Charlotte and Magon is a duo with a unique background – one hails from France, while the other from Israel. Their meeting reads like a modern love story: the two met online, got together to create an album and fell in love in the process. I got a chance to hold a short Q & A for the twosome who took some time off from their touring schedule to answer my questions:
How did you guys start out? I know you guys met online, and finally met in person after two years of communication. What drew you to each other?
C&M : We met on a musical network.
C : After listening to Magon’s music on this network, I sent him a long mail about what I was feeling about it and not about technical musical talking or just a “thanks like your sound blabla”. It was for me the beginning of going on the web for musical networking, so I was really careful with what I was discovering and his music was so funny, delightful, original, playful and effective. Than he told me he was beginning composing music just since couple of months and I began to be more interested. But it was just musical and friendship. After few mails, weeks and life going by, we begun to chat and really become close virtual friends. Maybe he was fantasizing about talking to a french singer, but for me, it was quite serious. I was calling him my “virtual friend” to my people.
M : At the time, Charlotte seemed like a fantasy because she seemed to be so energetic, full of life and curious. I always tried to make my friendships concretely cooperative with my new creations. So after one year and a half of communication, I asked Charlotte to sing for my next album and sometimes she was more serious in the way she was talking about it through the internet and than I felt easily for the first time our artistical parallel ways. I think that what Charlotte liked is that…
C : He was quite young – and making things happened so fast and with such passion. I was quite admiring him as a musical and creative thing, especially when I received his CD. He was talking to me a lot about it to me on the chats I was also sending him voices for it. But here in my hand it was quite real… A nice cover, a refreshing music with short crazy songs, nice ideas, good production, young but so promising… And horrible presentation letters. ahaha. He was not showing off at all even if he was always talking giantly about his work.
M : When I asked Charlotte to come to Israel to make a romantic pop album with me, I didn’t know if it’s ok to ask that and if I was serious, and when I saw that she was into the idea, I found it so cool.
Considering that you two come from different cultural backgrounds – in the songs that you’ve made for the album, Love Happening, what were your influences?
C&M : So for the songs of Love Happening, we were influenced by what was happening in our lives at that moment (our meeting and the fact we were falling in love) and by a musical general background in our mind created by friendships, discoverings, passions…
If you could pick a few songs to share, which songs would you like us to share to our readers? Can you tell us a little bit about them?
This song is the end of the album, the ninth one and it’s really meaningful for us. Conceptually, the whole album talks about a love being happening, beginning, whatever. For this song, we imagined us as an old couple faced with the separation that death represents. For us, it was just being separated by the distance. It could be a lots of things that could separate two persons really connected and loving each other. The album is quite light and fantasized of a love in the 70’s with a sepia touch in the picture (this grain of visual Magon chose for the cover), but this one was more “serious”, deep, musically complex. The longest also, the slowest and the fastest (for the outro). Maybe an opening way to the next project we’re thinking of…
During the composition of the songs, we were sharing also a daily normal life : eating, sleeping, going out for a walk, toilets… We realised we had some kind of phobia, normal human fears, those dark side that everyone has and that even with your most professional collegues you begin to share just because we are close for long and intense periods of work. Everyone could be a maniac cause unstability of mind is human, and what also rules the world. We realised also that every kind of creation and deep and good human relationship can make this unstability creative and positive or could even be cured… We called that song Howard, thinking of Howard Hughes – this genius and so crazy guy.
Love Happening is truly a romantic album. The songs ooze with sex appeal – think of it as the perfect background music for a private candelit dinner for two, but with an experimental kind of twist which takes it a bit on the edgy side. Of course Charlotte’s vocals lends a lot to the romantic appeal – who can say ‘no’ to sultry vocals with a French accent? Their unique chemistry shows in their music, which is passion filled. But like all great partnerships, do they have what it takes to keep the music playing? In any case, I hope that the fire that ignited Charlotte and Magon to create such wonderful tunes won’t burn out so easily, they do make such great music together.
You can check out other tracks from their album at their MySpace page or download the full album at eMusic.
