Bonjour! from Born Idiot
Maybe they’re born with it — Born Idiot; photographed by Lucas Martin.
The curious sophisti-pop group Born Idiot was the concept of Rennes, France artist Lucas Benmahammed from Betty The Nun who set out to make really candid vignettes. From youthful reflective ballads like “Childhood”, the album Afterschool, the happy hour charm of "Cocktail Bomb" and the indulgent luxury lined EP Coco Trip — the group preps the new album Full Time Bored arriving this September courtesy of the stylish imprint on the rise — Géographie.
Sharing the clever sweet and suave visual for their new single “Blue is My Color” from Lucas Martin; the lavish new summer holi-dazed track is given an equally slick and smart video. With assistance from Maxence Boucq, Grégoire Macke and styling by Anaïs Le Pape; the group takes the mod nouvelle vogue sensibility into the neat, stoic and decadent aesthetic of the current era. Born Idiot plays with all the exuberant pop tropes that allude to vacation paradisos with on-brand chic coupled with the absurd and cheeky. The hook pleas of, Let me stay at the pool, let me stay at the pool, it’s so cold, get stranger in their recitations, with Let me stay in the pool, beat out some molecules, it’s so cool... The arrangement assisted by Paul Rosalie and Sebastien Lohro is produced in a posh aesthetic that recalls lost weekends spent at resorts, opulent spas and interludes along the riviera replete with bleep-boop synths that slightly offsets the experience. One of the charms of Benmahammed’s work is the wild card aspect of composing entertaining pop art performances that can take on any number of unexpected (and always interesting) directions in execution and movement.
Lucas shared the following thoughts on Born Idiot’s own evolution, the new song and other reflections:
“Blue Is My Color” is a song about the decay of our generation in which we can hear a mechanical groove with a naïve talk : Let me stay at the pool, it’s so cool... The subject of a new technologic [sic] world where nobody understands what is going on is the clue of the new album Full Time Bored . The complexity nowadays is to live the moment and at the same time be in war to preserve the future and I guess this is the all the point of this album, a way for us to kill frustrations and claim positive things through our music. Our band evolution is pretty natural, we’ve been writing a lot about childhood and now we feel like fucked up adults who need to keep hope. This album will be out in September 2020 on Géographie, glad to work with this label. And we’re already in studio for the third, a lot of stuff are on their way.
Listen to more from Born Idiot via Spotify, Bandcamp and the label Géographie.
Azure siestas with Born Idiot; photographed by Lucas Martin.