The Farmer’s Conclusion is an instrumental track (last one!) from the album Ainsi soit je… released in April 1988
Music and by arrangements: Laurent Boutonnat.
This instrumental song contains many sounds of farm animals mixed with sighs of Farmer. The title refers to the pseudonym chosen by the singer (“Farmer” means “fermière” in French language) and is a humorous reply to journalists who sometimes give her that name in a literal way. What a great reply!
I figured off the bet that’s what he was trying to do. Plus technology behind mixing got a bit more advanced (in the late 80s ias opposed to the early 80s). So I can totally see Laurent getting carried away with all those tricks he can do. It is sheer naughtiness and pun…
Perhaps, it is a straightforward caricature of all those “friends” from the press? And perhaps “conclusion” is not only for the conclusion of the album Ainsi soit je… but also a conclusion as in “bottom line” as far as what he thinks about them 😊 You got to love it!
It was never performed on stage, nor on television. And one must wonder – why not? I can totally see Laurent and Mylene dressed for to the occasion 😊 😊
Sound recording and Mixing: Thierry Rogen assisted by Philippe Colonna
“That’s Laurent’s idea! It’s an instrumental. The Farmer’s conclusion is the farmer’s conclusion! And it’s a little song, how long does it last? I don’t know, very shortly… There is the foot which is a pig… The bass is the dog… Well, it’s quite a construction, like that, which is quite funny. I guarantee you that it did not take time! It was like that, in the studio. ” (Mylène Farmer – Skyrock – 05/07/1988)
“I admit that the Farmers’s conclusion remains a mystery to me. Making a rhythm with chickens and pigs remains one of Laurent’s deliriums which is a little beyond my comprehension, but it made us laugh! Laurent has a lot of humor and I have quite incredible memories of having fun with him. ” (Thierry Rogen – ” Styx Magazine “- 2011)
Thierry Rogen is another wizard before Jérôme Devoise. Read more in the chapter below if you’ve missed it.
about Thierry Rogen
Let’s meet Thierry Rogen – another sound engineer who contributed a great deal to Mylene’s success. He started in music at the age of 17 and quickly became a sound engineer. It was for William Sheller that he produced his first album in the early 80s.
After working in particular at the Guillaume Tell studio and with various artists, he created his own studio, the Mega studio in 1987 in a bunker near the Bois de Boulogne. He notably collaborated with Eric Serra on the soundtrack of Luc Besson’s film, Le Grand Bleu. In 1996, his Méga studio moved to Suresnes for larger premises. He worked with Johnny Hallyday, Patricia Kaas, Jean-Jacques Goldman … and on musicals.
In 2005, he sold his studio and moved to Thailand in Phuket. Contrary to what has been written on the internet, Thierry Rogen has never been reported missing following a typhoon.
He now devotes himself to house building and interior design.
Thierry Rogen met Laurent Boutonnat at the end of 1986 through Michel Elli, Axel Bauer producer with whom Thierry Rogen worked.
Thierry Rogen’s first collaboration with Mylène Farmer for the single Tristana
in 1987 recorded at the studio of the Palais des Congrès in Paris. Mylène inaugurates Thierry Rogen’s Mega studio by recording the single Sans contrefaçon on September 16, 1987.
Thierry Rogen’s role with Mylène and Laurent Boutonnat will expand from the recording of the album Ainsi Soit Je… . Always sound engineer, he becomes co-director of the albums. He also creates remixes for many songs of Mylène in collaboration with Laurent Boutonnat.
In 1994, he directed and produced with Mylène in Los Angeles an EP for Headmess, Shade Underbelly.
The same year, Thierry Rogen worked on Giorgino, both on the sound of the film and on the soundtrack.
In 1995, he joined Mylène and Laurent Boutonnat to work on the album Anamorphosée. Thierry Rogen working on other projects in parallel and the occurrence of some interpersonal difficulties will lead him to abandon this project (he will be replaced by Bertrand Châtenet).
In 1996, he made the sound recording of the 1996 Tour concerts for the Live à Bercy album.
He recorded that same year, alone (Laurent Boutonnat is not present) the duet of Mylène with Khaled, La poupée qui fait non and did the remixes of this song.
In 2000, he made the sound recording of the Mylenium Tour concerts for the live album of the same name. This is his last collaboration with Mylène to date.
