Noir Désir
Tostaky

THE REVIEW

A Cut on the Soul  

It was ten years ago, the sweat and the gaze towards Frédéric next to the amplifier could be lost in a fleeting and reverberated snapshot; one of those images I fixed in my head on frames of memory. The darkness embraced me, sometimes, a friend of few words and gestures confused among pets. Suffocating, naturally and simply, those hands I felt rough and rogue on the throat tightening, tightening, and tightening again until my pain was the protagonist of a tragic moment. Damned syncope, you tried to trample my maudit dreams of Morrison, Stooges, Lou Reed and Sonic Youth in Besancon in 1989 and this voice abandoned among hysteria and political impulses: ten years ago, the operation on the vocal cords and the darkness that does not want to leave. Complicated and severe days; the urgency, the strong and moral need to express poorly concealed anger, restlessness, and ideals annihilated by boredom and frustration. The 'black desire' cut off for an endless and authoritarian period. But the heavy chains of physical problems are not enough to make me a passive and apathetic slave, to make anxiety and the fear of defeat prevail. Life, often deceitful and lying, is not enough to erase Denis's silhouette on stage behind the drums and the onset of 'Here it comes slowly'. Or the harshness, and distortions complices of my friend Serge during 'Ici Paris'. I seek an 'Oublie' that can distance me from strange thoughts and darkness in a corner, an alternative to this train whose destination I do not want to know. Here in Paris, where you can meet Marianne the rebel, the air borrows from love and life; and what you have given often does not come back.  Here in Paris, I swim in Alice's visions - it can transform, nothing opposes: at the end of the race, it returns to the source, a long wait before stretching into a 'One trip\one noise'. In the voice of 'Marlene' the warmth that alleviates the death of soldiers, in her veins the unconditional love where they find eternal refuge. And 'Johnny  Colere' speaks to me and shakes me with words of passion: "forget your father, forget your mother and forget yourself because it's time to choose which side, in which 'camp' to take a stand". I still have the bitter taste of indignation, victory sometimes caresses the hope of belonging to the 'losers' and desperate; malaise, disillusionment in the spat-out lyrics of '7 Minutes' and 'Sober song' like small cuts on the soul.'It spurts', and finally, I bend my head while a green light on the exhausted Fender concludes the concert 'attacking' the extreme right local administration of Toulon, in '97. The bottom of the continent, the gold of the new world. Disposable pyramids, impeccable businessmen when the rain of wisdom 'rots' on sidewalks: 'Tostaky'.

"Oh lord, hear me please, you have to make me sober... It's allright now, but what an awful night. I'm almost reaching the kitchen. I'll drink water till I die..Aspirin, come on please, i don't want to suffer..."

Perhaps someone will be able to look me in the eyes, and not notice the perpetual darkness of these narrow spaces. The abyss where my heart drowned in Vilnius determines moods and habits of the everyday. Many think they know me, dissect me, and annul me since that July 27, 2003. What remains of four adolescent friends from Bordeaux, with the common disease of the new wave, and a madly loved partner; famous actress and daughter of art? A sandcastle eroded and carried away by the wind. Now I wear a mask that doesn't belong to me, a tragic night is not enough to make me a 'monster' and the truth, often, is not written in the newspapers. I carry the horror inside of moments that have torn me apart. I can never forgive myself, certain actions do not represent us, and I ask myself: 'Was I the perpetrator, were my hands stained with blood?!'. Marie if I could... Open with a gash the walls that separate me from the outside, observe the indifference of the clouds in the sky - that immense blue traversed by distant white spots that captured my wonder as a child in Normandy, and breathe. Breathe deeply the air outside. And free myself from the darkness that has imprisoned me for years. It was ten years ago, a slight feedback bid us farewell from the audience and behind me Barthe's spontaneous smile accompanied my joy for a dense, vital, and successful live; in a word 'electric': in Toulon those clear, firm, political positions left a mark. It was 1997.

Les Noir Désir, French rock standard-bearers at the dawn of the Nineties with Mano Negra and Les Negresses Vertes.