Staff Reviews

Charlotte Gainsbourg - Rest

Review by Anna Byrne

Not just intimate, but vulnerable, self knowing, open and loving. And definitely not embarrassing»

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Produced by Ed Bangers’ SebastiAn the album features collaborations with Daft Punk’s Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo, Connan Mockasin and Owen Pallett (Arcade Fire, Caribou). Having previously written lyrics with Jarvis Cocker and Air on 5.55 (2006) and Beck on IRM (2010), Rest is the first album where Gainsbourg penned all the words. On the album, Gainsbourg addresses personal topics ranging from the death of her father Serge and more recently sister Kate Barry, to the tensions between her shyness and her life as a performer and public figure, to charmingly illogical childhood fears.

The album’s major production lynchpin would be French DJ, remixer and producer Sebastian Akchoté-Bozovic, aka Sebastian, best known for his releases on French house label Ed Banger and for his production work for Frank Ocean. His background in electronic music accorded with Charlotte’s desire for a sound with a disquieting, mechanistic edge, inspired by Giorgio Moroder and, perhaps unsurprisingly for a revered, award-winning film actress, movie soundtracks, particularly Pino Donaggio’s score for Brian De Palma’s ’70s horror classic Carrie and Georges Delerue’s music for Jean-Luc Godard’s nouvelle vague masterpiece Le Mepris, as well as the chilly, unsettling ambience of films like Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining and Hitchcock’s Rebecca.description from www.roughtrade.com