Famous Tracks mixed by Thierry Rogen:
Désenchantée – Club Remix and Chaos Mix extended version
Sans logique – Logical Single Mix and Illogical Club Remix
Beyond My Control – Under Control Remix, Godforsaken Mix and The Raven Mix:
Que mon cœur lâche – Extended Dance Remix and Damage Club Mix
Je t’aime mélancolie – Extended Club Remix
Rogen in his own words
Background
I started working in music at the age of 17, not completely by chance, since my father was a musician. I entered a studio called Jean Jaurès, where I worked for three years. I was lucky, because I immediately became a sound engineer, and very quickly I was in charge. The first album I did was William Sheller’s. Then, I became an independent engineer, in 1982-1983, with a stopover at the Guillaume Tell studio (where Mylène recorded her last songs, Editor’s note). At the time, I worked a lot with Michel Eli, the producer of Axel Bauer who was quite friends with Laurent Boutonnat. I joined the team right after the Moon Ashes album. Laurent had a hard time finding engineers and directors, and by chance Michel Eli told him about me. We met at the end of 1986, and our first collaboration was for Tristana . We did that at the studio at the Palais des Congrès, but I had the idea of setting up my own studio, which I did in 1987 (studio Méga, in a bunker near the Bois de Boulogne, Editor’s note). Mylène and Laurent were the triggers that allowed me to carry out my project, as well as other artists, such as Éric Serra, with whom I worked on the soundtrack of Le Grand Bleu.
Start
Basically, a sound engineer is used to record the songs brought to him by the producer and the director. There is the recording phase, then the mixing phase, which is used to give the color and atmosphere of the album. But there are several degrees of investment, depending on how the engineer is involved in the project. At the start, I was only a sound engineer for Mylène and Laurent. Then, I moved on to programming the synths and writing the rhythms with Laurent. And I became a co-director, quite naturally. I didn’t just limit myself to recording the songs, which artistically is a bit passive. I only remained strictly an engineer on the first two singles, Tristana and Sans contrefaçon. Then I evolved with the album Ainsi Soit Je … I always brought ideas on the rhythm and the remixes. Laurent is above all a composer, and when I met him, I brought my programming know-how. They already had their universe, on which I grafted myself. I also had, like them, this side a little dark. There was immediate osmosis, and it is quite rare. Nothing was calculated, we were locked in the studio, with Laurent, like two Merlin the enchanting! He was doing something, it gave me an idea, and vice versa. There are even songs that were born like that, out of nothing, in the studio, like Agnus Dei , on the album The Other.. At the beginning, Mylène was not very present in musical production, she just took care of her lyrics and her voices.
Ainsi Soit Je …
The first single recorded at studio Méga, which is now 16 years old, is Sans contrefaçon, on September 16, 1987, the day the studio opened! It was also the first big hit for Mylène, even Libertine and Tristana had been hits before. The studio’s explosion of success has paralleled Mylène’s explosion of success. Immediately after, we continued with Ainsi Soit Je…, until December 1987. I have only good memories of that period, because it was the perfect fusion. At the time, we did not know each other very well, which avoided automatic procedures. In addition, the studio was working: I was 24 years old and I had my box…
Remixes
Before knowing Mylène and Laurent, I was in the world of dance music, and I made a lot of remixes. Laurent has always liked it. Once again, our meeting was strong, because I think I brought an element that I mastered well, namely the world of dance. We took great pleasure in making remixes. There are even times when we finished the song quickly, to hurry to do the long version! The remixes were the playground, because the work on the albums was long and tiring, with in addition time and construction constraints for the singles intended for radio passages. Mylène intervened little in the remixes, it was really our delirium, Laurent and me. But she still came back to do vocals if we needed new gimmicks. Often, Laurent would gladly have made songs that lasted 6 minutes, and that was only possible with the remixes, which allowed us to express ourselves completely. In fact, we sometimes first recorded the song in a long version. It also happened that we mixed the single, made the remix and made a new single from the remix. For example for Sans contrefaçon or Désenchantée, certain bridges or gimmicks did not exist in the first single version we made, and which never came out! On Provided they are soft , I had Mylène re-record the voices, which we engraved. Then we brought in a DJ, who scratched a ton of vocals stuff, and we did the famous PQSD intro . Until I quit working with them, no remixes were outsourced, which is the case today.
