Indochine releases the highly anticipated “Babel Babel”, an unreasonable and committed double album. Two Belgian dates in April 2025.
Indochina 2024. Stéphane Ridard
After seven years of waiting, here it is finally, this fourteenth album by Indochine. “Babel Babel” follows “13” and it is a seventeen-course menu that the group serves us. Double CD, triple vinyl. Seventeen tracks that prove that Nicola Sirkis and his team are more up to date than ever. The group reinvents itself while keeping this instantly recognizable touch. It invites magnificent strings on Alone in Heaven which closes the set, launches into an unexpected reggae on Beauty and the Beast and takes us onto the dancefloor with the incredible Victoria which mixes electro and disco rhythm. Without forgetting the powerful Sanna on the crossthe steamroller that is Babel Babel and the unstoppable The Song of the Swans already released as a single.
These five titles stand out. But there are still twelve that you need to soak up. “17 titles is too manysays Nicola Sirkis during our meeting in Paris. When people say this album is unreasonable, it’s because of that. Today, who still has time to listen? This album, either we live with it for two years, or we put it there, we’ll never listen to it.”
This fourteenth album has been a long time coming…
NICOLA SIRKIS – Usually, there are four to five years between two records. We finish a tour and we start a writing process. Here, it’s seven years. Like everyone else, we lost two years. Or we gained two. Covid had an impact on writing. The fact that it took so long made us see things differently. And then, we still did a lot of things during this time. We did two tours. And at the same time, we wrote. Writing an album while playing a lot on stage gives much stronger tracks, both in terms of music and lyrics.
This album has very electro sounds. Was it difficult to transpose it for the stage during your first showcase given this Tuesday at Roissy?
Oli de Sat – We thought it was going to be complicated but it happened quite naturally during the first showcases given in France and at home. All of a sudden, we realized that, yes, we can still take the songs up a level when we already thought that on record, the production was already pretty cool.
Nicola Sirkis – It’s a great pleasure to be able to make this album and play it directly before everyone has it, to see how it sounds live.
Was it bold to perform it live last week in front of an audience that didn’t know any of the songs?
Nicola Sirkis – The important thing is that people like our album, whether they are journalists or the public. It’s two and a half years of our work. So, if we say it’s crap, it would hurt. Will people like the album? The doubt is always there, but about the way we play the songs on stage, there is none. We felt that three weeks ago, when we started rehearsing. We rehearse in a big studio near Paris, where there are other artists. Everyone stopped when they heard us. They wondered who this group was that goes from reggae to electropop. They couldn’t believe it was us. We felt that something was happening.
Is Indochina’s DNA still there?
Nicola Sirkis – For Indochine, doing reggae is not in the cliché that we have been put in, that of rock. It is a totally strange album compared to that. But the DNA remains. When we started the group, 40 years ago, people told us that if we had our sound we would be recognizable. It is true that we recognize a Coldplay song no matter what, or a U2 song. We are also recognized, it is rather classy.
In the age of Spotify, why release another double album of seventeen songs?
Nicolas Sirkis – We work the old way but by making modern rock. Releasing a single track, we did it with Nos fêtements. But we want to create and express ourselves. Indeed, it goes against everything that should be done. It’s an anti-TikTok generation album. For the record industry, it’s long and double, while people no longer have time to listen to records today. There are long tracks, choruses that come after two minutes, or even no chorus. We really want to make music that we like, so we do what we like. We are lucky that the audience is powerful enough and large enough to allow us to do what we want. At least we are proud of what we do.
Isn’t “Babel Babel” Indochine’s most committed album?
Nicola Sirkis – We are told that every time. On “13”, there was still A French Summer and Trump the world. We observe the world and we undergo it like everyone else. For the past ten years, he has never been so confronted with barking from one and the other, self-persuasion from one and the other, self-sufficiency in saying “I’m right, you’re not.”. Nobody talks to each other anymore, nobody understands each other anymore, everyone is right. And then, in fact, we realize that no. For months, in France, we had been saying that the Olympic Games were going to be a disaster. In fact, no. Everything went very well. People were happy to see each other again. They were magnificent Olympic Games. All the people who said that made fools of themselves. We are in this filthy cacophony that is unbearable. It is more an observation than a political commitment. But it is also an album that has a lot of hope.
This album was recorded in London, Paris and Brussels, which has become your base camp since 1996. Why Brussels and the ICP studios?
Oli de Sat – Every time we say to ourselves that we’re going to change. We go to other studios, we try… and we come back to Brussels. We’re used to the ICP, we’re very well received. The food is excellent. We recorded with Erwin (Autrique), with whom we’d already worked a lot. He knows very well what we want. So, there’s no need to explain. Everything is so well-oiled there that it’s difficult to go elsewhere. And above all, there’s sound.
Here you are in 2024 with a fourteenth Indochine album. And to think that at the beginning of the group, you were given six months before seeing you disappear. What does that inspire in you?
Nicolas Sirkis- There you go! Yes, we were barely given six months. The name wasn’t going to hold up because it was too connoted. We were a crappy pop band. What can I say? The dogs bark, the caravan moves on.
4 and 5/4, ING Arena, Brussels
Indochina Babel Babel Our rating: 3/4
