La Voix du Nord (F)

LA VOIX DU NORD SUNDAY 27 AUGUST 2023

For Zaboitzeff, 50 years of music,
and a whole life after Art Zoyd

In 2017, the cymbal struck. The New York Times had ranked "44 and a half", by northern band Art Zoyd, among the box sets of the century, between Bowie and Zappa.
century between Bowie and Zappa. Six years later, Sambrian Thierry Zaboitzeff, Art Zoyd's other composer along with Gérard
Hourbette, has released his own boxed set, covering half a century of creative work. We're waiting for the New York review.

BY THÉO TERSCHLUSEN
tterschlusen@lavoixdunord.fr

THE CITIZEN OF SALZBURG

Thierry Zaboitzeff is taking a breather. 70 years old, no tour planned, a blank page in his studio. What a sound it would make, if on his double bass
the bow slips on a wet cloth? He now lives in Salzburg, Austria. The city of Mozart. Not the slightest hint of rivalry with the divine Amadeus. But the certainty that he was right to hold on to his guitar. As a rare privilege, at the end of 2022 Zaboitzeff released a fine three-disc box set of his 50 years of music (see below).
against). A collector's item. The oldest track dates back to prehistoric times: 1971. Sangria is, as its name
Sangria is, as its name suggests, a crazy rock romp. It's also the first spark of the Art Zoyd rocket, a northern band that never made it into the Top 50 but around which chapels of fans are burning candles all the way to Tokyo's musicology faculty.

L'ENFANT DE SOUS-LE-BOIS
Mythical: the group, founded by Rocco Fernandez from Valenciennes (in 1969, an exotic year), really took off in Maubeuge. Thierry Zaboitzeff was born in
Sous-le-Bois, the working-class heart of the Sambre, where factory yards occupied the entire valley in the 1950s. He remembers: "When I was a kid, everyone around me had someone who worked in the factory".
Not him, who strums his guitar and listens to pop rock. But he's already feeling the pinch. He has his eye on Franck Zappa, the alchemist guitarist, and Magma, the French pioneers of progressive rock.
pioneers of progressive rock. What followed was reminiscent of the meeting of Lennon and Mac Cartney on the Liverpool docks. At the turn of the 1970s, the director of the
of the Sangha hostel for young workers put "Zab" in touch with another kid: Gérard Hourbette. Thierry was self-taught, while Gérard had attended the Conservatoire and preferred the violin.

Thierry Zaboïtzeff has a philosophy: invent, never get bored, never look back. But that hasn't stopped him from offering his fans this boxed set of some fifty pieces, white pebbles amassed over the course of a career. The oldest dates back to 1971, when progressive rock was just taking off.

THE FUSE AND THE COMET
Who lit the fuse? Both, sir. They have the same appetite for new sounds. First they decide what they don't want at any price. Basically, showbiz.
showbiz: "We were proud and unconscious". They joined Art Zoyd and embarked on the first part of Magma's tour.

The rest was the same: inventing, never falling straight into a duly labelled record shop bin. Unclassifiable, they were quite successful at it.

In the 1980s, Art Zoyd appeared on Drucker's TV show on a Sunday, with Roland Petit's corps de ballet. Filled the Barcelona stadium for the 1992 Olympics
with the Groupe F fireworks team. Touring as far afield as Australia, taking in London's Royal Albert Hall with its cinematic concerts dedicated to silent films,
including Murnau's famous Nosferatu.

A LEGENDARY FIRST BOX SET
Gérard Hourbette died in 2018. At the end of 2017, a New York Times Christmas supplement ranked Art Zoyd's anthology 44 and a half as one of the box sets of the century, between Bowie, Zappa (remember that) and Thelonious Monk.
Hourbette and Zaboitzeff parted company at the turn of the century: they no longer shared the same musical vision.
Hourbette kept the house, and the studios linked to it, in Valenciennes. "Zab went his own way. Of the 50 or so pieces in his
his box set, only seven are stamped Art Zoyd. "I've never looked back.

SOME 50 PIECES, AS MANY MOODS
Is this music experimental? That would be to imprison it. Many of the pieces in the box set, arranged randomly, are classically written, or even have the lightness of jazz, like Avishaï Cohen, the Israeli double bassist.
Avishaï Cohen, the Israeli double bassist. Domagali, for example, was written in 2017 as the soundtrack to a Belgian documentary about Toubous women in the desert.
Was Zaboitzeff more melodically inclined than Hourbette? "Above all, we complemented each other perfectly. In invention too, the desire to change style and instrumentation.
and instrumentation. Electric cello, keyboards, tenor sax, voice, including his own, which he has found in the ultra-low register. "I'm trying out new climates.
I don't like to be bored. Épreuves d'acier, written in the 1990s, certainly tends towards industrial rock.
photo exhibition on a forge in Lorraine. But in his box set, Zaboitzeff has also slipped in several pieces written
for choreographer Edita Braun, which have the fluidity befitting ballet. A fruitful collaboration: the Austrian became the musician's wife two years ago.

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