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nouvelle vague

 
Dictionary: nouvelle vague   (väg') pronunciation
 
n.

See new wave (sense 1).

[French : nouvelle, new + vague, wave.]


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Artist: Nouvelle Vague
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Group Members:

Camille, Olivier Libaux, Marc Collin

Similar Artists:

The Mike Flowers Pops, Au Revoir Simone, Stereolab

Influenced By:

Formal Connection With:

Gilles Leguen, Camille
  • Genres: Electronica
  • Representative Albums: "LateNightTales," "Nouvelle Vague," "New Wave"

Biography

With a name that means "new wave" in English and "bossa nova" in Portuguese, Nouvelle Vague's moniker neatly sums up the group's concept: remaking classic new wave singles with a Brazilian pop twist. Nouvelle Vague is the brainchild of French producers Marc Collin and Olivier Libaux. Prior to this collaboration, Collin played with the trip-hop outfit Ollano; composed film soundtracks such as The Kidnapper's Theme; and released electronic music ranging from club-oriented material for Paper Recordings to more eclectic fare for Fcom and Output Records (under the aliases Avril and Volga Select, respectively). Libaux played with various French pop bands during the '90s and began working with Collin in 1998. For Nouvelle Vague, Collin and Libaux recruited half a dozen French and Brazilian vocalists who were unfamiliar with the original versions of songs like Joy Division's "Love Will Tear Us Apart" and XTC's "Making Plans for Nigel" to ensure that their renditions had their own identity. Nouvelle Vague was released in Europe in 2004 and received U.S. distribution in spring 2005, which coincided with tour dates in locales as far-flung as Shanghai, New York, Los Angeles, and Rio de Janeiro. Nouvelle Vague's second album, A Bande a Part, arrived in summer 2006. The following year, the team returned with Coming Home, a collection of songs from films given the Nouvelle Vague treatment. New Wave, a collection of covers by new wave artists, also arrived in 2007. ~ Heather Phares, All Music Guide
 
French Literature Companion: Nouvelle Vague
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A term originally coined by Françoise Giroud in L'Express to describe the movement that from 1958-9—the years in which Chabrol, Godard, Resnais, and Truffaut released their first feature films—revolutionized the French cinema. Inspired by the vitality of the Hollywood ‘B’ movie, the wider availability of equipment suitable for location filming, and the self-conscious iconoclasm of Existentialism, the new directors showed a fierce determination to establish film as the cultural equal—if not the superior—of more ‘respectable’ art-forms such as the novel. Most of them had worked as film critics (generally for Cahiers du cinéma); all had spent much time in the Paris Cinémathèque. Their trademarks included widespread use of the jump-cut (moving abruptly from the beginning of an action to the end), uncoupling of the image and the soundtrack (helped by almost universal location filming), and a rejection—often (as with Truffaut) contemptuous—of the older school of ‘literary’ cinema with its stress on décor and plot. Financial reasons determined all this as much as aesthetic ones: the Nouvelle Vague made low-budget filming outside the orbit of the big studios a reality for many.

Its major directors not listed separately were Claude Chabrol, influenced by Hitchcock and fond of lampooning the provincial bourgeoisie (Le Beau Serge, 1958; Que la bête meure, 1969; Les Noces rouges, 1973), and Jacques Rivette, whose convoluted stories-within-stories evoke the Nouveau Roman or even Perec (Paris nous appartient, 1961; Céline et Julie vont en bateau, 1974). Chris Marker, Jacques Demy, and Jacques Rozier are other important figures associated with the movement, though since it never issued a manifesto or formally constituted itself it is a matter of opinion who is or is not a ‘Nouvelle Vague director’. By the same token, it is difficult to say when the Nouvelle Vague ceased to exist; May 1968 and the Cinémathèque affair brought its main figures together in action, but their film-making practices had already begun to diverge widely. Its continuing influence is, however, shown by the fact that in 1990 Godard made a film—starring Alain Delon, an actor never associated with the movement—with the title Nouvelle Vague.

[KAR]

Bibliography

  • J. Monaco, The New Wave (1976)
 
WordNet: Nouvelle Vague
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Note: click on a word meaning below to see its connections and related words.

The noun has one meaning:

Meaning #1: an art movement in French cinema in the 1960s
  Synonym: New Wave


 
Wikipedia: Nouvelle Vague (band)
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Nouvelle Vague
Nouvelle Vague playing Rockefeller Music Hall, Norway in February 2007
Nouvelle Vague playing Rockefeller Music Hall, Norway in February 2007
Background information
Origin France
Genre(s) Lounge
Alternative rock
Years active 2003–present
Members
Marc Collin
Olivier Libaux
Various singers

Nouvelle Vague is a French musical collective led by musicians Marc Collin and Olivier Libaux. Their name is a play on words, meaning "new wave" in French. This refers simultaneously to their "Frenchness" and "artiness" (the '60s new wave of cult French cinema), the source of their songs (all covers of punk rock, post-punk, and New Wave songs), and their use of '60s bossa nova-style arrangements ("bossa nova" being Portuguese for "new wave").

On their first album, Nouvelle Vague, the group resurrected classics from the New Wave music era, and reinterpreted them in a bossa nova style. The songs were stripped back to acoustic arrangements with lithe shaker rhythms achieved by gathering a parade of chanteuses from all over the world (six French, one Brazilian and one New Yorker) to cover bands including XTC, Modern English, The Clash, Joy Division and The Undertones. The various female singers on Nouvelle Vague only performed songs they had never heard before, to ensure that each cover would have a unique quality.

Nouvelle Vague in concert at Le Cargö.

Their second album, Bande à Part, includes versions of "Ever Fallen in Love (With Someone You Shouldn't've)" by Buzzcocks, "Blue Monday" by New Order, "The Killing Moon" by Echo and the Bunnymen and "Heart of Glass" by Blondie.

Members, former members and contributors include many French artists who are now very well known on their own and considered as part of what is now called the "Renouveau de la chanson française" (the "Renewal of French chanson"): Anaïs Croze, Camille Dalmais, Phoebe Killdeer, Mélanie Pain and Marina Céleste.

Contents

Appearances in media

Discography: Albums

Discography: Singles

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Copyrights:

Dictionary. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2007, 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2007. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.  Read more
Artist. Copyright © 2009 All Media Guide, LLC. Content provided by All Music Guide ®, a trademark of All Media Guide, LLC. All rights reserved.  Read more
French Literature Companion. The New Oxford Companion to Literature in French. Copyright © 1995, 2005 by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.  Read more
WordNet. WordNet 1.7.1 Copyright © 2001 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.  Read more
Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Nouvelle Vague (band)" Read more

 

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