• Frànçois & The Atlas Mountains

Biography

Frànçois came to Bristol from France in September 2003. He drew a picture and put a note in a window announcing his arrival, and asking people to make music with him. He started going to car-boot sales to find some instruments he could use. Overnight, Frànçois won the hearts out of this town. Well of course, he’s a sweet kid, but he’s also armed with an eager sense of adventure and a keen taste for pop thrills.

In January 2004 he played his first live show, taking to the stage alone, making use of keyboards (played with his foot), a guitar, live samples and a drum machine, mixing playful and experimental ideas with his natural pop-tune sensibilities and sweet bilingual vocals. The string of live performances he has since played has all been eagerly anticipated and utterly charming. Musically, you could say he is reminiscent of STEREO TOTAL, VELVET UNDERGROUND, HOOD, and FRANÇOISE HARDY and yet he is also like nothing else at all.

He has also played trumpet onstage with fellow Bristol bands ROZI PLAIN (Fence records) MOVIETONE (Domino) and CRESCENT (Fat Cat) and Glaswegian CAMERA OBSCURA (4ad) and skateboard onstage with HEADFALL (Spazoom). His first album, “Les Anciennes Falaises” was released on CD-r by Stitch-Stitch in 2004. A busy year where also drew and made a photocopied zine of his diaries, ‘Livre’.

In 2005 he gathered a band of friends, ‘The Atlas Mountains’ and recorded “The People to Forget” a more ambitious album realeased in february 2006 on vinyl by Stitch-Stitch.

‘Fránçois & The Atlas Mountains’ band toured and giged a lot across Europe and the Uk in 2006 and 2007, supporting Adrian Orange, Camera Obscura, Electrelane end many others. Gathering songs and shaping their sound from shows to shows they recorded the “Brother” album but left it unfinished.

When the album and the band projects were quiet Fránçois went down to the south cost of England to record some songs in the analogue studio of his friend Nico Marcel. Ray Rumours invited fránçois to join her to make a split 7″ for the TooPure Singles Club. The song used is ‘Swimmers, Drifters’ and made it to the Word Magazine cover mount.

In 2008 Fránçois took a break and went back to live with his parents in France with the intention to stop the music side of things and to hide behind his brushes and watercolour paints. There he found support from a bunch of local friends who convinced him to do some recordings of the works he had prepared for a show in Paris at the Centre Pompidou. The recordings of “Plaine Inondable” took place partly in Charente-Maritime and partly in the Basques Country. For those sessions the musicians were the polyphonic quintet Bost Gehio and members from Unkle Jelly Fish.


Discography
Plaine Inondable

Album , CD
Tal-049 — 2009


    François And The Atlas Mountains’ third album, “Plaine Inondable”, marks a departure from the homemade character of his first two, eschewing the casiotones and xylophones for a more professional sound and sophisticated arrangements.



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