Lemaitre

One Liner: Electronic happy tunes in the neighborhood of Justice

Wikipedia Genre: Electro house, French house, electronic rock, indietronica, nu-disco
Home: L.A.

Poster Position: 19
Day: Sunday at 11:30
Both Weekends.

Thoughts: Happy internationally confusing band day!  Say the band name out loud, and you get one guess where the band is from.  Did you guess France, like I did?
Well, Lemaitre is a French surname, derived from the Latin word magister, which translates to the master.  But, the group is actually two dudes from Norway, Ketil Jansen and Ulrik Denizou Lund. And, they actually live and make their electronic tunes in L.A.  So unless you cheated, I suspect you failed my quiz.  You owe me $20.

The group has stated that the band name came from Georges Lemaître, a Belgian priest who first proposed the Big Bang Theory and derived the physics concept now referred to as Hubble's Law.  I was going to try to explain Hubble's Law, but if you are interested, just go read this.  My head started to hurt about eight seconds into reading that thing.  Feels like someone trying to explain the science behind the Force.  I wish I knew why these guys wanted to name their group after this scientist.  Are they big celestial velocity fans?

These two dudes got together in 2010, and started releasing EPs and singles almost right away.  Their major output was in 2012-2013, when they released Relativity 1, Relativity 2, Relativity 3, and then Relativity By Nite.  But after a few more EPs and singles in 2014, 2016, and 2017, they finally released a full album in 2017 called Chapter One.  The first EP has kind of a Justice/Daft Punk vibe - very danceable, a little retro/atmospheric/chilled.  I can see why nu-disco is chosen as one of their genres (even if I have no clue what that means).  The top song from those early EPs is "Cut to Black," from Relativity 3.  I'll showcase that one for you, even if the piano-driven style in it is pretty different from their other tunes.

Kinda funky, kinda fun.  I guess maybe I like "house" music?  9.7 million streams for that one.  Oh, and also that is the opening track off their full-length album, so more than likely that is why it has more listens than their other older stuff.  Sorry, I'm an idiot.  Their top track overall, by a BUNCH, is called "Closer," and is also on the new album.  59.6 million streams.

OK, that video actually made me chuckle out loud a few times.  The song isn't as good as some of the others by these guys, but the video is slightly funny.  Interesting that it is so popular - almost 60 million streams is a buttload.  One reason may be that the song was used in a video for the Google Pixel phone whenever it launched?

The things I do not enjoy from this group?  The remixes.  They have a lot of remixes, and I think they muddle the clean joyfulness of the house style by adding in too much other electronica.

Their most recent single is even more like Justice/Daft Punk, all electro-robot buzz.  Here is "Rocket Girl."

I mean, don't get me wrong, I'm not signing up for the fan club just yet or anything, but this is pretty entertaining electronic music.  I could see enjoying a show of these tunes.