By Keith Walsh
Despite the troubled state of the world, there’s never any reason sufficient to stop us from having some fun. Indeed, troubles have never stopped Gilles Snowcat. With the release of a brand new single“Tiffany (The Festival Babe)” we are closer to knowing what shape his upcoming album will take. With its calypso reggae groove, it’s a fun little tune filled with love and admiration. It would be an ideal number to get the crowd moving at a club or one of those hot sweaty festivals that we would have been attending had the virus not hit.
I asked Gilles who inspired the song? “It should be the reincarnation of Audrey Hepburn, ” he says, “or the kind of lovely groupie that musicians end up marrying. Or both.”
The tune has lots of bounce, with congas, synth horn lines, all propelled by the bass line. Gilles’ vocals, along with those of his guest vocalists, tell the story of a lovely lady and the joys of music. And the tune assembles a cast of legends.
Gilles explains: “There’s Pat Lennon, the Scottish lady from the Pat Lennon Project to which I sometimes contribute. It’s fun to play on stage with her, when she starts a song you know when it begins but you’re never quite sure when it ends, nor if it’s gonna end before the heavies from the venue kicks the band by force. There’s always room for improvisation with her. She was also singing a few harmonies on Continental Breakfast, on my Nama Time album.”
“And Elvira Lanza, an Italian lady who’s a writer and a beautiful singer. I played piano with her on stage but hardly could get her singing my own songs. And the other harmonies are courtesy of Paul J. No from Midrone, a man who sometimes thinks he’s Barry Gibb.”
Gilles continues: “Midrone is the project of Paul J. No, who happens to be 1/3 of Lunear,” Gilles says. “I always thought the older Midrone records were a bit like the stuff I did with Awaken one hundred years ago, and wondered how a guy could make a living with such stuff. So I invited Paul to play on my album, which he kindly obliged since I made him an offer he couldn’t refuse, in a way.”
Bass and guitar feature another legend. Gilles tells us:
“As for hetpampa, he’s an Argentinian singer songwriter guitarist etcetera, living in Brussels. I met him on stage, or so, since he sometimes tells me ‘Hey Gilles I have a brand new song, care playing it with me live tonight?’ And it’s 10 minutes before going on stage, and I usually have no idea about the chords or anything, so he shows me a sheet but you know guitarists they write chords strangely, like cryptic codes, so I always end up playing by ears, and it always works.”
Gilles adds his praise for the expert mixing. “And there’s Herman Martin who took the tapes at Bonk Studio and made it danceable. Herman is a kind of genius, he can mix any song with my difficult voice in.”
It all comes together beautifully in the just under four minutes track. Gilles has been known to go into darker territory, but “Tiffany” is decidedly fun, upbeat, and most importantly, romantic. Which has us wondering what new directions will the full length release by Gilles Snowcat take? I just had to ask.
“It’s You’ve Been Unboxing Gilles Snowcat, and when you unbox me you got quite a lot of side effects, you never know if it’s a Pandora’s box or if you’re gonna find a vintage Louis Vuitton bag inside, like those girls on Youtube do. You’ll listen to it at your own risks.”
“It’s an upperdowner album, like some good booze that sometimes brings you up, sometimes soothes you like a downer pill.” “You’ve Been Unboxing Gilles Snowcat will release on all platforms on September 11, and physical forms soon after.
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