Kids Return

Kids Return is first and foremost a great story of friendship between Adrien Rozé and Clément Savoye. It was in Paris, at the age of 13, that the two musicians met. Like Japanese director Takeshi Kitano's film from which it takes its name, the French duo's project explores the depth within the false naivety of childhood, and the evocative power of nostalgia when it blurs the line between joy and sadness. Kids Return's sound sits somewhere between the Mamas and the Papas' Californian pop, Vladimir Cosma's orchestrations and the modesty of Joe Hisaishi's soundtracks. It draws on Blur's energy and MGMT's vocal harmonies, while revisiting these Anglo-Saxon influences with the precision and delicacy of bands like Air. The result is a romantic and melancholic melody, a laboratory of emotions that can be thought of in pictures. Kids Return is also, at a time when music is essentially produced on computer, the choice of an organic, ample and living sound. With their analogical gears, which they like to see as children's toys, in the manner of François de Roubaix, Clément (on Moog, Mellotron, cr8000 drum machine) and Adrien (on acoustic guitar, piano and vocals) compose, produce and write together. It is between their small Parisian studio and a house suspended between the mountains of the Pyrenees that their pieces are born, then orchestrated by a string quartet in the countryside. From this journey emerged a dreamlike and sensory music, a call to dream, an invitation to extract oneself from time.