Let’s face it, the French don’t have the best reputation when it comes to making rock ‘n roll. As John Lennon once said, “French rock is like British wine”. But could things be changing? Versailles, former home of Marie-Antoinette, has a new protégé. After worldwide phenomenons such as Air and Phoenix, Romain Turzi has left his elegant suburb to take the lead of an underground neo-psychedelic movement in Paris.

Romain is the lead singer of electro-rock band Turzi about to release their third album, ‘B’, but also co-directs a record label ‘Pan European Recording’ dedicated to supporting emerging psyché bands. ‘B’ follows the previous album, ‘A’, which, similarly, titles every song with that letter: Beijing, Buenos Aires, etc. These 15 songs were recorded in 15 days, in between a villa in Corsica and Romain’s studio at the Point Éphémère, a musical central in the North of Paris.
Whilst ‘A’ bears a distinct seventies, Krautrock feel, ‘B’ experiments with heavier genres, such as Black Sabbath and Motorhead. The dense sound is nuanced with instruments such as violins, cithara, cymbals etc. “This is an accident,” Romain explains “all of our equipment is bought second hand, and these instruments are there because we randomly found them in flea markets.”

And the album holds more surprises: mixed by Max Heyes (who also worked with Oasis and Massive Attack), it features Bobby Gillepsie, guitarist of Primal Scream on the ‘Baltimore’ track, and French singer Brigitte Fontaine’s unmistakable voice on ‘Bamako’. “A new album is a good opportunity to start all over again, to try out something completely new. It might be a little puzzling for our audience, but that’s definitely a good thing” says Romain.

This isn’t the only passion in the musician’s life. When he isn’t busy with his band, or DJing his personal electro creations round Paris, he dedicates his time to his record label:  ‘Pan European Recording’ was founded two years ago with his bass player Arthur Peschaud. ‘Psych-Nouveau’, literally ‘New Psychedelic’, as the NME described Turzi’s previous album, is at core of the two musicians’ project: the label acts as a platform for the emerging, experimental scene originating from Versailles and Paris, with bands such as  ‘One Switch to Collision’, ‘Acqua Nebula Oscillator’, or ‘Kill for Total Peace’. “We always wanted to create a label, for our ‘family’.” Romain explains “Even though it has some Krautrock influences, I don’t want to limit it to one title. It’s all down to how we are feeling, or are surrounded with a certain point in time. We change constantly and so does our music.”

And Versailles? “A lot of us come from there, we all met there years ago”, says Romain, who has fond teenage memories of playing skate board with the Phoenix band mates, and regularly bumping into Air.  “When I was growing up, the park of Château de Versailles was our local hangout. If people are constantly surrounded with such landscape, they might not have the urge to scream in a microphone. It’s a very de-politicized environment, life is slow, people have social security, there is no rush or fear”.

Music came to him naturally. He taught himself how to play the guitar at age fifteen, and never stopped. Today, he still plays with most of the people he met as a teenager. “France is different from London, red wine is our drug. There is definitely an interesting scene that has been bubbling for the past few years , but you don’t see it because of the amount of pop bands around.” French music tends to be nicknamed ‘frog rock’, something that doesn’t bother Romain. “To be honest, I prefer camembert rock. It’s more accurate.”