DER (aka RED)
Over the past virulent and lost two years, Red (Olivier Lambin, his real name), at the time suffering from presbyopia, buys a bass guitar (bigger frets and fewer strings) and asks two drummers, Néman (Zombie Zombie, Herman Düne) and DDDxie (The Shoes, Rocky, Gumm) to create their own rhythms on which he composes “Supersound”. He asks Jex, aka Jérôme Excoffier, his lifelong accomplice, who still has excellent eyesight, to play all the guitars on the album for him.
Before Red (and Der), Olivier Lambin did a series of odd jobs: he sold radiators over the phone, threaded handles into Tefal stoves and even did undertaker work. Self-taught through and through, he learns guitar playing by listening to Dylan and the Stones. He performs solo with a guitar and a hypersensitive voice in the bistros of Rennes from 1996 under the name of Red. He released the feverish and cathartic “Felk” in 1999 under Rectangle, Noël Akchoté and Quentin Rollet’s label.Hallfway between noisy blues and electro folk with no pathos or misery, this album was recorded on a PC with a rotten microphone in his kitchen, an acoustic guitar and digital hacks… Then comes a second album, a complete tribute to “Songs from a Room” by Leonard Cohen, and in 2002 he released “33” (Jesus Christ’s age when he died) inspired by the bible in which he used the Word as a symbolistic and profane cut up. This album was finally released by Universal in 2002. Critics bring Red out in the open and don’t skimp on comparisons: Tom Waits, Johnny Cash, Nick Cave…
The unclassifiable Red transcends genres and styles, drifts, wanders. Over the next years, he takes part in “Race Track Blues” on the label Volcanic with Tchangodéï (pianist at Archie Shepp, Steve Lacy and Mal Waldron’s side), he plays in a trio with Jean-François Pauvros and Noël Akchoté on the experimental album “Ecume et bave” for the label Signature of Radio France and appears on the soundtrack of Thierry Jousse’s film, “Les Invisibles” with a cover of Monsieur William (lyrics by Caussimon).Red reunited as a band on “Nothin’ to Celebrate,” a blockbuster compared to the previous two albums. With this uninhibited tribute to Dylan and the Stones, the Frenchie blows out the cursed alcoholic artist cliché. Filmed by Christian Laville, the sessions resulted in a 52-minute documentary, “Rien à Célébrer”. Then, he releases “Social Hide and Seek” in 2006, recorded live which conveys the band’s rock energy during their concerts.
Red has his finger in all kinds of pies. 2008 and 2009 are devoted to the development of a solo album “The Nightcrawler aka Red” inspired by a collection of texts written in Nashville in 2005 while recording with Bonnie Prince Billy for a young audience album “Songs for the Young at Heart” produced by Stuart Staples. The starting idea was to make a series of 200 albums with original covers painted one by one. In the end he will make more than 900 copies on CDs plus a series of 500 vinyl’s distributed by Clapping Music.In 2012, back in Lille he creates Bodybeat, a futuristic dance funk band. They released a first eponymous EP and at the end of 2015 an LP called “8” with Alpage Record. He performed with this band on English and French stages until 2017. That same year, while tidying up his attic, Red finds a CD with electro tracks on it he had made back in the days of “Felk” seventeen years ago. He then starts recording “Felk Moon” on the sly at night, which was released at the end of 2018 on Bisou Records featuring Bertrand Belin on “Bunch of Teens”. For this album, he made 800 vinyl covers by hand, a hundred of which would be published in an eponymous CD book.
Then come the virulent 20s, pale and lost, which see the making of the subversive “Supersound” for which he draws 1000 unique vinyl buttons. Red but upside down: Der.
