In Nice, the singer Blanche pedals to make watts and hits

Watts in the legs, sound in the ears! Yohann Le Mat, alias Blanche, a 42-year-old resident of Nice (Alpes-Maritimes), has just finished eight tracks from his third “electro-pop song” style album, thanks to a recording studio powered by “made in” current… concrete calves.

The artist sweated on an electricity-generating bicycle for “around fifty hours” to put together 100 to 120 hours of composition, between the end of November and the end of January. “I cycled for two hours in the morning, that was my workout, then I recorded for almost four hours in the afternoon,” he explains. I had to be as productive as possible. I didn’t reshoot the shots over and over again, but the little accidents gave it a natural human and organic feel. »

A two-wheeler capable of storing energy on a battery

The man had this somewhat bizarre idea when he noticed the large quantities of energy deployed in a traditional studio. “I asked myself questions,” he said. I looked at solar panels, wind turbines, it was too complicated. » After extensive research, he found the rare gem, a two-wheeler capable of storing energy on a battery, “made in Lithuania which can then be plugged into with a normal 220 volt socket”.

His initiative required some adaptations. The main one? Repatriate the magic bicycle from Grenoble. “I didn’t want to go and pick her up with my car, to stay within the environmental approach. Thanks to people on social networks, I found a carpooling solution for packages,” he says. He also had to set up the recording studio at home with “the minimum equipment”: computer, sound card, speakers and instruments. On a daily basis, operations had to be streamlined. Optimizing the setup was not easy “requiring equipment to be unplugged to save battery power”.

“With less electricity we don’t do worse”

Yohann Le Mat shared his green adventures on social networks via eight episodes. And obviously he hit the mark: “There were a lot of positive reactions. Indirectly, it raised awareness among people who wanted to know more and understand how it was possible to produce electricity in this way. »

His pedaling at home will also have had merit, he admits. “Of course, this makes for great promotion. But above all I wanted to show how an album is made, what is behind the scenes of musical production beyond artistic creation…”

After the release of a first single in March, then a second on April 17, this famous album called “Peau rouge” will be available next June. “At first, it was a challenge,” he confides, “but then I got into the game. In any case, I realized that with less electricity we didn’t do any worse. » If he claims to have loved “this great experience”, Blanche will not do it again and will do “something else next time”. No doubt a little tired of cycling for a little while…