2023-08-17 14:44:04
Sixteen years ago, his career as a promising rocker ended in police custody. Not spared by fate, Gustave Rudman found redemption through classical music, faith and unexpected collaborations. Portrait of an unclassifiable artist who owes as much to Jean-François Bizot as to Jean-Sébastien Bach.
December 2006: the Naasts are interviewed in the offices of their label, Source Etc. They are not all major but all very stylish, with in their speech a form of superb where their enemies see arrogance. The leader, Gustave, does not lack charisma, having inherited the look of his mother, a former model – which gives him a point in common with Julian Casablancas. The Naast are in full buzz, are preparing to release their first album, Antichambre, will certainly break everything. At the arrival ? The young Parisian rock scene is pschitt, the Naast are scuttled (we will see how) and only the BB Brunes pull out of the game by experiencing a relative popular success.
The years have passed. From time to time, we heard good things about Gustave from talented people (producer Adrien Durand, writer Boris Bergmann). Gustave had taken up classical music, he had become a producer, he had worked for The Weeknd, Mika or Sia, he had changed his surname, we met him in London, then again in Paris, we found his trace in Los Angeles… Lately, he has reappeared in fashion: during one of Balenciaga’s latest collections, Naomi Campbell, Kim Kardashian, Bella Hadid and others paraded to his music. “It was a little surreal, a concentrate of pop-culture”, smiles Gustave at the editorial staff where he came to see us in June. Since 2006, he has gained a few pounds. Above all, he stored up an experience that deserves to be told.
THEATER OPTION
Gustave was born in August 1988 to a Swedish mother and an English father, Paul Rambali, who has Indian and Italian blood. Journalist after being a record store thanks to Marc Zermati, Rambali worked at the NME in the 1970s, then at The Face in the 1980s. When Gustave arrived, he left England to settle in France, first in Paris, then quickly in Joinville-le-Pont, not far from the property of his friend Jean-François Bizot in Saint-Maur-des-Fossés. As a child, Gustave therefore frequented the Actuel gang: “Every Wednesday and Saturday we went there, where there were my father’s friends. I met a lot of interesting people very early on – a real privilege. I remember Bernard Zekri, Léon Mercadet, Patrice Van Eersel… Bizot had an aura, a messianic side, he was a unifying figure. My father said he was a genius, but his house was in an incredible brothel. It was my ultimate argument when my father reproached me for not tidying up my room: I told him that I was doing like Jean-François! »
HE PLAYED THE PIANO STANDING_
Gustave is an atypical boy. The former spiritual son of Jean-François Bizot is currently working on a conceptual opera. With him, you have to expect everything.
Bizot made Gustave listen to the Velvet Underground, raised by his parents to the sound of soul and reggae, and to the repeated viewing of Yellow Submarine and Fantasia: “It fed my psyche: rock and classical music associated with picture “. Having learned the piano “without being a child prodigy”, Gustave quickly reaches adolescence and downloads Stooges-type dad rock, a way of doing psychoanalysis: “I had a complicated relationship with my father, and rock was an unconscious way of recreating the link, and of feeling myself existing. In 2004, my father took me to Brixton Academy in London to see a White Stripes concert. We spoke little, and it took on enormous significance. I was shocked by the simplicity, just two musicians on stage. In the audience, young and well-dressed people. There was life in there…”
The return to Joinville-le-Pont is difficult. At the Arsonval de Saint-Maur high school, Gustave went through a “psychological desert”, not recognizing himself among the boys of his generation, “remaining attached to this dream of the White Stripes at Brixton Academy”. Through his father, he wrote a few articles in Rock & Folk, which allowed him “to go to concerts for free and learn to synthesize ideas”. Note that there is a theater option. Cultural background and stage presence, he has all the cards in hand to set up and lead a group, which he does by teaming up with his neighbor Nicolas, a drummer by profession.
GLORIOUS PAPERS
We are in the middle of the 2000s: initiated by the Strokes in New York in 2001, the return of rock is struggling to infiltrate a France governed both by the Star Academy (Universal/TF1 side) and by the chic variety at Carla Bruni (Naïve side / France Inter). “Very few bands conveyed this rock energy in Paris then”, except for the excellent Parisians. The Naasts play their first game one evening at Cruiscin Lan, an Irish pub near Châtelet. It’s the spark.
Very quickly, one place, Bar III (rue de l’Ancienne-Comédie), became a must: “It was Raw Power! A cathartic experience of pure electric liberation. “Report the Brats and the Plastiscines, then the Shades and Boris Bergmann:” We were mainly suburbanites, except the Second Sex who came from the Alsacian School, from the 6th arrondissement. We then had an image of bourgeois, which we were not. It was a little clumsy, and unfair – Jeff, who played in Naast, was from a housing estate. Branco de Phoenix sponsors this scene, serving as a “mentor” to Gustave, as do the novelist Georgina Tacou and Yarol Poupaud, “very generous, always ready to help”. The band parties at Patrick Eudeline in Pigalle, and is entitled to glowing papers in Rock & Folk. Then the Gibus recovered the movement by organizing evenings, where the BB Brunes joined in passing, who abandoned their massive sound à la Blink-182 to surf on the garage-rock wave: “The Gibus institutionalized us, the record companies arrived… It was only the beginning of our scene but already for me the end of something. I discovered the media exposure, and I didn’t like it, I experienced it very badly, rediscovering the loneliness that I experienced in high school. We were treated with contempt as baby rockers, a way of belittling a generation that had something luminous about it. There was a loss of innocence there. »
“I HAD COME TO MAKE MUSIC AND I FIND MYSELF IN A CELL. I WAS ONLY 18…”
The Naasts leave Antichambre and go on tour. Alas, the province awaits them with fierce hostility: it is a question of killing the Parisian twinks. On March 24, 2007, a concert degenerated in Bègles. In a big fight, Gustave is forced to take a fork to defend himself and accidentally hits the bassist of the band Cowboys in Africa in the eye: “I injured him by accident, and he had no after-effects. . But still… I thought about it all that night, in police custody and then in the depot, lying down staring at the ceiling. I had come to make music and I found myself in a cell. I was only 18. I thought this chapter was over.
