Siam (FR)

Siam is a duo coming from Brest, located in Bretagne, which is a region in France with a strong traditional music identity coming from Celtic sounds. Far from this stereotype, Bruno Leroux (voice and guitar) offers a tremendously poetic text. Fanny Labiau adds a melancolic note with her Bandonéon (accordeon) and her voice. On their MySpace page you can see a video and a text featuring Miossec (famous french singer), who Bruno Leroux collabored with on his debut album.

If you like the music of Siam, you should try to discover the musical universe of Christophe Miossec.

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CZB: You have collaborated with Kensico and David Crozon? and Fanny Labiau has played with Diwall? All these bands promote a kind of Acoustic Folk-rock?

Bruno Leroux (Siam): I was the composer of these two bands, I’ve met Fanny Labiau with Kensico.

I’ve also worked with Miossec, a famous singer in France, Fanny Labiau has played with Diwall when she was fourteen!
All these bands come from Brest.
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CZB: Would you say that the acoustic element in your music and the music you make with other bands in your area has something to do with the Celtic roots of the area?
Bruno Leroux (Siam): Fanny Labiau was playing diatonic accordéon in a folk band and she was a folk queen dancer. My influences come from English pop music… England and Ireland are not so far from here, anyway Brest is not a typical Brittany town and not a French town either … we are bastards!
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CZB: Why don’t you present yourselves a little more? Is it because you only care about the music?
Bruno Leroux (Siam): Maybe we are shy. Music must explain what we are and websites are very strange things; it’s better to meet real people.

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CZB: In the Photos promoting the band, there appears basically Fanny Labiau and Bruno Leroux. How did you meet and decide to start playing together?
Bruno Leroux (Siam): I’ve met her in a pub, I’ve asked her to do a session with Miossec just for ten minutes. I think it’s more a question of affinity than music but I was very impressed by her and her instrument. Last year I’ve just asked her to sing and play guitar and she’s done it!
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CZB: The bandonéon is an accordeon?
Bruno Leroux (Siam): The bandonéon is a kind of accordeon. It came from Germany and has been exploited in Argentina for the tango. For my arrangement, it can cry like violins and kick like trumpets.

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CZB: What are your ages? What city are you from? Are you both from Brest?
Bruno Leroux (Siam): I come from Brest, she’s born in the north of France, I’m 46 year’s old and she’s 28.

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CZB: How long have you been playing together? Are you together as a team in your personal life as well?

Bruno Leroux (Siam): We have been playing together for a couple of years.

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CZB: How far do you hope to reach professionally with your passion for the music?

Bruno Leroux (Siam): As far as possible and afterwards, marry Nicolas Sarkozy.

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CZB: What is the message behind your music?

Bruno Leroux (Siam): I’m not sure that artists have a message, it’s just coincidence between writing and circumstances. The audience creates the message.

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CZB: Why have you chosen to keep it simple with the duo (sometimes a trio with bass player Valentin Goy) … How did you meet with and start playing with Valentin Goy?
Bruno Leroux (Siam): Valentin Goy is our sound engineer, he plays bass guitar on a couple of songs for fun. In the future, we’ll hope to play with a good backing band at festivals and in studio sessions (with Matmatah‘s drummer and Miossec‘s bass guitar player) but the basic concept is for a duo, Fanny and me , I’ve written all the songs for us.

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CZB: What are your most important music projects … this act or another of the bands you work with?

Bruno Leroux (Siam): Today, we work essentially with this project (sometimes Fanny Labiau works with a Spanish band and I write verses for an actress).

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CZB: What are artists in your area like? Do you help each other out, do you communicate between bands or is it like a competition for gigs in the local pubs?

Bruno Leroux (Siam): There are a lot of bands in Brest in many styles of music; I like the new electro pop bands very much. We try to work together.

I think there is a special spirit in this town because of its history and the geography.

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CZB: How often do you get to play in Paris? How many concerts have you had so far as Siam?

Bruno Leroux (Siam): We’ve never played in Paris; we are waiting for our album in order to do the promotion in Paris.

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CZB: Why the name Siam … an exotic former colony in southeast Asia?
Bruno Leroux (Siam): In the 19th century, the ambassador of Siam was from Brest. Siam is the name of our main road.
Jaques Preverts talks about “la rue de Siam” in the poem Barbara.

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CZB: Do you have day jobs or is music your life and you play with several projects to make ends meet each month?

Bruno Leroux (Siam): We just play.

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CZB: What was the best concert you have had so far?

Bruno Leroux (Siam): Each gig is important; we are a young band!

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CZB: How did the French Cultural Center discover Siam and invite you to Romania? Are you excited of getting to play here? Do you know that the Celtic influence exists also on the northwest corner of Romania, MaramureÅŸ, three hours away from Cluj?

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Have you played in other European countries, besides Romania? What do your friends think of your getting to travel to this corner of Europe?

Bruno Leroux (Siam): Our manager has worked for one year in Romania. We are very excited and proud to play in Romania (our friends too). French people are often too much concentrated on the English culture. We have played in Germany; it was very interesting to see how people can understand our music because the lyrics are very frenchy. Maybe we talk about universal stuff in French terms…

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CZB: I have just found out that Christophe Miossec is a well respected french poet.

You have songs with lyrics composed by him…

Who is Christophe Miossec and how did the collaboration start and what do French people think of this collaboration?

Bruno Leroux (Siam): Miossec wrote the lyrics of “Le club des caniches“, you can find the video on our MySpace page. Miossec is a friend of mine (the song talks about Sarkozy, Gordon Brown, poutine…).

Back in 1993, he was a journalist and I was singer in a rock band; he came with us on tour, and said: music is a good job, I like it! We’ve made his first album in 1994, “Boire” was Gold Album 3 months after release. He is a great poet. His words are so evident (simple and direct) that you’re jealous and you wonder why you haven’t written it.

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http://www.myspace.com/siammusik

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Siam. The Band

• Fanny Labiau: vocals, bandonéon (other bands: diwall, kensico)
• Bruno Leroux: voice, guitar (other bands: les locataires, miossec, david crozon, kensico)
• Valentin Goy: sound engineer, bass guitar (other bands: david crozon, kensico)

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Debut album

• Nov.18, 2010. L'amour a trois

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They were supposed to play in Cluj-Napoca, Romania on April 20th, 2010. The gig was cancelled dur to the Islandic volcanic ash cloud hovering over Europe at this time.

The French Cultural Center invited them back to Cluj one year later, on Thursday, April 7th, in Gambrinus Pub.

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RiCo

CZB. April 19th, 2010

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