They are blues, they are psychedelic, they are root, they are futuristic, they are portentous, they are genuine, … they are unique. Automatic City are also French (from Lyon), but they could well have come from an Egyptian pyramid, or from a Louisiana swamp, or from Aladdin’s lamp or, why fool us, even from a spaceship. They started playing blues versions to develop a sound as own as dazzling, electrifying the classic blues of the 50s and 60s until experimentation: an exciting, magical, impure, contaminated, dirty, sexy blues, as innovative as liberating (and liberated).
So, because there is not only blues in life (although there is no life without blues, as they themselves say), the French cross lines, limits and borders incorporating into their genuine sound their taste for the exotic oriental, for the psychedelic, for the soundtracks of science fiction movies, for the African rhythms, for the electronic beats. Listening to them, seeing them, enjoying them live is, at times, entering a Mississippi Baptist church; for others, stroll through the Sahara on a camel; sometimes feeling like you are being kidnapped by a tribe of aliens.
They rhyme surprisingly and sound retro-futuristic, like an updated journey to the origins of the genre: soulful vocals, organic rhythms, raw sounds, the root of blues and rhythm’n’blues, redrawn with wild electric guitars, assorted percussions, old rhythm boxes, theremin or sitar, bottles, cans, … All panting and wet, vibrant and suggestive. Like the blues itself, the real blues.
