Toog

Toog - French-born (from Mulhouse) artist Toog is a musician, a poet, a blogger and a director. He started his musical career in 1999 when he met the widely venerated scottish singer/songwriter Momus. They went on an extensive tour together, playing almost 150 shows. Toog sounds like a Casio-damaged karaoke recital by a Frenchman who learned English two weeks ago with occasional prog rock neoclassical flourishes. The lyrics are rarely less than charming and occasionally betray a demented genius at work. Recommended by those who like music as diverse as Syd Barrett or the Magnetic Fields.

His debut album, "Gilles Weinzaepflen" war recorded in 1998 but hasn't been released officially. Third album called "Easy Toog for Beginners" (2001) has a great song about "The Wild Jackalope." Three years later French project released his fourth album "Lou Étendue" on Karaoke Kalk together with Italian actress and director Asia Argento. Asia lends her strangely alluring narrative to this highly cinematic collection of tracks. With elements of musique concrete, field recording, modern composition, hip hop, electronica and post-folk thrown in to guide production, “Lou Etendue” lends itself brilliantly to that kind of home listening that is often described as imaginary soundtracking, here using as its narrative the 1914 chance encounter between French poet Guillaume Apollinaire and Lou, to whom he eventually dedicated the famous volume “Poems to Lou”.

In 2008 he shot his first movie, "Prélude au Sommein", a wonderful documentary about one of the pioneers of electronic music: Jean-Jaques Perrey. The film was shown on various festivals such as "Filmer La Musique" (Paris, June 2009).

His new album "Goto" is a collection of musical ideas, references, nostalgia and gags. A background noise with coarse exaggerations. Madness and graceful lightness go hand in hand. Whistles and explicit statements ("Traffic Jam") try a balancing act between humour and serious contemplation of particular events ("My House"). A musical diary, reflecting memorable encounters, experiences and oddities. Asia Argento says: "Goto" kind of comes off like a soundtrack for a psychedelic exploitation movie, which is probably fitting for an album that was exploitative in and on itself". True.

Discography:

01.Gilles Weinzaepflen (1998)
02. 6633 (1999)
03. Easy Toog for Beginners (2001)
04. Lou Etendue (2004)
05. Goto (2010)

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