ZOOEY
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ZOOEY

London, England, United Kingdom | INDIE

London, England, United Kingdom | INDIE
Band EDM Pop

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This band has not uploaded any videos

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"Radar"

French couple Marie Merlet and Matthieu Beck have been making gloriously pretty dream-pop under the ZOOEY moniker for a few years now, but they've so far remained an undiscovered gem. Hopefully, this will all change with the release of their wonderful four track 'Time To Meet Outside' EP. It's out now on Recorder Records - NME


"This French duo take the breezy harmonies of Burt Bacharach and Brian Wilson to create blissful Balearica-tinged pop"

If you're expecting us to be unpredictable and lay some extreme noise terror on you, you're going to be mightily disappointed because today's new band appear to have been designed to be wafted through the PA at Pikes. Zooey are a French duo, currently living in London, in thrall to the 90s St Etienne/High Llamas/Stereolab axis and those groups' revisionist, cerebral take on ba-ba-ba pop, the breezy harmonies of Free Design and Fifth Dimension, and the melodies of Burt Bacharach and Brian Wilson. It's E-Z listening soft-rock that only rarely nods to developments in pop music subsequent to 1970, and even then wilfully ignores psychedelia and anything remotely countercultural. Often, the music is enhanced by electronic touches and gentle beats, at which point it becomes the most blissful Balearica.

Apparently, Matthieu Beck and Marie Merlet met and fell in love on a French island, but we're not interested in their private life or indeed anyone else's, unless it's the one notorious Pikes resident Grace Jones sang about. Merlet used to play in Monade with Laetitia Sadier of Stereolab, which makes sense, and is a member of another ace retro Francophile project called Lisbonne. Meanwhile, Beck moonlights in a French disco-pop troupe called Adam Kesher. Together, they've recorded a bunch of tunes, including the Travelin' Light and Time to Meet Outside EPs. They write all the music (except for the odd cover version, such as their take on Pavement's Father to a Sister of Thought, rendered as a Gauloise-tinged ballad), perform it and produce at home in south London, except for one track, Pique-Nique, which they schlepped all the way to Bordeaux to edit and mix, not that you'd notice the difference: they turn everywhere they go into a smoky jazz bar by the Seine. In 1964. They even do the artwork – this is a fully-realised, self-contained world that they operate in. The male vocals are winsome, the female ones lissom, and if it all sounds a bit sexless and neutered, as though they were robots created to express only prettiness and gentle rapture, that's probably deliberate. And unlike Stereolab, there are no intimations of Marxist philosophy or dialectical materialism here, unless we've seriously misjudged the messages of Raindrops and I'm So Glad You Came This Morning. - The Guardian


Discography

"Travelin' Light EP", 4 tracks digital EP on Paris label Recorder, released 06/12/2010

"Time To Meet Outside EP", 4 tracks digital EP on Paris label Recorder, released 25/07/2011. One track streamed on The Guardian website : http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2011/aug/11/new-band-zooey. Some airplays at Amazing Tunes

http://www.discogs.com/artist/ZOOEY

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Bio

ZOOEY is two hearts beating as one. Matthieu Beck and Marie Merlet fell in love on a French island in the sun, lulled by Burt Bacharach and the Wilson brothers. They now live in South London where they create a unique and charming union of easy listening and dance music. Their electronic pop songs blend beat patterns with melancholic synths and daydream exotica vocals.

+ Some more details about our musical background:
Marie used to play in Monade with Laetitia Sadier (Stereolab), she runs another really cool pop project called lisbonne. Matthieu was in the french disco pop band called Adam Kesher

A brief description of "Time To meet Outside" EP :
Time To Meet Outside EP is ZOOEY’s mid-summer collection. Marie and Matthieu share their dreamy "synth-folk" in the form of four ballads which convey vivid summer memories as well as lost souvenirs. Recorded at home under South London palm trees, Time to Meet Outside has a lo-fi sound reminiscent of Atlas Sound or Panda Bear.
ZOOEY is a perfect marriage of tropicalia percussions, vintage synths and girl/boy sweet vocal duos. But as with many Brian Wilson songs, summer fun is tinted with melancholic overtones. They're taking a walk down the beach, but already thinking about the end of the holidays...

+ Check these videos :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZzQgWLUT6A
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9q3MU1J1YkQ
http://youtu.be/lzsX79U-NZ4