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For their new album the french sound collective Variety Lab invited many buddies for a get together to sing. You can listen to good humoured pop songs with voices from Donovan, Lily Frost or Yael Naim - and have lots of fun. "Team up" is the title of this album with really great summer music. - Brigitte #14 - June 17th 2009 (Germany - circulation: 760 000)
2nd album for the Variety Lab, a success including dance and lounge elements, a mix between Scissor Sisters, Blur and Jamiroquai which works very well on the dance side thanks also to very catchy songs.
Funny and very smart.
(Note: 7 / 10) - Album review by Biz - Italy
"This is a diverse and super funky mix of tropicalia, electro, acid jazz and bubblegum pop with a surprise at every turn. From the vocodered disco-rock of Let's Boogie to the sun-drenched acoustica of Mireia there isn't a moment here that doesn't ooze laid-back Mediterranean cool."
Clash magazine (UK) - Charlie Frame
"I was delighted to be asked to join Variety Lab on their project. I flew into Paris to record. I helped to re-work the song and had great fun with the band. It's a cool track and I am pleased to present this first single with Variety Lab. It's a funny lyric and I brought out the humour with one of my quirky accents that I use when I take on the character in a song. It's a perfect new pop record to dance and meet a new friend or lover."
Donovan
- Press release for single 'Is This The Last Time'
"Miracle of the e-music: in studio or on laptops, voices are kidnapped by faithless engineers and producers. With their great CD sleeve made by famous French designers Dupuy & Berberian, Variety Lab received intact Donovan's voice. And the less we can say is that the Scotsman gave his best languish tremolo to 'Is This The Last Time' and made it a true hit..."
Jean-Daniel Beauvallet (Chief editor) - Les Inrocks - November 18th 2008 - Jean-Daniel Beauvallet
Jazz, Electro, 80th Disco? It doesn't matter. Sound Fiddler Thierry Bellia likes to experiment and inviting artists, such as folk legend Donovan or singer Yael Naim into his studio. "Team Up" is a charming and fun album with big potential for a summer hit. - Album review in PETRA (Germany)
(...) Surrounded by a crowd of guests, from Donovan to Yael Naim, the Frenchman Variety Lab made a great pop patchwork. (...)
- Johanna Seban
Planned as a solo project, ended up as collective creative activity: Thierry Bellia, "laboratory supervisor" known for his "London In The Rain" from his debut album "Providence", a regular guest track on good compilations and in dancefloors of all hip clubs, managed to combine guests which not necessarily fit together from the first view: electronica and folk, chanson and dance, jazz and humour. The title of the album stands symbolically for the collaboration with folk icon Donovan, Sharko singer David Bartholomé, Bellrays' voice miracle Lisa Kekaula, jazz diva Yael Naim and a couple of others, which Frenchman Bellia puts together in a homogeneous production. Arranged with analog-synthies, old organs, real drums, acoustic guitars and loads of detailed samples, he created elegant club tunes with vintage flair and occasional winks. Complete fun CD! - Album review - Germany (circulation: 120 000)
France-based quirky dance-pop act Variety Lab take their hip-shaking cues from '70s mainstream French pop hit influences known as "la variété" and modern engineering that causes an unprecedented contagion in the foot-tapping area.
With songs that blossom out from boogie bass lines and soulful, sultry vocals into Zappa-esque guitars and back again, Variety Lab make pliant music that isn't limited to the electro-dance genre because their main objective is creating pop.
Without hesitation they draw influences from Tropicalia vibes and secret crushes on Frances Gall and carefully wrap their myriad influences into an assemblage of pop soldiers that arm their synths, horns, retrofitted keys and genre-spanning lead vocalists on their diverse body of work. At times singing their simplified philosophy on life ("We Should Be Dancing!") and at others cranking out a slow jam with careful attention to the proper portions of funk and groove, Variety Lab make tunes that always result in a desire to sing and dance along. - Story by: Jomel Silverio
Discography
- "Team up!" (2009) - 12 tracks album - including participation of Donovan, Yael Naim, Lisa Kekaula (The Bellrays), Sharko,...
This new album is now available in France (Pschent/Wagram), Belgium (Bang!), Switzerland (Disques Office), Poland, Italy (Audioglobe), Germany (SPV),...
Soon in Canada (Musik2musik), South Korea (C&L), Hong Kong/Malaysia/Singapore (Love Da records), USA (Digital Pressure).
From this album, "Soda Pop Confusion" is included in new compilation "Hotel Costes #11", "Mireia" in Primavera compilation,...
- "Providence" (2003) - Debut album including electro hit "London in the rain" - track included in many compilations like "Hotel Costes"
Photos
Bio
New album "Team up" - a collective project featuring Donovan, Yael Naim, Lisa Kekaula (The Bellrays), David Bartholome (Sharko), Lily Frost,...
Back in 2003, Variety Lab made themselves known to a wider audience thanks to their first album, "Providence". This initiated Nancy-born Thierry Bellia's electronic breakaway, especially with the track London In The Rain, which was, at the time, included in every single lounge compilation. Five years on, here they are again with a new opus called Team Up!, a magnificent record polished with the mastery of a patient craftsman, and with a cover designed by famous French comic artists Dupuy Berberian.
Bellia, alone, put this record together, but he did not forget to emphasize his friends' assistance in the process. Let's just name his henchmen from the French band Orwell (Jerome Didelot and Alexandre Longo, aka Cascadeur and winner of the 2008 Inrockuptibles CQFD prize). Making use of instruments, machines and other weird objects (for instance the Optigan, a toy devised back in the 70's), not to mention his friends, Bellia has worked non-stop on his "Spanish apartment" project. Team Up! is a work that has been enhanced throughout by the contributions of outstanding musicians. One cannot argue with that.
Team up! is more than a mere album. Much more. It is like awaking from a soft dream. Here we have Donovan opening the doors-after months of swapping tapes across the channel with Bellia the folk legend himself flew across to Paris to offer his voice and his experience to the spacious and bouncy opening track, Is This The Last Time. On three other tracks, We Should Be Dancing, Mireia and the very rocky Not Enough, it is David Bartholome, the lead-singer with the excellent Belgian band Sharko, who grabs the mike. And then the fantastic and frantic Bellrays' vocalist, Lisa Kekaula, with her husky and roaring voice who sings on Let's Boogie, a groovy and vocoded track that oozes sheer rock and soul energy from Detroit. The youngster Vincent Mougel from Kidsaredead comes in next to blow some sugary foam on the sweet candy that is Soda Pop Confusion, while Thierry's fellow Nancy-born Mona Soyoc naturally joins the project as a next-door neighbour, and adds some sensuality to the very eighties Money, a cover version of the track by late 70s-early 80s English band The Flying Lizards, who had themselves borrowed it from the soul crooner Barrett Strong. Last but not least, the 2008 pop sensation Yael Naim offers her version of Love Is A Bird, originally a Variety Lab demo that has gradually evolved, first in the expert hands of Cascadeur, then by David Bartholome on a Sharko album.
"Love is a bird", a simple, and beautiful idea, that leads us strolling from one end of Team up! to the other, filled with a feeling that can be summed up as the more, the stronger, the prettier and the merrier.
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