That Summer

That Summer was created as David Sanson's musical project in the early 90's. Raised in Chateauroux in France, David Sanson attended the academy of music for ten years, and was brought up with the classical music and jazz of his parents, as well as becoming interested in cold wave and « industrial » tones.
Tony Wakeford (Death In June, Sol Invictus) listened to one of his first demos and encouraged him to continue and finally produced his first full-length in 1993: DROWSINESS OF ANCIENT GARDENS is the result of one week's work with an analog 8-track recorder, featuring intimate and mostly piano/cello compositions.
On his second album HOME IS WHERE THE STUDIO IS (recorded in Berlin with Bernd Jestram (Tarwater) during the Summer of 2001), David Sanson tried to conciliate parallel worlds and atmospheres, analogical sounds versus acoustic instruments, silence versus singing, and discord versus melodies. HOME IS WHERE THE STUDIO IS was sometimes compared to Robert Wyatt or Tuxedomoon, French magazine « Les Inrockuptibles » describing That Summer as « a false Parisian band with a vertiginous culture ».
In 2004, Arbouse Recordings publish STRATEGIES OBLIQUES as a CD-R: The soundtrack of an eponymous short film directed by Rodolphe Bertrand.
That Summer's third album, CLEAR, was composed between 2001 and 2004, and between Paris and Montreal (two tracks were recorded at the Hotel2Tango, the studio of Godspeed You! Black Emperor and Arcade Fire!). It is the result of a close collaboration with several French musicians such as Benoit Burello (Bed), Sylvain Chauveau, Pierre-Yves Macé, Jérome Minière, Jean-Michel Pirès (The Married Monk, Headphone, Bed, NLF3.), Alain Frappier (Baroque Bordello) and Geoffroy Montel (Minizza, Brocoli Records), and also with artists such as Malcolm Eden (Mc Carthy, Herzfeld), Rebecca Foon and Rachel Levine (Fifths Of Seven). A dozen pastoral and urban pop-songs, melodic and melancholic, stripped down and subtle, influenced by artists such as Brian Eno and David Sylvian, as well as Hood and Depeche Mode. CLEAR has been released in 2005 by the Bordeaux-based label Talitres (Wedding Present, The Organ, Idaho). The same year, That Summer was featured on Talitres's anniversary double compilation (TALITRES IS 5) with a new, unreleased track, and gave their first live shows - mainly in Paris, in particular at Café de la Danse (w/ The National and Flotation Toy Warning). On stage, David Sanson was performing with Nikolu Jorio (also a member of La Chatte , Genau, ii, Louisville, Lustrine.), Olivier Cavaillé (Louisville, Sylvain Chauveau, My Broken Frame) and drummer Vincent Touchard.
In 2006, on NINE SHRUNKEN PIECES, a mini-album released on Optical Sound in Fall '06, That Summer appears as a trio - featuring Nikolu Jorio plus visual and sound artist Emmanuel Lagarrigue. This record is another way of collaboration: The transcription of 9 PIECES REDUITES, an exhibition by visual artist Saâdane Afif held at the Prince Pierre Foundation (Monaco), in July 2006. This project was continued with an exhibition at Galleria Maze in Torino (Italy), « La Répétition » (« The Rehearsal »), for which That Summer performed a 3-hour public rehearsal.
Since then, That Summer has become a real band - a quartet including multi-instrumentalists Nikolu Jorio, Olivier Cavaillé (Louisville) and Etienne Bonhomme (Diterzi, Innocent X.). Together, they gave a few concerts in France (La Route du Rock festival, Centre Pompidou), and recorded some tracks for video-installations by French visual artist François-Xavier Courrèges. Above all, during Summer 2008, on the French countryside and in Berlin (at Bernd Jestram's new studio), they have also recorded a new album, NEAR MISS, to be released on September 27th, 2010 on Talitres.
Due this new collective/band dynamic, That Summer's sound has become more compact and « rocky ». These 8 tracks + one (including even a cover of The Cure's « All Cats Are Grey » !) have been post-produced, mixed and mastered by Geoffroy Montel, except « The Hues of You » which was mixed by musician and DJ Krikor. Guest musicians on this recording were Sylvain Chauveau, Matthias Grübel (Phon°noir, Telekaster) and Cyril Secq from astrïd, who has also accompanied the band live sometimes.
Tracks by That Summer do also appear on several compilations issued in 2010 (check Discogs).