Here come the animals

We have a new album out! It’s called ‘Des Animaux Pires Que Moi’, featuring music by Louis Fontaine, and vocals by Yzoula, formerly in the French band La Femme. (An English translation could be ‘Creatures Crueler Than Me.’) 

After the positive experience we had working on our song ‘Tormento’, composer and multi-instrumentalist Louis Fontaine asked if I would like to brainstorm and write the lyrics for his next album with the singer Yzoula. We met up in his studio in Paris. Pointing to an old film poster above one of his 1970s synthesizers, he said he wanted to make an album about a vampire or a young witch. He played some of the tracks he had composed and I took some notes in my sketchbook. 

Excited about the project, I walked to my local library and checked out a stack of books about witchcraft and the history of the occult in Paris. Fontaine sent me the music, along with more specifics: one song should have the mood of chanson française, another should be a speech, another a kind of spell, another a spoken story, and the last song should be a bit melancholy.  I walked the rainy streets of Paris, crossing the Seine, singing poems to myself, and remembering the times I could have used some magic powers. 

From there, I created the character of the album's protagonist: a kind of sorceress with my personality and experiences combined with elements of the singer. Then I wrote the songs in French, layering my stories and moments with my research, along with inspiration of witchy movies and 1970s pulp books, (which I collect) plus a sprinkle of imagination… and a dash of dark humor. I also came up with the titles of the instrumental songs, except for the second song on the record. Fontaine liked the lyrics, recorded Yzoula’s dreamy vocals, brought in a harpist and a violinist, and spent many hours mastering and perfecting the songs. 

‘Des Animaux…’ tells a story about supernatural powers, taking risks, playing with seduction and revenge, and prowling around Paris. Broc Recordz is releasing ‘Des Animaux Pires Que Moi’ on April 18th, 2025 on vinyl. You can listen to the first single here or watch the video here. If you don’t have a record player, you can stream the album to get in the midnight mood.

My First Disco Song

I've loved disco music since I was a teenager, growing up in the right city but in the wrong decade. It was easy to find cheap disco records in New York City, if you knew how to hunt. I started collecting records when I was about 14, and began taking it more seriously four years later. 

Fast forward to a recent unexpected encounter in Paris: I met the composer Louis Fontaine in a cafe in Le Marais. Sharing a fondness for 1970s music, films, and hairstyles, we struck up a kind of friendship. He asked if I wanted to write lyrics for him. We started with a soft disco track. He had heard singer/ music supervisor Alix Brown performing in bands (including La Femme and Daisy Glaze), and wanted her to sing the song. I wrote a late night-tale about a strange love triangle I nearly interfaced with while living in Madrid. We recorded the song and heard from labels a few months later. On February 14th, 2025 the cult Italian record label Four Flies released our song 'Tormento' on vinyl. You can listen to it here.

'Tormento' appeared in the press and soon featured on radio shows including KCRW's Morning Becomes Eclectic. Shindig, the English magazine wrote "It's a beguiling song, the music combining a lilting keyboard arpeggio, sinewy bass and insistent rhythm with vocals that are at once intimate yet ethereal...Fontaine found his wordsmith when he met author and artist Margo Fortuny in a Paris bar." (Clive Webb.) A fun fact: Chuck D from Public Enemy loves Shindig and has been collecting issues for years! 

Italy's IndieVision wrote "This is a piece that owes a lot to the music of Serge Gainsbourg and the soundtracks of François de Roubaix, that is to say to those electronic sounds, precursors of the French touch à la Cerrone and Daft Punk, which pairs perfectly with sensually captivating and mischievous lyrics... From the union of these three artistic minds, all linked to the Italian cinematic aesthetics of the 70s, 'Tormento' was born, a song where Brown's dazzling and sensual voice marries perfectly with Fontaine's sexy late-'70s sound, dominated by analog synthesizers, thus giving life to Fortuny's story, a nocturnal tale of seduction, transgression and sensual tension where one does not listen to one's own rationality, one's own fears, but one lets oneself be involved and dragged into the inebriating vortex of the forbidden." (Edoardo Previti) 

Mexico's DNA magazine wrote "Vintage synthesizers, powerful bass, and rhythmic percussion dominate the instrumental of the piece, while Alix's intoned lyrics are inhabited by Odyssean and fantastical feelings, contemplated by desire. In a kind of erotic filmscape, the texture of the voice envelops the love of Alix, Louis, and Margo Fortuny, the lyricist and writer of the piece, for the seventies and the musical aesthetic that leaves its mark." (Sofo Tequiero) 

Flaunt magazine wrote "Tormento sweeps you away into the gleamy, glowy summer nights of the late sixties and seventies from the very first chord... Brown contributed vocals from L.A. to music composed by instrumentalist and soundtrack maestro Louis Fontaine with lyrics by Margo Fortuny. The shimmering recording captures Brown's Jane Birkin breathiness as she mouths a teasing mix of French and English couplets that dissect a forbidden desire...alongside references to Emile Zola and 'Twister'." (Hannah Bhuiya.)