Dear Friends,

First of all, as promised, here’s the video shot and edited by Marie XXme from our concert at Café de la Danse on the 13th of January.

We’re currently booking this project for 2012-2013, so if you’re interested in booking us to play the cinema-concert “Berlin, Die Symphonie der Großtadt”, please contact us HERE. More information about this project can be found the CINEMA-CONCERT page.

Here are the usual links to favorite social networking pages:

FACEBOOK
We’ve got a band page on Facebook. Just click “Like” to join us.

Follow @weinsistband
TWITTER
You can follow us on Twitter, too.

…and finally: BANDCAMP
We now have a Bandcamp page allowing you to listen to our discography in high-quality. Tracks can be purchased for download individually (1€ each!) or albums can be bought in digital or CD format directly from the Bandcamp website using Paypal.

THREE NEW SONGS + TRIO CONCERTS IN 2012

We’ve just finished recording three new tracks for our next album at Studio Nibiru. We’ll be posting one soon for special preview.

New concerts for 2012 will be announced very soon and you’ll find them here on this site. We’ll be performing all new material as a trio.

More news coming soon, so stay tuned…

Hello everyone,
Welcome the new version of our website! You will find herein all sorts of information about the band since its conception in 1995. This site will be updated regularly – however, you will also find links to some social networking sites which you may or may not use. On the music page you can listen to a selection of tracks extracted from our last 4 albums, but check back because the tracks available for listening will change from time to time. All of our concerts will be announced first on this website.

For the launch of this new website and until the 29th of February all albums are on sale for 9€ each on the webshop.

Stay tuned and see you soon in a venue near you…

Thanks to everyone who came to the cinema-concert, you were numerous and enthousiastic. We’d like to thank Filiamotsa for sharing the stage and also Cyril and Virginie for their support. We won’t forget Romain and Thibaut for light, video and sound. Marie XXme shot some images during soundcheck and the show, it’ll soon be online, stay tuned.

Hello everyone,

WE INSIST! will soon play the live soundtrack written for Walther Ruttmann’s film: "Berlin, die Sinfonie der Grosstadt", a silent portrait of Berlin in 1927. The show was premiered in Agen (Le Florida) last year and was toured around Germany in February 2011.

Friday January 13th 2012, 8:00 p.m.

at LE CAFE DE LA DANSE (Paris)
5, passage Louis-Philippe, 75011 Paris

Here’s a few video excerpts:

It’s also time for you to know that WE INSIST! is now a trio:
Etienne Gaillochet: lead vocals, drums
Julien Allanic: bass, guitar, vocals
Eric Martin: guitar, vocals

We have been working on new songs that will soon be played live and will lead us to a new album.
Stay tuned…

The music we’ve written for “Berlin, die Sinfonie der Großtadt” is influenced by the rhythm of the editing. It plays with pace and create surprising effects that amplify the subtle drama of the documentary.
Most of the music is instrumental but there are a few songs, too. It is very contrasted, with huge dynamics, it moves from tense acoustic parts to sharp, violent attacks and riffs with the electric pressure that those who already know the band live are familiar with.
Our soundtrack increases the time difference between music and image, giving the viewer a subjective historical aspect of the film.

This avant-garde film is constructed on a classical scheme of time and space. Five acts within one day: 1927, Berlin, Weimar republic, two years before the Great Depression, Nazism and war.
Act I : 5am to the clock-in of factory workers.
Act II : The awakening of the streets until the opening of the administrations.
Act III : Street, shops, mongers, social disparities, union and political action, and an evocation of power.
Act IV : Lunch break and vacation time.
Act V : Entertainment and night life.

All aspects of city-life are entered upon, from underground to the sky, from the slums of town to the nobility, the bourgeoisie, the ruling class, crowds, solitude, daylight and darkness. Throughout the film transport, communication and industrialisation, are ubiquitous. While the director’s overall concept tends to be only aesthetic, there are some non-narrative commentaries at critical points in the film.
To see such a close portrait of the Berlin metropolis, before the war and its destruction, is of immense documentary interest. The filming took place for more than a year, and the editing of these “hypersensitive” images is experimental, witty, very technical and varied, it announces the analogue style of Dziga Vertov’s “The Man with a Movie Camera” that was released two years later in 1929.

