Renaissance man and musician meets French philosopher and musician. Together, they form a bande à part – a band of outsiders. Fitting, really, as they borrowed their name from one of Godard’s lesser appreciated films, Detective. Together, through his love of crunching garage guitar and her starlit vocals and stylings, DTCV produce a gently ironic blend of Velvet Underground meets Blondie via grunge. They record under pseudonyms – Vivarock and Fiat Lux, according to their press release. On the run? But while we know their real names, James Greer and Guylaine Vivarat, we’ll just focus on their brilliant songs, like “Early Alone”, “X-Water”, and “Miley Cyrus Wins the Race”, spontaneous pop gems forged from the heat of their post-punk transatlantic collaboration. Their newest release, Uptime, out on multi-colored vinyl and download on Unsatisfied Records and cassette on Lolipop Records, has just come out, and while you might want to keep this as the soundtrack to your own tragically misunderstood film, the music is just too good to hide away. Northern Transmissions needed the backstory. Alice Severin spoke to DTCV, Jim and Guylaine, about the good things that come out of being drunk, irony, and the lack of subtlety on the internet.
James: And I’m vintage myself. (they both start laughing) I know how those records were made because I was there. But we’re just not interested in doing that. We’d much rather see what comes out. I don’t understand, and this is just me, or whatever, but I don’t understand what the point of that is, of reproducing something that’s already been done.
