In The Studio: Gossling/Oh Mercy

Australian label Inertia had the idea that it might be fun to invite some of Australia's most interesting contemporary artists to reinterpret some of the most famous of French pop songs, in French. The opening and first song lifted from the album, Mélodie Française, as a single was La Minute De Silence, written by one Salvadore Poe and interpreted here by Helen Croome aka Gossling and Oh Mercy's Alexander Gow.

“The producer of the track was Pip Norman, though he goes under the name Countbounce,” Croome begins. “He's a hip hop dude,” Gow adds, “so they're allowed to have pseudonyms!” “So it was at his studio in Preston in Melbourne.” That's Bounce County Studios, and Norman is a founding member of the electro-hip hop outfit TZU. Recording with Logic Pro 9, his favourite piece of gear is his much-prized RCA Dx77 vintage ribbon mic.

“It's impossible to know where something is going to go,” Gow continues. “Helen and I had discussed a few options, but to be fair to Helen, I probably got a little overexcited and probably was working on a bit of a different level to Helen, and kind of went ahead and followed my whim, and luckily it turned out great, 'cause if it didn't… I would have been to blame,” he laughs. “I know Pip's studio really well. We didn't have a ton of time to do it. We did it all in, maybe, six hours or something like that, from scratch. So his understanding of his studio and being able to make things happen really quickly… As I said, I was kind of going at a hundred miles an hour and he was able to keep up with that, so in that he was particularly useful, doing the analogue synth you can hear on the track, which is one of my favourite parts.”

“When we recorded the song, I only had a basic understanding of the lyrics,” Croome admits. As it happens, those artists that felt they needed a little help in their performances in French had the opportunity to with French tutors both in the studio and via Skype.

The bonus for Croome and Gow in being the first cab off the album was the opportunity to go to Paris to film the promotional video for their song, thanks to French web-based music streaming service, Deezer. Croome and Gow even launched the track in a performance at Deezer's Paris office, while the production crew were given unprecedented permission to film in and around the legendary Moulin Rouge. The filmmakers based the black and white clip's storyboard on old French films.

“We probably did two ten-hour days, if not more, to film the clip. It was kind of a sightseeing adventure – you're not going to send a couple of Australians to Paris and put them in a studio somewhere with green screen, so we got to walk around. I'd never been there before – Helen had once. We had some French camera people, but Lucy [Perrett], from the label, and her partner Jim [Yeomans] directed the clip.”

Yeomans is a director at ampbox.tv, a London-based company, and specialises in fly on the wall, on the move footage. Shooting on the road for Kasabian, he has mastered the art. Due to the limited time available in Paris and the desire to shoot in as many locations as possible, he shot with two Canon 5Ds – one with shoulder rig – and a Canon 7D with a monopod and a bag of lenses.

“There was a crew of four,” he explains. “We knew certain locations we wanted but also knew we would see stuff on the fly, so being able to run around town and not get tired was important. It was a case of walking, cabs and trains.”

“It isn't hard work,” Croome chuckles, “spending four days walking around Paris pretending that you like someone!”