The music we composed for this film will certainly be the basis of the material we’ll use for our next album. In the meantime, here’s a teaser.

We plan on a tour in February 2011 in Germany and Austria, so stay tuned…

Since our last gig at Le Triton when Julien Divisia left the band, we’ve been working hard on new compositions. All of them have been arranged and are now ready to be performed on the silent-movie: “Berlin, die Sinfonie der Großtadt”. The première will take place at a great venue: Le Florida in the south-west of France in Agen, on November 27th.

We are now finishing the arrangements and beginning the final rehearsals. We’re already very familiar with the editing of the film and the structure of the music. Most of this live-soundtrack is instrumental but there are a few songs, too. It’s very contrasted, with huge dynamics, we’ll move from tense acoustic parts to sharp, violent attacks and riffs with the electric pressure that those who already know the band live are familiar with.

It’s been a long time without any news. Lately we’ve been touring very little in France. Concentrating on new things and making decisions. We are now proud to announce a new project. New music to come. Several times in the past we were offered silent movie projects, but we had too much to do: writing new material for the next album, touring, etc… This time we’ve chosen project in a style that is totally new for us. We will write music for Walther Ruttmann‘s movie : “Berlin, die Sinfonie der Großstadt” which was filmed in 1927, and we’ll perform live alongside the projected film.

Since we’ve travelled Germany we’ve had to look at the architecture and the scars left by a painful history, that is still very present through landscape, and also in the fantastic sense of humour of our east German friends.

Anchored in the beautiful and thriving period of the Weimar Republic in Berlin when new forms of
art flourished all over the country before the rise and fall of the Third Reich. Owing to its evocative power, despite its age and largely because of the backdrop, this “Symphony of a Big City” was a shock to the German public when released. With “Berlin, die Sinfonie der Großstadt” Ruttman made his first movie with representational imagery after his abstract movies Opus I-IV. He explained his change of heart as not only a break from but a continuity with his earlier absolute films, wanting to reach a larger audience. Coincidentally, We will intend to reach a large audience while we’ll take a short break from songwriting. We Insist!’s aim for this project is to add to the modernism of this 1927 work by creating modern instrumental music with a focus mainly on rhythm and tone-colour.

We also have to announce that our good freind Julien Divisia has decided to stop playing with We Insist! Yes we had to take it all in one stride. We’ve decided that the band will not die. And we’ll continue on with the 4 of us. This movie project will be a good start for this new We Insist! metamorphisis. Before that we’ll play a show on the 12th of June at Le Triton were it all ” almost ” started. For this big occasion Cyrille Méchin, another We Insist ! war veteran, will be playing with us. There will be the 6 of us for this show and then 4 donuts…

The plans for now are, playing the Berlin project at the Florida a great venue in Agen on the 27th of November and touring Germany in February 2011.

Here we are: “The Babel Inside Was Terrible” our fifth album is now out and everywhere, distributed by Southern Record Distribution. We have been reading with attention the numerous reviews that we’ve found on the internet. We did our release party in Paris at La Maroquinerie and we’ll now hit the road to defend our music tooth and nail. We’d like to thank the support some of you have already shown us by buying the record on this website, and of course through Exile On Mainstream and record stores as well.

We’re eager to be back in some of the venues we already know and like, in Germany, and to meet some of our friends there again. Some others are supposedly marvellous, we’ll check it out. Looking forward to see and hear the bands with who we’ll share the stages here and there… In case some of you might not know, we’re looking for help with booking in almost all Europe except Germany. Over seas we’ve had good support and reviews but we’ve never had the chance yet to tour… And in France some venues get in contact with us, directly through Orienté Bancal Production and we thank them very much but we’re still looking for a booking agent…

Julien Allanic not only can play the bass but also did under very much pressure a beautiful t-shirt for this new album that will be for sale on this web-site soon.

We have plans for the future but the first step now is to play LIVE, come to see us…