“POP IS DEAD POP IS DEAD POP IS DEAD POP IS DEAD POP IS DEAD POP IS DEAD. THE KING OF POP IS DEAD.” Anne-James Chaton, his indurate mien impassive and poker-faced, stands as still and stiff as a motorway signpost, just off-centre on the ample stage of the Gaîté Lyrique in Paris. As his rapid-fire verse gushes from between his lips over a loop of his own voice – “POP IS DEAD POP IS DEAD POP IS DEAD” – each plosive consonant is wedded to a glitched burst of sub-bass to create an insistent, technoid beat pattern.
Alone like this, he performs the première partie to his own event, Guitar Poetry, which will later see guitarists Thurston Moore and Andy Moor locking antlers before Chaton re-takes the stage in a trio with the pair of absonant improvisers. This refrain, "THE KING OF POP IS DEAD", is from one of three Événements Chaton performs solo, about the Afghan elections, the inauguration of Barack Obama, and, of course, the death of Michael Jackson; each one a fevered burst of blank-faced concrete poetry, versified reportage spat out like bullets from a gatling gun.
Tonight’s trio of pieces all circulate around events from 2009, but he has been writing and performing this series since the turn of the century. It was while performing several earlierÉvénements (the word means simply ‘events’) at a festival of experimental music in northern France, back in 2001, that Chaton first met Andy Moor of The Ex. Moor was at the festival playing in an improvised duo with the British sound artist and electronic musician Kaffe Matthews. His bandmate, Terrie Hessels, was there too, jamming with drummer Han Bennink. Immediately having seen Chaton, they asked him to join them on tour and play the support slot for The Ex. Two years later, Moor and Chaton would start making music together, initiating a working collaboration that has endured now for over a decade.
Read the rest of my interview with Anne-James Chaton at The Quietus.