A few albums, a few tours, a live album to immortalize it all, broken-up and reformed line-ups: lots of things can happen in the life of a band over the course of fifteen years.A few albums, a few tours, a live album to immortalize it all, broken-up and reformed line-ups: lots of things can happen in the life of a band over the course of fifteen years.
Fifteen years is what Cotonete spent leaving indelible impressions on the barrooms, halls and festivals where they performed. Walls cracked by groove-heavy saturated jazz-funk, halls pyro-engraved by incandescent horn sections, the air heavy with Brazilian humidity, shirts stuck to skin.
Though happy to remain far from the recording studio, recent maxi-and EP releases convinced Cotonete to make an LP.
Their first album, over fifteen years after their debut.
The key was to get as close as possible to the passion and unity that have always characterized their live performances, while remaining precise and focused — and it is with that in mind that the eight Parisian members of the band went to the studio to put Super-Vilains together. With songs precisely written and rehearsed to the point of exhaustion, mastered to such an extent that they could play them in their sleep.
Inspired by seventies jazz-funk, Super-Vilains unspools imaginary film reels, brass-heavy and illuminated by a constellation of black and white keys. Visit Africa and South America, zigzag your way through the bustling streets of electrifying cities, suspended by moments of feminine grace. One crosses the virtual, vocal paths of the Guarani-Kaiowa Indians, before forest-devouring bulldozers reduce their existence to mere memory.
Cinematic themes that bear the influence of Melik, the man you only see when the lights shine on the mixing board, a man intolerant of excessive deliberation and/or indecision, the man who was able to guide Cotonete to the first album they so richly deserved and that their fans wanted so badly.
Time’s passing whims have never had much of a hold on Cotonete. Even if all of its members have always been involved in other projects (Akalé Wubé, Florian Pellissier Quintet, Camarao Orkestra…), they have always remained the same. Therefore, after a maturing process of fifteen years, Super-Vilains deftly reveals the potential for improvement that a first album always stokes.
Super-Vilains not only meets expectations. It surpasses them.