Mathieu Persan
KNX Crew
About Mathieu Persan
Often, when you read musicians’ biographies, they start with something like “at the age of four, I had already listened to all my parents’ records. From that moment I started to live for music, for music only”. In my case, it’s a bit more complicated and maybe more honest... I was born 28 years ago in France in Paris neighbourhood. Until the age of 11, I was not particularly attracted to music. Nevertheless, I asked my parents to take violin lessons. The reason why? I must admit that I don’t remember. After 3 years’ practising, I began to play with the music school’s orchestra: a group of people like me, with no particular skills for their instruments but who took pleasure but made a mess of famous classical pieces in front of their parent’s tender looks and blocked ears. At the age of 16, I realized that I could never honour famous composers with my very personal interpretation of their work. So I let them rest in peace…which they really deserved. I stopped violin lessons and began to try to play the guitar. For this second choice of an instrument, I had some reasons. The first one was not obviously the best one: guitar is cool, ask the girls. The second one was that I met a new guy at school, Philippe Crab who played the guitar and wrote songs. We soon became friends and he taught me a few things on guitar. I learned a little by myself too and after a few months I was able to play some songs decently and took much more pleasure than with my violin. I began to write songs, just for fun. Then I bought a little 4 track recorder and began to record them as a leisure. Then one day, after having listened to my favourite record of the moment, I asked myself a question that you will probably find a bit stupid. Anyway, I wondered why I would not try to write beautiful songs. Probably deeply moved by the music I had just listened to, it appeared to me that the music I had written ‘for fun’ as a kind of an excuse was everything but beautiful. From this moment I never pushed a song to the end if I did not find something in it that could move me in some way. It required from me to be honest and to accept who I was, what I thought and what I wanted to say. Shy and not very self-confident, even a bit ashamed of who I was, I had unconsciously found a way to hide myself using a dark low voice like a subtle disguise of my intimate thoughts. When I sang, I was not myself anymore. I was someone more confident, cleverer, more attractive, who looked at the world from above, in peace instead of feeling squeezed and scared by it. Those songs were like a catharsis. I began to feel proud of my work as it gave me pleasure and emotions. The desire of making a record with my songs came then. The usual first step to reach that aim should have been to build a band and play live as much as possible, hoping that one day a record label would discover me. I was not really in that mood. I wanted to create a whole universe, working on arrangements, instruments, harmony and melody like a tool to create some little pieces of art. I started to play the piano and various keyboards, the bass guitar, took back my violin and included them all in my compositions. With very modest means I recorded around 10 songs and found a record label that was interested in my work. I was received very kindly, was asked if I had lived in New York (no sorry I just took the tube to come…) and we listened to my songs. They chose the song “you vs. You” to put on a compilation. We went into a studio to record it entirely. During the recording session, Sinclair, who was in charge of the artistic side of the project asked me to sing with my “own” voice. It was hard and even painful at the beginning. But soon I realized that if I wanted to make people feel the same way I felt when I listened to a song that touches me, I had to be myself. The fact of being chosen for this compilation gave me enough trust to face myself without any trick. I left my parents’ house, found a job and began to write and record one song a week. After several fruitless attempts to obtain a recording contract with a record label I decided to produce my record by myself. So I went to my bank and asked for a credit to buy a car. You may wonder how a car would help me to produce my music. Actually, I sort of lied to my banker. I thought I would be treated more seriously if I told him that I wanted a car to go to work rather than some equipment for self-producing my music… So in May 2004 I had everything I needed to try to produce my very first LP. Everything but recording and mixing skills. I spent hours trying things, recording a lot and finally managed to produce my songs decently. “does it make you feel sad ?” was finished in September 2005 and I had to spread the word about it all around the world. By “the world” understand independent webzines, record labels, editors etc… Webzines wrote great reviews about it (thanks a lot!), I met some record labels, but no one seemed to be interested in releasing this record in spite of the interest they appeared to show. It was time to begin to play live and defend my music. I asked my friend Philippe Crab if he wanted to play the guitar with me on stage. We made some gigs in Paris and step by step, I began to like playing live in rawest way. Then I was contacted by “Coming soon pop records” record label based in Paris. They told me things directly: we love your music but we won’t release your self-produced LP like that because it is not good enough. Even if it was hard to hear, I appreciated their honesty. It took me time to admit that all the work I had done on this record was finally just a sketch. It was like coming back to the first point but from a different point of view; one year after having finished “does it make you feel sad?” I was able to step back and question what I had done. So, I recorded some old and brand new songs, changed lots of things, adjusted them with Philippe’s help and precious advice on some songs, and finally sung them again, using my experience of the stage. It was a lot of work, with many choices, doubts and sleepless nights. This record is the result of all that and I must say that it is pretty close to what I imagined at the very beginning. It is a very personal satisfaction. Now it belongs to you to tell me if I really reached my goal. Pop-songs are not really pieces of art but they have a great power: they can help in hard times or make happy ones even better. Carved in the memory, they can then act like emotion pills you can take whenever you want, whenever you need. I hope my songs will have this power on you like hundreds of songs had it on me. I am glad I opened you a door to my world, be sure that I would be honoured to be a part of yours. Mathieu Persan
Taken from Last.fm
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