Voice of Mylène
Mylène is not Celine Dion, everyone knows that. But she is very perfectionist in the placement and the correctness of the words, in the work of recording the voices. From the start of my collaboration with Mylène and Laurent, I placed myself in a sort of triangle. I had a very close collaboration with Laurent when we were making the recordings, and I had a very close collaboration with Mylène when we were working on the vocals. Ainsi Soit Je …, the three of us did the vocals, but it was a job that quickly inflamed Laurent, because Mylène wanted the best result and that sometimes took hours. I soon found myself only doing it with her. Mylène has a great talent for synchronizing her voices. Without going into too much manufacturing secrets, the fact of doubling the vocals when working on a chorus, of doing several tracks, managed to give this specific color to the ‘Farmer’ sound. Mylène was very good at this job. Getting to double your voices perfectly, without anything sticking out, is not given to everyone. In fact, she did her own backing vocals and it was very rare that she used backing vocals. Mylène is not a shouting singer, but on the contrary other singers, her voice is the instrument of what she wants to say, and not an end in itself. You should know that most ‘vocal’ singers do not write their lyrics. Their voice is their business. Mylène Farmer, her business, that’s what she says, it’s her universe. As everything else was perfect, the press was bent on the only ‘weakness’ of Mylène, which is not, moreover, one, since millions of people adore her.
Mylène on stage
The 1989 concert is one of my best professional experiences, but at the same time one of the worst. One of the most beautiful, because I had followed Mylène’s career in an almost family way, and it was an important moment. At the time, Mylène only existed through the image of her music videos, and showing off in public was something new to her. Where she amazed me is that she has such professionalism that she broke all barriers. The preparation of the concert was also very difficult in the daily work, because, like everything that concerned Mylène and according to Laurent’s wishes, the show had to be “huge”. I don’t know if we were all prepared for something this big. We were afraid until the end of not being up to the task, and I will remember the first concert all my life, in Saint-Étienne. We were the first to put synths and sequences on stage, with a technology that was not as developed as it is today. We had the following problem: Mylène’s records were so sophisticated in production that we couldn’t go on stage and just put in a drummer, a bassist and a guitarist. The public had to find the color of the albums on stage, which included tons of sequences and programming. So, in addition to the backing singers and Mylène on stage, there were also some backings, which included sequences of vocals. Maybe that’s what got the criticism, because people said the sound was too huge to just come off the stage. But when U2 is in concert, and that The Edge is all alone on stage, the enormous sound that comes out of his guitar does not come only from him! So where is the criticism? If we want to take a show in the face, the technical details that make us put tape around the package, what can that do to people? Everyone uses sequencers on stage. So how is this open to criticism?
When Michael Jackson or Madonna do that, everyone praises them, while unlike Mylène, they sing more in playback. Mylène, to my knowledge, has never sung in playback on stage. If you want to go to an unplugged live by candlelight, go see Francis Cabrel, because his songs lend themselves to it. Not Mylène’s. So where is the criticism? If we want to take a show in the face, the technical details that make us put tape around the package, what can that do to people? Everyone uses sequencers on stage. So how is this open to criticism?
This is the greatest memory of production that I have. One day, I was at Laurent’s, and as he never did a model and kept everything in mind, he took out his little piano and played me Désenchantée . My first hot reaction was: it’s a huge hit. I excited them with my own excitement, and suddenly we stuck an extra pressure, which we already had with the preparation of the album L’autre …! For the record, Désenchantée has been recorded four times. The first three, we put it in the trash. We couldn’t do it, the arrangements weren’t good. The third time, Laurent got to such a point of nervousness that he said: “I’m going to throw it away”, and he left, slamming the door, exasperated. Once alone, I worked on a completely different rhythm. Originally, Laurent wanted this choppy song, with techno bass. And I felt her rather groove, with brass gimmicks. So I took it up with this in mind, with more funk drums. Laurent came back the next day, and he bounced back on my idea. The day we finally mixed the version you know, our fingers were heating up, because we knew we were holding a huge hit! We weren’t wrong,
Dance Remixes
There were those who had bought Mylène’s albums, and fans who had bought everything. But the ‘buffs’ were still a minority, and many people still had things to discover. As we liked to make remixes, and that it fell into a little hollow after the album L’autre…, Laurent decided to make this album. We remastered old remixes, and we made others, including Libertine, a song I hadn’t worked on at the time. The financial stake was not great, and it was an intermediate album. Mylène was one of the first to come up with remixes as a variety artist. Laurent composed Let my heart loose, but he took very little part in the arrangements, which I made only with Mylène. It is also from this time that Mylène became more present in the production of albums.
