio. It's really good for me to have this space to create. I have the piano in one part of the living room, another little part for the guitar, another part to compose with computers, there's a little office part for writing.”
It's in this home studio that Tellier with the help of Parisian producer Mr. Flash (Ed Banger Records) – worked on latest album My God Is Blue, a musical meditation on spirituality and belief. Tellier admits to a favourite haunt close by: “I really like a French brasserie named Siflot it's really, really old fashioned. It's really close to a big garden named Les Tuileries, it's also quite close to the Louvre Museum. Everyone knows me in this restaurant.” However, to remove any temptation to get on the plonk during the creation of My God Is Blue, the musician put himself under house arrest: “Usually when I work, I don't have a break, I wake up, I work and I don't even eat until about 8pm. So I don't usually go to cafes really during the day. Also, I have a history with alcoholism, and am trying not to drink anymore, so cafes always have alcohol – it's best for me to stay away.”

Shutting himself off to make music is something Tellier says he's been doing since childhood: “When I was six I had an electric guitar, I used to listen to Pink Floyd's Animals and try and copy what I heard. Then a few years later and I got some drums, and by the time I was 13 I had my first little studio set up in my bedroom. So that was pretty great, not many 13 year olds have their own music studios. But it was also pretty lonely for me – on the weekends other kids my age would be going out, but I would stay at home making music in my studio.” But if not friends, Tellier at least his family keeping him in good company: “My father is a big fan of music, so for me, it was completely natural to become a musician – there were no expectations on me from my parents to become a doctor or anything,” explains Tellier. “Every Sunday morning my family would religiously listen to records together. That really cemented my relationship in music. My father taught me to play chords on the piano, helped me understand how to create music. I'm really grateful for that.”

Knowing his calling early on meant that by the time Tellier was 20, he was ready to map out a solid plan on how to implement his passion; taking it upon himself one night to write down in a notebook every kind of album he wanted to make in his life, a plan he now references regularly: “I said I wanted to make an album about family, another about politics, another about sex, one abut religion… so now I just follow these books. When I was 20 I had this lovely, naive view of the world and I want to preserve that naivety.” In line with his plan, My God Is Blue takes up religion in a broad sense as a subject matter, although not in a limiting way, says Tellier. “The album is my proposition to society: don't forget the spiritual side of life, it's really important. Myself, I feel close to God, but not in the boring, old-fashioned way. I just believe in the power of something stronger than us, that religion is inside everything. For instance, I feel closest to God when I'm playing music, on stage or in the studio.”

The 'Blue God' refers to Tellier's hope that people will abandon pre-determined notions of religion and create their own spiritual masters. For Tellier, this realisation was spurred after a a trip to a shaman in Los Angeles – the shaman gave Tellier a “potion” to drink that resulted in Tellier dreaming “blue dreams”. “They were wonderful dreams, a blue wave washed over the world and everything was beautiful and true,” muses Tellier, “all my new music ideas came from that dream. So for now, it's about Blue God. Maybe next year I'll have some different Gods, maybe the year after that, 20 different Gods. Society is so complex, everyone wants a finite answer, but what's always going to be simple is sleeping and dreaming, creating and seeking. Everyone can do that.”

To spread the good 'blue' energy, Tellier has created an online community – L'Alliance Bleue – to accompany the album release, the idea being that Tellier can surround himself with like minds, and possibly raise some funds to translate this online community into a real one. He's not sure where it'll be yet, but Tellier says this 'mystery' location will have sun, disco, swimming pools and vodka and be some kind of “heaven on earth”. Even writing this sounds a little wack, but Tellier assures us it's all above board. “Maybe the world thinks it's a sect or a cult, but it's not, true! I need money and time and skilled people to create this place. The website is about finding those people who want this place to happen and bringing them together.”

There's no denying My God Is Blue witnesses Tellier's philosophies and music graduate into new and complex realms – a long way from the days when a simple love song had Tellier ruling the charts and critics. “It took me eight minutes to write 'La Ritournelle',” remembers Tellier. “I did it in one night.I called all my friends to come over; I said 'I'm pretty sure I've got a good song here, a life-changing song.' They all came over, we had wine, I played the piano part to them… then I got Tony Allen [Fela Kuti] to do the percussion on the track – he's the leader in African rhythm, it was really important for me to play with him. It was a wonderful experience for me.”