Valparaiso

The Parisian musical collective deriving from the cult band Jack The Ripper releases its first album as Valparaiso on September 22nd , featuring the voices and poetry of Phoebe Killdeer of Nouvelle Vague, Howe Gelb, Shannon Wright, Spain’s Josh Haden, Dominique A, Moriarty’s Rosemary Standley, Venus’ Marc Huyghens, Mansfield Tya's Julia Lanoë. The album is recorded, mixed and produced by John Parish.

The Chilean seaport Valparaiso has been a distant, yet mystic point for travellers and sailors. The French musical collective Valparaiso symbolizes a harbor that welcomes artists who stay for a while, leave and may come back. Though, the travelling and no-border mentalities unite Valparaiso and their manifold guests.

It is the artist’s passion for the iconic photographer Sergio Lorrain’s raw imagery, as well as Joris Ivens and Chris Maker’s film about Valparaiso that led to the name’s choice of Valparaiso. At the same time, this marked the overall aesthetics of the project, which also leads to a particular visual note in the many short-films, photos and stage-design.

Hervé and Thierry Mazurel, musicians and co-founders of the French cult act Jack The Ripper are at the origin of Valparaiso. Stable members are also Matthieu Texier (guitars), Thomas Belhom (drums) and Adrien Rodrigue (violin and vibraphones), all indie-rock scene experienced musicians.

We may remind that just before Jack the Ripper’s 4th album recording session, a surprising split from their iconic singer left the band without a frontman. Out of the ashes of Jack the Ripper, they marked a milestone with The Fitzcarraldo Sessions, an experimental predecessor to Valparaiso (among them Stuart Staples of Tindersticks, Joey Burns of Calexico, Blaine Reininger of Tuxedomoon, Craig Walker of Archive). The album We hear Voices immediately gained rave reviews in France.

While the music on “Broken Homeland” was composed by Valparaiso, the guests were invited through creative and organic networking and finally coincidences. The lyrics and vocals were written in total liberty by each singer and recorded together in Bristol, where it was all unified and consolidated by John Parish. Today, their first album Broken Homeland resemble a photo-book that documents the collective.

Valparaiso’s Broken Homeland will be released Europe-wide via Zamora Label 22nd of September 2017. A release-tour is being planned for fall 2017 featuring different guests.