Barbès Records 20th Anniversary Party With Combo Daguerre to Take Place at The Sultan Room

Celebrate the 20th anniversary of Brooklyn's legendary Barbès Records and the release of Combo Daguerre's debut album Fracassines on Saturday, June 29th, at The Sultan Room(234 Starr St, Brooklyn, NY). Featuring live music from Combo Daguerre and Glockabelle, with DJ sets by Chicha Libre and Glockabelle.

Led by French-born long-time Brooklyn resident Olivier Conan Combo Daguerre performs original psychedelic chanson with a mostly Latin crew and a hybrid style informed by boleros, cumbia, 60's rock, French chanson and 1930s surrealism. The group is named after Louis Daguerre, usually credited as one of the inventors of photography, but Daguerre also refers to a street in the 14th arrondissement of Paris, steps away from where Conan grew up - a street lovingly documented by Nouvelle Vague filmmaker Agnès Varda.

Combo Daguerre started as francophone offshoot of Chicha Libre, a cumbia and chicha band that spent close to a decade touring around the world - and like its predecessor, the project owes much to New York city where cultural and linguistic borders are fluid and Pan-Latin influences can be found in every possible musical genre. Its music is filled with joy and darkness, deep grooves and dirges, nostalgia, and futurism and deals with exile, misplaced nostalgia, and a language adulterated by distance.

Bandleader Olivier Conan grew up in Paris, moved to New York in his 20's and has since been working as a musician, producer, and curator. He owns and curates the small Brooklyn club Barbès. As a producer, he is responsible for the compilation The Roots of Chicha, albums by Los Wembler's de Iquitos and Las Rubias del Norte and his own band, Chicha Libre.

Fracassines is Combo Daguerre's debut album. While its repertoire is somewhat moodier and more downtempo than Chicha Libre's, the album remains mostly upbeat. Much of the lyrics deal with the ghosts of the past and the toxicity of nostalgia, with touches of surrealistic humor that ensures than none of it be taken too seriously. All songs are written in a French battered by decades of expatriation and peppered with semi-conscious references to France's pop and literary past.

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