Sébastien Tellier -
The last time I saw Sébastien Tellier was at Latitude in 2008. His big-top set included material from the newly-released Sexuality album, an electronic concept collection which featured titles like 'Sexual Sportswear' and 'Fingers of Steel'. Two months earlier, 'Divine', another song from the album, had caused a minor stir when Tellier performed it as France's entry for the Eurovision Song Contest in Belgrade. The eccentric Frenchman took to the stage in a golf buggy, inhaling from an inflatable helium-filled globe, but it was his performance in English that really soulevés des sourcils back home. The album, however, was an intriguingly baroque blend that borrowed heavily from fellow countrymen Air and Daft Punk. Indeed, Sexuality was produced by Daft Punk's Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo.
Twelve years on and the natural interventions of love, marriage and children inspire Domesticated, an album that romanticises and glorifies the happiness that lurks beneath a dirty laundry basket. Tellier still favours the vocoder vocalising used by his compatriots in turn-of-the-century classics like 'Kelly Watch The Stars' and 'Harder, Better, Faster'. Domesticated emerges, therefore, as something of a paradox, a time capsule conundrum constructed out of slightly tired colour schemes rather than exploring the cutting edges of cooking and cleaning as promoted to an IKEA generation. Or perhaps that is the point. By sticking with his synth arrangements, and invoking the snappy spirits of retro beat, Domesticated becomes a collage of nostalgia, resurrecting the glory days of Habitat and Comet. But, the appliance of old science can still deliver impressive results, and these eight tracks fly by in less time than it takes my ageing washing machine to complete a rinse cycle.
6/10
