How do you portray someone who is unrepresentable? French composer, artist, and songwriter Thierry Matioszek’s Matioszek provides a distorted view of the many moods of Thierry. I thoroughly enjoy it, perhaps, knowing that it’s nearly alien to the other releases Thierry had done before (and perhaps to the things he’d continue elsewhere or be more known for). However, here, it’s its brilliant mix of nighttime mutant funk and Nowheresville sleazy Pop that really places you in Thierry’s mindspace.
Matioszek (1982) really shouldn’t exist. For nearly a decade, Thierry has been working on the outskirts of French Pop music, as songwriter for others like Francoise Hardy, as a sometime film and TV drama actor, and all sorts of mass cultural media. Languishing in some kind of chanson slum, Thierry’s ambition never quite met whatever he put on tape. Four releases of also-ran rock posturing hadn’t placed him any closer to any meaningful fame or fortune.
By the time of 1977’s Matioszek French record label WIP Records had surrendered enough money and clout to give him one final push into stardom. They plunged deep money into booking time for Thierry and lyricist Stéphane Delaroche to record in the same Château d’Hérouville that Elton John and the Stones had fruitful sessions, revolutionizing their inspiration. As they recorded there, sessions turned milquetoast and rote. Somewhere, down a hall, they’d walk through the sessions by David Bowie and Iggy Pop for Heroes and The Idiot, only to realize how far behind they were in the stuff sent to the recording can.
On 1979, they cut ties to their overtly French Pop world and decided to write songs in English. Stephane put it simply: “how can we make music that would soundtrack a guy walking in some rainy night, in some boulevard in a red light district in Paris, some kind of perfectly, violent music.” If you’ve heard “Bloody Loser” you get your answer to the sea change, in tone, Thierry took.
Swinging between extremes of mutant funk and Lou Reed-esque post-punk tomes, Rainy Night In Clichy found them integrating dirty Moog synth sonics and guitarists Didier Batard (of Heldon fame) into a stew that sounded like the back-alleys of Paris culture as seen by the dejected soul of someone’s slowly decaying repute. The heavy influence of American streetwise punk music soaked into the deeper vocal tomes and palpably rawer grinds Thierry now churned through, presented a welcome, truer reimagining. Although a personal, creative success, it still wouldn’t translate to commercial success. This forgotten, minor masterpiece of ferocious glam punk on a better day (or a different site) would merit its own recollection/post. However, today I focus on the final turn Thierry would take for his solo career.
Matioszek (1982) would be such an oddball album if it didn’t have wayward, oddball souls who obviously knew what they were doing. Going deeper into Thierry’s love of Krautrock, disco and the burgeoning New Wave scene, they’d trade the Stooges-esque sonics of Rainy Night for something far funkier, yet somehow more robotic and icier. Joining him would be Be-Bop Deluxe’s Andy Clark and Paul Buckmaster to create a maximum take on icy, electro-pop.
Taking the helm as director of his first music video for “Business In The City”, Thierry presented a man crushed by the wheels of industry. Wrapped inside some of the tightest blue-eyed electro-funk of the early ’80s was an early tome against the “eye in the sky” now enveloping Thierry’s thought space. Heaven 17 ran with this idea a year later, but Thierry had to clock it in first.
Kraftwerkian songs like “Modern Living” signal the future of ’80s Pop. Others like, the opener “Cold, Clean and Clear”, take cues from bands like the Talking Heads to signal something that isn’t quite like other bits of dance music floating around. Ditto, for a slow burner like “Happy and Sad”. The UK’s Japan has notably, cursory influence on the sound of songs like “Michael” and “Rock’N’Roll Tuxedo”.
What keeps me coming back is that intriguing blend of deeply muscular funk and knowingly resigned lyricism. Part of Thierry expresses the palpable emotional pressure in our modern living but a huge part (the driving thing moving the music) stresses the joy in our human dance with progress. You could say it’s a poignant poke at all this modern living with all its convenient inconveniences. That’s something memorable, I think.