PRO Profile - Manceau
About
It may seem easy on the surface. Nevertheless, Manceau’s pop music is shaped in a trompe-l’oeil style and discloses even more bold details every time you immerse yourself in it. “On a Mellow Day”, the band’s five-track EP, is a clear example of this. The album sounds like a small collection of melodies with false bottoms: happy but gloomy, colored but pastel, ornate but fixed. Since the summer of 2008, these four craftsmen have been questing for the perfect arrangement in their way of composing a demanding music that has to touch anyone (including pop addicts overseas since this first effort has recently drawn increasing enthusiasm in Japan).
Even if they’re crazy about pop culture in a broad meaning (music, cinema, plastic arts), Julien Vignon, Vincent Roux, Samuel Chapelain and François Lemercier can’t be summed up as unimaginative torturers. Not only sat on the shoulders of giants (from Colin Blunstone to Prince), their songwriting is also tinged with the same savoir-faire of younger goldsmiths as Sufjan Stevens, Phoenix or Vampire week end .The band is now building a case with soul and electro tools for their delicate melodies: definitely far from eventless pop highways.
On stage, Manceau succeeds perfectly in mixing that groovy soul-music lightness and more exhilarating tough rhythms. This is a kind of infusion who’s been tasted and approved by audiences of famous french venues (L’Aéronef, le Réservoir, le VIP, l’International, l’Olympic ) since a little over a year. Last but not least, Rennes Trans Musicales festival widely revealed their alchemy in 2010.
