UKNW SOUNDS : DAVID LEMAITRE (Germany)
Between heaven and earth, this music lover moves along his tightrope. Avoiding the fall, David Lemaitre concocts a series of songs in his first album ‘Latitude’. His music constantly fluctuates between happiness and sadness, and gives us the impression that he and his companions float above ground.
A mixture of Peruvian and Bolivian roots, Lemaitre grew up in La Paz and 20 years later moved to Germany with an electrical engineering qualification in his pocket. He quickly dropped out of this field for the love of music, a love passed down by his mother who gave himguitar lessons from an early age. By meeting various personalities in the business in Mannheim, he got on board the“Get Well Soon” gig which allowed him to explore new countries, prefect his genius and make himself known to the public.
His refined pop / folk, lightly tinted electro sounds emerge from his first LP ‘Latitude’ and could translate into aconflicting relationship between space and time. Because of his origins, this temporal and physical disparity is a positive thing, even if the physical distance with his loved onesis shown with resentment in some of his tracks. This mixture of the two states gives us the best track of the album titled “Six Years”. Other tracks are less subtle although equally enchanting, check out the strings in ‘Magnolia (Girl with Camera)’, ‘Olivia’ -. The essence of his origins and travels begin with the sound of drums in tracks like ‘Pandora Express’ and ‘River Man’. Lemaitre also likes to dip into the water with the aquatic and surprising ‘Jacques Cousteau’ which differs slightly from the other tracks. We hold on as much as we can to those summertime and pop vibeswith ‘Megalomania’ which sends a thousand waltz morsels that pamper us throughout the album.
For sure, Lemaitre did not produce the happiest of albums. But it is undeniably the work of an honest and spontaneous man who has more of a story to tell. And so to quote the anguishes of E.M. Cioran,“In a world without melancholy, nightingales would start burping”.
Julien Catala