RESUMING STUDIES
In the midst of a Dostoevskian descent like Raskolnikov rock, Gaspard listens to Ravel, Lalo Schifrin, Burt Bacharach: “It reconnected me to Fantasia, I understood that was my language”. Having discovered prog-rock thanks to Adrien Durand, he wrote a “hyper cryptic” second album, recorded demos but stopped the Naasts. He also renounces the name of his father (Rambali), to have his mother’s (Rudman) inscribed on his passport: “I wanted to have a blank page, to be anonymous, to see if I had music in me or if I was just an impostor. I was lucky not to be into drugs at that time: I really could have committed suicide. I had almost no resources. I made cartoon music that allowed me to pay my lawyer and get by. I felt guilty. It was very difficult to bear…”
Fortunately, he found love (a story that would last ten years) and, feeling at peace, he resumed his studies, first at the Schola Cantorum then at the National Conservatory of Music and Dance in Paris, at La Villette: “I worked hard, day and night. It was a matter of life or death. At the Schola Cantorum, my teacher Pierre Doury, a former organist at Saint-Sulpice, saw me as a crazy dog to train. I learned counterpoint and listened to Bach. You should know that I was baptized Protestant. Through Bach, I reconnected with faith. There is a depth in his music that helps to accept his destiny. I decided not to ask myself any more questions, to have a mystical relationship to life. I saw myself as a criminal, and Bach made me understand that there is something else above us. »
In 2011, miracle: the producer of Antichambre, Julien Delfaud, presents Gustave to Woodkid, who is looking for someone to make arrangements on the title “Iron”. Gaspard jumped at the chance: “It was great: a way to experiment with what I was learning in my studies, to record brass, etc. I started with chords that I had worked on in counterpoint class, stuff you can play on the organ. This song saved me. I had existed as an artist through images, and that proved to me that I could exist as a craftsman. It gave me confidence.”
At Sony, Guy Moot thinks that Gustave could mix for other pop and classic. He brought him to London and introduced him to Labrinth: “I wasn’t a fan at first, but I saw a lot of old synths at his house, a vocoder that belonged to Herbie Hancock. Labrinth too was hurt by the music industry. It was and remains a great friendly and artistic meeting: he teaches me about production, electronics, and I bring him the principles of composition, orchestration and harmonics. »
After a few years in the shadows (working for Mika or Sia), he decides not to resign with Sony, tired of being “the slave of the stars”. Once again, her guardian angel came to her rescue: “I was again in a psychological no man’s land, I was lost, broke, my girlfriend had left me, I had moments of derealization… found myself at a dinner party in Los Angeles with Labrinth’s manager, who is also Miley Cyrus’ manager. I wondered what I was doing there, even though I now try to enjoy the incongruities of life. Labrinth introduced me to Sam Levinson. A little nervous about his vaper, he showed me an episode of Euphoria. I said that I imagined music like Fellini’s Orchestral Rehearsal, something a la Nino Rota. A few months later, HBO contacted me. »
As always in the decisive moments of his life, Gustave cuts everything off and goes to Sweden, in Värmland, where his mother’s family owns a small house on the edge of a lake, cut off from the world. Perked up, he composes two pieces of the soundtrack of Euphoria, and continues with that of Tranchées de Loup Bureau.
CLASSIC TURN
New twist in a trajectory that is not lacking: at the Venice Film Festival where Tranchées is presented, her music is spotted by Clémande Burgevin, who talks about it to friends she has at Alaïa. And here is Gustave propelled composer for Alaïa, Gucci and Balenciaga: “The music industry is frankly disgusting, it crushes talented people. The fashion world, against all odds, is much more human. It’s very creative. You can express yourself freely, with means and consideration”. Did fashion save it in turn? “Don’t put that as the title of an article, be careful! Say rather that I saved fashion! Alright, I’m kidding…”
Gustave’s classic turn is reminiscent of the more recent one by Thomas Bangalter. What does he think of him? “I met him just before he released his record, by Melvil Poupaud, and we talked about all that. I was very touched by his music, and by the fact that he stopped a duo as installed and iconic as Daft Punk to go towards what he loves. In Hinduism, which interests me because of my father’s Indian roots, there is this idea that destruction is part of creation. I’ve done it before, and I will do it again. »
If he does not intend to stop fashion, which allows him to create “full-fledged compositions”, Gustave is already in another energy: “I met Vanessa Beecroft in Los Angeles last summer. She’s done all of Kanye West’s visual identity since 2008. She’s a genius artist, I don’t know anyone that brilliant. She asked me to do the music for a performance produced by Kanye West that she staged at Rome’s Cinecittà with three hundred women. His works are absolutely fascinating tableaux vivants. She’s older than me, she’s 54, she’s taking me somewhere else. We have projects together, including an opera. It excites me a lot, it will be for next year…”
Unusual career, decidedly, than that of Gustave Rudman. Who agrees, laughing: “At first, I was ashamed. At 34, soon to be 35, I love this journey, this mystical adventure that is life. I am amazed at what music offers me as experiences. I remember growing up wanting to have one of the most bizarre journeys in music history. Well, it’s happening to me! »
Single « Two Shadows » (Forever Changes).
By Louis-Henri de La Rochefoucauld
Photos Vanessa Beecroft
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#Rock #Punishment #Technikart