Last week at the same time, the Fnac forum in Nice took us on a journey through the streets of New Jersey with groove songs performed by Georges-Alain Jones. A real treat! As we asked for more, this Wednesday Nice-Première decided to go see what’s “On the Other Side of the Wind”. To our great surprise, we met an artist with original musical colors: a mix of rock, musette, and electro signed by Arnaud Méthivier, known as Nano. Nano is his new stage name. This artist is known for having accompanied many great talents with his faithful accordion and today he… No, I’ll stop there, I’ll let you discover his film by giving him the floor. Camera rolling: “Hello, my name is Nano and I make music for you.”
Nice-Première: How did the story of your new album start?
Nano: It was a meeting with Label Bleu. I have been leading my personal story for years and I was looking without really searching for a partner to make records. Chance made us meet. I was rather keen to work with this label because it matched the record I have at home. This record is the outcome of that meeting.
N-P: For this 8th album, you are using the pseudonym Nano, why?
Nano: It’s a desire to distance myself from my image as an artist’s accompanist, to break with that story. To clearly identify the Nano project, my project. And then, I didn’t want there to be any confusion between the artists I accompany and my personal project which is very different. It is difficult to imagine presentations of my project where we talk about Kent, Francis Cabrel, or Georges Moustaki. Nano, it’s to clearly identify it’s two different things.
N-P: How would you define this album?
Nano: It’s a film, a fiction with characters inside with love, hate, tension, wars. There are a lot of emotions in this disc. It is scripted like a film.
N-P: So it could be visualized?
Nano: Yes, it could. At least, I hope that each listener visualizes it themselves, that it evokes visual spaces, journeys.
N-P: “Voyage” isn’t that one of the titles of your albums?
Nano: Yes, that’s what I do. I am a travel agent actually. In my concerts, my records, I try to take the audience on an unknown journey and bring them back in good health yet slightly changed. My album is a film. I want to register in cinema not just in music with records. But after all in cinema, there are as much sounds as there are images. We have the impression that cinema is all about images but no, without the sound, these days, it becomes imperfect.
N-P: Walking around Fnac, I noticed that your album was classified in the “French Songs” section. If you could choose, in which section would you like to place your disc?
Nano: I would find myself well in a section that would be between Beethoven and Nick Kent, if it exists. I don’t have much connection with French song, I believe. Then in my section, you would also have to put the Cohen Brothers, Hitchcock, Orson Welles but also Beethoven. I think we need to invent the section.
N-P: Do you know your audience?
Nano: Not at all. I don’t have the impression of knowing them as I advance. I have an audience of incredible variety because I play on electro stages, current music stages, French song stages, rock stages, jazz stages. I want my music to fit into several fields. Moreover, I like all music. Maybe I fit into a category. I don’t know in the end. But in any case, I listen to all music, world music, contemporary music, classical, jazz, techno…
