Serge Teyssot-Gay

Born in Saint-Étienne in 1963 and settling at a young age in Bordeaux, Serge Teyssot-Gay developed a guitar style marked by tense rock, noise textures and improvisation, with a constant interest in intersections between music, poetry and the stage. A co‑founder of Noir Désir, active in the band from 1980 to 2010, he played a central role in the musical writing while from the 1990s also pursuing a parallel solo path with Silence radio (1996) and On croit qu’on en est sorti (2000). His work later expanded towards more experimental forms: the duo Interzone with Syrian oud player Khaled Aljaramani, documented notably by Interzone (2005), Deuxième Jour (2006), Waiting for Spring (2013), Kan Ya Ma Kan (2019) and Waslat (2024), sets electric guitar, modal music and improvisation in dialogue. With Zone Libre, created with Marc Sens and Cyril Bilbeaud, Serge Teyssot-Gay explores a dry, rhythmic free rock, often in contact with rap and spoken word, as on L’Angle mort (2009), Les Contes du chaos (2011) or Zone libre polyurbaine (2015). He has also carried out projects with Lydie Salvayre, Joëlle Léandre, Carol Robinson, Mike Ladd, Marc Nammour, Paul Bloas and Gaspar Claus in formats ranging from instrumental duos to ciné-concerts and text-music performances.