Cyril Cyril Prophesizes the Robot Apocalypse
Our record of the month is "Le futur ça marche pas", the political third album of the Geneva-based duo Cyril Cyril
Swiss readers have requested more post about Swiss music, even though I already talked about Lausanne some weeks ago when I talked about Meril Wubslin. But who am I to deny what the people wants?
So let’s talk about Cyril Cyril, but first… THE NEWS!
A little aparté about this year’s Eurovision
Switzerland: land of chocolate, fondue, chocolate fondue, (shady) banks and the new Eurovision winner!
The supercute Nemo have won a deeply controversial song contest with a quirky, energetic banger called The Code. Ouf! France came fourth with Slimane performing yet another sad but powerful love song (our drink of choice). It was a good one but Nemo was better. Good for them.
But we’re not going to talk about Eurovision. You can always revisit my post from last year where I told France’s history in the Eurovision Song Contest.
The third album of the Swiss duo Cyril Cyril was released on April 26 by Bongo Joe and Born Bad, two record labels I already talked about several times, sharing a passion for independent music, but most importantly the publishing of international musicians' forgotten works. They don’t want to call it “world music”.
On Le futur ça marche pas [trad: The future doesn't work], Cyril Cyril are sharing with us their best anticapitalistic fusion rock.
Frenchsplaining Cyril Cyril
Even if you don't know Cyril Cyril, you may know Cyril and Cyril. Two very important people in the Geneva music scene. I interviewed both of them, separately, last summer. I will share some translated bits here.
We knew each other by reputation. I don't know why but I always had the feeling that there was something to do with this guy. He has a crazy energy with a desire to share and create spaces where people meet. I really identify with his approach. We spoke for the first time at La Tène’s inauguration at the Cave 12 where he was mixing. From that moment, we really had the opportunity to meet more regularly. We started making music without a musical project, at a time in our lives when we wanted to start from scratch. It was an organic and instinctive way of working. A real blank page.
Cyril Bondi
Cyril Bondi is the co-founder of the collective Insub. (and their extremely specialized orchestra) and a former member of Plaistow, a jazz band from Switzerland. He’s currently the drummer in La Tène, a band I already talked about last year. In Cyril Cyril, Bondi arguably plays the poppiest music he's ever played. He took the opportunity to recreate a hybrid drum kit from scratch, mixing traditional elements and atypical percussion. Rhythm is an essential element of the duo's music, ever more on this new album.
Cyril Yeterian, is the founder of Bongo Joe, an excellent label/café/store in Geneva specialized in music from the margins. He was playing the accordion in Mama Rosin, a Cajun folk group from Switzerland. When he speaks about Cyril Cyril, he thinks it’s his “personal healing” because he “looks for elements in my [Armenian] origins to add them to the music”.
As Cyril Cyril, they already released two good albums : Certaines Ruines [trad: Some ruins] in 2018 and Yallah Mickey Mouse in 2020. I strongly urged you to see them live to dance your ass off.
Together, Cyril Bondi and Cyril Yeterian can also be found in Yalla Miku, a supergroup with members of Hyperculte (number five in my 2023 list) and three musicians with African origins based in Geneva.
One day, I had carte blanche at the Cave 12, our experimental music mecca in Geneva. I invited musicians who had landed in Geneva in incredible circumstances. They had all played at the store in the months following their arrival, even though they didn't even speak French yet. We created very strong bonds. A few years later, I suggested that we be part of a band in which we would break new ground. This is the genesis of Yalla Miku. […] We wanted to show the real international Geneva, the one with the the invisible communities.
Cyril Yeterian
Music from around the Mediterranean has always been an important element in the DNA of Cyril Cyril’s music.“With the next album, it will be more complicated to label us,” Yeterian added at the end of the interview.
Indeed, Cyril Cyril's third album, without denying its globalized influences, is becoming more radical. Le futur ça marche pas is something that seemed to have disappeared since the 2000s: a political rock record in French.
The Matrix revolutions
The whole album has a cool vibe of nostalgic fear of the impending apocalypse. Particularly about the revolt of the machines: Cyril Cyril talks about artificial intelligence, screens, automation, etc.
On vocals, Yeterian lets loose like never before and tells us a lot of things:
Microonda Sahara talks about global warming, in a duet with Eblis Álvarez, the guy from Meridian Brothers
The single La Rotation de l’Axe [trad: The Rotation of the Axis] addressed the inexorability of the future, the central theme of the album
Plus rien à faire [trad: Nothing Left to Do] addresses terrorism and direct action in a deluge of noise
Chat Gepetto talks about… uh… artificial intelligence
Le tocsin [trad: a type of warning church bell] where Bondi takes the microphone to recite the names of whistleblowers and the secrets they revealed
It’s only on La grisaille [trad: the greyness] that Yeterian explains why he became much more political: the violence of this current world no longer leaves room for poetry
Even if the global influences are decreasing, Cyril Cyril still invites the entire Bongo Joe microcosm to do a bass line or a cello part. The album is produced by Carlos Quebrada from the Argentinian punk rock band Blanco Teta.
Musically, it’s more minimalist and direct than the previous ones. A krautrock reduced to its simplest expression, all the percussion and riffs come together in a very elegant noisy rock, the vocal harmonies and other singing effects add to the delicately leftist atmosphere. All we need to do is end up shouting “libérer l’argent des banques” [trad: free the money from the banks] while shaking our asses.
Geography bonus about the Lake’s name
Geneva and Lausanne are two cities located on the Swiss shore of my favorite lake. In France, we call it Lac Léman, which is dumb because Léman means “lake” in an ancient language. So we basically call it Lake Lake, so dumb. In Switzerland, they are more pragmatic albeit limited because they call it Lac de Genève [trad: Geneva’s lake], even though there is other cities bordering the lake, including Lausanne, Thonon, Evian and Montreux (of the jazz festival fame).
If someone could offer me a job there, I would swim in the lake every day. I’ve never been to la Cave 12.