Recto Verso – Paradis

French house tempos, chanson phrasing, Paris apartment sessions

Recto Verso opens with Instantané: slow chords, soft synths, a vocal resting just above the beat. Simon Mény and Pierre Rousseau (Paradis) had already shown their taste on singles like the Bashung cover La Ballade de Jim. Their debut album, released 23 September 2016 on Barclay/Riviera, runs twelve tracks and about 63 minutes. French chanson phrasing rides house-leaning rhythms without forcing drops. The drums stay soft and close. The bass sits near the vocal. Vocals are mixed as another instrument, neither buried nor belted. The record never races. The grooves run long enough for small details to show up in the quiet parts.

Tracks such as Toi et moi, Miroir (Un) / Miroir (Deux), and Garde le pour toi work like short scenes: repeated lines, careful stereo space, no sudden climax for DJ points. Pierre’s classical and design habits show in the structures; Simon’s fashion-and-voice background shows in phrasing and presence. They worked late in a Paris apartment with the city leaking through open windows, tracking parts with the patience of a duo more interested in balance than in festival drops. Scooters and distant horns turn up in accounts of the sessions, and the mixes stay domestic rather than festival-sized. Julien Delfaud mixed the album; Chab mastered it. Cyprien Sorel’s trumpet colors the title track; Paradis (Reprise) revisits Alain Chamfort’s song with Jacques Duvall’s words.

The title points at symmetry: each arrangement curves inward, French vowels riding a clear, steady dance kick when the album chooses to move. Influences are easy to name without mythmaking: Sade and Étienne Daho in the vocal calm, early Chicago house in the body of the drums. The result does not freeze to one year of French Touch fashion. Radio UTD called the record deep and progressive as electronic production and still lovable as songwriting; that double read fits. Headphones or small speakers both work. Clubs that wanted punch looked elsewhere; late-night sets and living rooms kept this one.