RadioMentale

Bookings : laradiomentale@gmail.com
RadioMentale is an electronic music, sound artists & DJ duo founded by Jean-Yves Leloup & Eric Pajot. They started their career in 1992, with their own radio show, playing experimental music, concrete music, ambient & electronic. During ten years, they produced this weekly and cult radio show in Paris for Radio FG (first french and independant electronic music station), national Swiss station Couleur 3 and Tokyo Shibuya FM. During this period, they also played in the first techno and rave parties organized in Paris, mainly in chill-out spaces.

From the mid-90’s, they started to work in the field of contemporary art, composing sountracks and soundpieces for exhibitions, and collaborating with video artists, writers, designers or film directors.

Since then, their work, their installations and performances, have been presented in various venues such as Palais de Tokyo in Paris, Centre Georges Pompidou, Kassel’s Documenta, Luxembourg Mudam, Paris Cité de la musique, Cartier Foundation, and various clubs, music and cinema festivals over the world.

Since 2000, they are known as the pioneers of « cinemix », an audiovisual performing practise quite popular in France. As Djs and sound artists, they create new soundtracks for silent and classic experimental films (by Griffith, Murnau, Keaton, Vertov, and dada/surrealist artists), but also for modern talking movies, such Antonioni’s Blow Up, Gus Van Sant’s Gerry, Brian De Palma’s Dressed To Kill or David Cronenberg’s Videodrome.

A RadioMentale performance or sound piece, is usually a collage drawing on an eclectic range of audio sources, including sound experiments, movie soundtracks, ambient music, experimental & electronic music, natural sounds, fragment of interviews and human voice.

After two Mixed CDs, released in 1997 (the ambient/IDM The Slow Room) and 2004 (the more cinematic Cut-Up Scenario), they released in 2007 as L-R & RadioMentale (with Jean-Philippe Renoult), an album/voice collage/radio art piece entitled I Could Never Make That Music Again, for the belgian label Sub Rosa, awarded by a 2008 Qwartz Prize in France for best electronic artist.

In 2012, their new album is entitled I-Land, gathering three recent original compositions, each one lasting twenty minutes. Mixing vocals with field recordings (natural and urban sounds) and electronic sounds, as well as revealing a rich and poetic universe, halfway between ambient, electro-acoustic and sound art. The characteristic features of Radiomentale’s sounds remain untouched: human vocals, immersion and hypnosis aesthetics, cinematic climate, sense of narration and atmospheres.

Their latest sound and audiovisual pieces and installations were commissioned by the Paris Gaîté Lyrique and the Geneva Chamber Orchestra, the french ministry of culture, Montpellier ZAT festival, national radio stations France Culture (ACR : creative radio workshop) and France Musique (Tapage Nocturne radio show).

Jean-Yves Leloup is a sound-artist, DJ, critic, journalist and a curator, specialized in electronic music, contemporary art & new technologies. He is the author of « Les Basiques : la musique électronique » (Olats.org), an online a free book dedicated to the history of electronic music, an essay entitled « Digital Magma » (2009, Sternberg Press) and also « Global Techno » (published in 1999 by Camion Blanc and republished by Scali in 2008). He has been the curator of the design and sound art project Audiolab. Born in 1968 in Paris. Lives and work in Paris.

Eric Pajot is a visual artist, a musician and a DJ. He is the author of several DVDs on graphic and digital art; he produces scenic videos all the while carrying out two other musical projects with the duos Haarpband and White Bamby. Born in 1966 in Bourgogne. Lives and work in Paris.