The CLUAS Archive: 1998 - 2011

10

St Augustine and France's new rock capital

Aidan Curran posted on August 10, 2008 19:00
Bibendum, the Michelin ManClermont-Ferrand, in the heart of France, is famous as the home of Michelin. Its local rugby team is cursed with the tag of perennial losers, having reached the final of the French championship 9 times (including the past two seasons) without ever winning. Their best-known player is flying blond winger Aurelien Rougerie (right, looking a bit out of shape).
 
The city is something of a music hub. Le Monde recently called Clermont-Ferrand "the new rock capital of France" and estimated that 7.5% of all French rock bands are based in the area. Regular readers will recognise our favourite clermontois band, acoustic duo Cocoon.
 
The latest folk-pop act from Clermont-Ferrand goes under the weighty name of St Augustine. The 6-piece group take their nom de rock not from the saint but from Judas himself, Bob Dylan – in particular, from the song “I Dreamed I Saw St Augustine” on the album “John Wesley Harding”.
 
Francois-Regis Crozier of St AugustineBut we Dylanophobes needn’t worry, for St Augustine make melodic, unpretentious folk-pop. They have just released their first E.P. and called it “In A Field Of Question Marks”, a title which we reckon is more poetic than the entire works of Zimmerman.
 
It’s a lovely record, tuneful and melancholic. Singer François-Régis Croisier (left) has an Antony-esque falsetto tremor in his voice, and Edwige Mazel adds a subtle layer of cello to the sparse arrangements.
 
You can listen to songs from “In A Field Of Question Marks” on St Augustine’s MySpace page. Our favourite track is called “Icelandic” but a more appropriate song for our times may be “Rainy Country”.

No videos for their tracks yet, but here’s a very arty snippet of film that features extracts of the band onstage at the recent Printemps de Bourges festival. As Saint Augustine once said, “To sing once is to pray twice”:


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2003 - Witnness 2003, a comprehensive review by Brian Kelly of the 2 days of what transpired to be the last ever Witnness festival (in 2004 it was rebranded as Oxegen when Heineken stepped into the sponsor shoes).