Chocolat Billy Le Feu Au Lac

“In french, one can say that "the lake isn’t on fire", meaning that there is no rush. But what would a lake on fire look like?
This new Chocolat Billy album, as its title announces, tries to picture it.
The urgency is there, it is hounding us, informing, spreading, but it is embroiled in a “danceable solution” as Brian Ferry would have said in the days of Roxy Music.
With Chocolat Billy, we don't dance in circles, we travel in dreams in half-built landscapes. Jacques seems to be blowing in his tuba, which one imagines to be a little dusty, and this simple movement of air is
transformed into a note on the sax leading the path from the cave to the river.
Besides Jacques, (we will not know what happened to his various partners that we encountered in a previous album), we come across several families of figures. Où vas-tu Zolatale? "Au Cinéma" seems to answer the following title. And it is Italy on the Cinecittà side that we visit to the rhythm of a shimmering afro-beat, taking the time to salute the great Mario Bava, then a Mediterranean California of acid-synth Beach Boys. We enter in a huge apartment reminiscent of a tango, not Piazzolla's but Zbigniew Rybczyński's film. We even dance in the dark following a reptilian progression, disregarding the angles and walls that our swaying hips might encounter. And above all, we don't dance alone.
We do not shuffle; the tracks move forward, compact, on their sustained rhythms, but one can linger to whistle the Orientologist. The fire in the lake does not create a bubble and does not give in to panic, it is crossed by colored and sinuous lines which intertwine supplely but can sometimes break abruptly as the design of the cover suggests. "Scutigères flamboyantes vs rats de bureau versus", this intense text found on a flyer
at Novö Local, an underground concert venue in Bordeaux, seems to have drifted to finally find its place in the band's music. One can imagine that other materials that make their music so rich were picked up along
the way, kept aside, waiting for the right moment to use them, this little nothings, like Jacques with his found mask which is a bit old.
Whether for dance or for life, there is an urgent need to keep your feet on the ground. And if you catch yourself looking at your shoes, it's not "shoegazing" but it's to check that they will hold up. "
Jean-Francois Magre

In 2002, to provide on the spot a first act for a concert, seven people from Bordeaux accidentally named their very young formation Chocolat Billy. Quickly, the group tightens around four people but the name, although absurd, is preserved. The quartet then takes a liking to exchanging instruments, unless it is the instruments that take a liking in changing musicians.
The result, echoing this game of musical chairs, is at the crossroads of several sonic paths, a hybrid form, alternately playful and dancing free-rock, experimental pop, world noise, naive songs.
Composed collectively and as democratically as possible, the pieces of Chocolate Billy, albeit written, give the lion share to improvisation and elasticity.
They played left, right and center with Deerhoof, The Ex, Thurston Moore, The Osees and a whole gang of great musicians.
To date, seven albums have been released on the labels Les Potagers Natures, Kythibong and Frissons.
Armelle Marcadé Magermans, Jo Burgun, Ian Saboya and Jordan Pirozzi make up the formation today.
credits
released April 22, 2022