David Leo

The faithful of Botanique will probably never forget this evening of November 2004. Arriving on stage with a large eclas in a skimpy jacket, bottlenecks in front of his eyes. Music begins, end of discussion. A warm voice, impressive, an energy catapult. It can not come out of such a frail man. No one else is singing, except for the  guy with the glasses. His name is still David from Froidmont, arrives from Visé. The energy is that of the twenty-two years he has just celebrated. His group is called Malibu Stacy. The public is conquered.

A decade goes by when David and his mates use the soles of their Converse on pretty much all the scenes of Belgium and beyond. The Woah oh oh of the interstellar Los Angeles becomes the cry of war or hope of young people after 9/11. They act like they’re not scared, said the song. And while the tube is taken again in the football stadiums, the band flew to the USA.

David has realized his dream at the age when others are still struggling on models or running tele-hooks with their parents. He has tasted the drunkenness of a crowd who scribes your words. He will test the cruel the day after she forgot them. Three albums later, the Visetois grew up. The magic of the evening initiatic to Bota dissipates. The Malibu too.

David knows, however, that the road will not stop on this Grande Scène des Francos de Spa where thegroup says goodbye on July 21, 2013. But in the meantime, someone else has been invited to the party. Life, the truth. The one who can give everything and the moment after you spit cheerfully in the face. At the dawn of the thirty, it will have to deal with a new landscape. A father and a brother gone in a few second, two little boys who bring back to basics. Between impossible and overwhelming mourning fatherhood, David de Froidmont becomes David Leo and music a matter of survival. In solitude of an attic, the words and notes soothe where all the other remedies have failed.

More than a therapy, it will be a liberation. Because if it can scare a little, singular creation has this advantage of abolishing the compromises inherent to the group. Left to start from scratch, so much to be done pleasure. And then David is not quite alone. For his solo return, he joins the talented Anthony Sinatra and Salvio Ladelfa from Piano Club. Above all, he finally assumes what he always wanted. Codes nineties revisited, memories of this adolescence which, to look at it, is not so far away. Vintage synths for a current sound, groovy bass lines, funky rhythm, David Leo takes a resolute turn pop. A paradoxical choice, curiously cheerful for the one that life did not spare. But what better answer to fatality? To sublimate the rage, to draw a pretty song. Better make him an arm.

Released in spring 2016, the frenetic Down the Hall and his jubilant video celebrate this rebirth. In this first single, we find a David Leo with the energy intact and the voice even more atomizing. The Retro tie suit is to impress us or make us laugh, or both. Ironically, David gets pose as a pop preacher. He changed, his texts too. Behind the musical orientation, there is a real philosophy. Is it because his glasses enlarge his eyes and the absurdities of the world?

sting at this point? He has no choice anyway: two questions must be answered little guys he is today the hero. Take lessons, enjoy every second and make fun of remain because very often there is nothing else to do. The Leo Leo objector of consciences and apostle of a generalized fun attitude balances his barely subliminal messages in

T.I.N.A. (There Is No Alternative), his new single. Pop is also for popular: born under a particle name, Monsieur de Froidmont does not have the vulgarity to be snobbish. David Leo wants us to dance about his cynicism. Rebellious well behaved, showman sick of jitters for fifteen years, a preacher in perpetual doubt, he is no longer a contradiction. But when we have the gift music always ends in harmony. In the name of pop, his sons and a life drive.