Scoop!
Mylène fell in love with an American, her English teacher, I believe, who made great rap songs (Henry Biggs, Editor’s note). She came over with this guy’s tapes, and asked me if I wanted to be produced together. We made the album in a month, but it didn’t come out, I don’t know why. It was super nice, it looked like a kind of Eminem before the hour, with quite melodic rap backgrounds, thanks to the intervention of Mylène, who had put his two cents in. It was during the big hole after the shooting of Giorgino . Mylène did other musical essays, some with Jeff Dahlgren, and that’s where we saw the birth of her ‘Mylène producer’ side.
Anamorphosée
The rock side of Anamorphosée, it is Mylène and Jeff Dahlgren who brought it and wished it. This clear evolution was really the result of the will of Mylène. She was very present in the production, which was not the case before. You still have to know that, even for the previous albums, some gimmicks and certain melodies came from her. She has a real talent for finding the melodies. The presence of Mylène in the production was therefore formalized on Anamorphosée, where she also began the composition. It is surely the place, Los Angeles, which also caused this positive turn, this color. I did not finish the album Anamorphosée, I don’t really want to say why. This marked the end of our collaboration, even if there were live performances. But it was different. Anamorphosée was very difficult to do, because Laurent was still in the ‘after Giorgino’ state of mind , and he was doing very badly. Mylène and Laurent no longer wanted to stay in France, and if they recorded in Los Angeles, it was because they wanted to forget all that. Initially, they were in a studio which was not very good, so I took them to Ocean Way, where Michael Jackson was recording, among others.
Breaking UP
Paradoxically, Anamorphosée was also a great moment for me, because I was in the process of remotely developing my new Mega studios, in Suresnes. All the construction of the studios was done at the same time as Mylène’s album. I had met a Swiss architect in the United States who designed the plans for the new Mega studios. So I was making Mylène’s album, and in the evening I was going to meet my friend. I was in an incredible state of excitement, and I met a lot of people. That’s what saved me from relationship difficulties during the album. I still left the Anamorphosée project, and it was Bertrand Châtenet who replaced me. I had introduced him to Mylène three years earlier, and they immediately hooked. The fact that he took over from me minimized the ‘mini-drama’ that my departure was. Afterwards, my life changed with this new studio, and Mylène went to other universes. I had a frank break with Laurent, not with Mylène. I still did the Live at Bercy, in 1997, although the break has already been made. I think they called on me because I had the experience of recording ‘big’ live ones, in a short time, with a lot of pressure. I was used to this kind of exercise with Johnny, Les Restos du cœur, etc. So, despite the tensions, Mylène and Laurent turned to me again. But I only recorded the live, I did not mix it, it was Bertrand who took care of it.
I also participated in the single La poupée qui fait non with Khaled, where Laurent was completely absent. The recording was done here, in the studio, in a good mood. It was very fast, Mylène and Khaled saw each other for four hours in all! During this period of the live, I ate once with Laurent, and we ‘parted’ good friends. I saw Mylène a few times, but our collaboration is over. We can’t even talk about the Mylenium Tour, where again, I only recorded, and where I saw it for four or five days.
That’s good, very good. Good songs, as Laurent knows how to do them. They were incredibly lucky to meet this kid, who is so in Mylène’s suite that you wonder if they didn’t make her together! In terms of image success, the success of Mylène which reflects on Alizée and vice versa, it’s absolutely perfect, and I take my hat off. Now musically it’s not my cup of tea, but my seven year old daughter loves it!
The following…
I find that Mylène has the necessary talent to allow herself to be daring. If she opened up her musical universe a little, she could explode into something else. She is very open musically, she listens to everything. She loves everything: English pop, she loves funk, her ears are everywhere. Laurent is more fond of film music, but he remains locked in the same universe. Today, when I think about it, I have only positive memories of my collaboration with them. The door is not closed, and if they came back to me, I think I would go back for a walk. Now that we have all passed forty, I think the sauce would only be better! But I believe they won’t, and neither will I…
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