Artist

Indochine

Paris, France • Formed 1981

Indochine is a music group from Paris, France, active since 1981. Their discography on Gatefold includes 24 records.

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1981

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Biography

Indochine (French for "Indochina") was formed in May 1981 in Paris, France by Nicola Sirkis and Dominique Nicolas. It took them a few months to write their first songs. They soon took on Dimitri Bodianski, the cousin of one of Nicola’s friends. Very soon, Stephane Sirkis, Nicola's brother got involved in the band and composed most of their hits in which Nicola always took the leading vocals. They gave their first concert at "Le Rose bonbon", a café in Paris on 29 September 1981.

The Arc of Indochine

The pivots — what forced Indochine to reinvent.

The New Wave Boom
Between 1982 and 1985, the band rode a massive wave of French synth-pop propelled by Dominik Nicolas's clean, melodic guitar lines and Dimitri Bodianski's saxophone. They weren't trying to be deep philosophers; they were writing high-energy fiction influenced by adventure novels and pulp comics. You hear it in the bright, sequenced production of '3' which turned them into stadium stars across Europe and even Peru of all places. It was the peak of their pop-purity phase before the internal friction started to rot the foundations.
The Desert Years
By the mid-90s, the band was effectively a ghost ship navigating a hostile French press that favored 'authentic' rock and burgeoning hip-hop. Dominik's departure left a massive hole in the songwriting, resulting in the Un jour dans notre vie era where the hooks felt desperate and the production lacked a clear identity. They were playing half-empty rooms and struggling to justify their existence to a label that had moved on. It was a brutal stretch of records that felt like a band trying to remember who they were supposed to be.
The Paradigm Shift
The arrival of Olivier Gérard, known as Oli de Sat, completely rewired the band's DNA starting with the arrangements on Dancetaria. He moved them away from the tinny synths of the past toward a dense, gothic wall of sound that drew heavily from Nine Inch Nails and Placebo. This shift culminated in Paradize in 2002, a record that sold over a million copies by embracing a darker, more mature aesthetic. Nicola’s vocals finally found a home in these moody, layered compositions that traded pop whimsy for actual grit.

Influences

The Cure — Nicola has cited Seventeen Seconds as the record that made him want to start a band. You hear it in the chorused guitar textures and the specific, melancholic pop structures of their early 80s singles. It’s the foundational blueprint they never fully shook off.
David Bowie — The band famously covered 'Heroes' and Nicola frequently points to the Berlin Trilogy as his artistic north star. The shift toward a more atmospheric, art-rock sound in the late 90s mirrors Bowie’s own habit of shedding his skin to survive. Without Low, there is no Indochine.
Taxi Girl — They were the immediate French predecessors who proved that cold, synth-driven pop could actually work in a French-speaking context. Indochine took the ice-cold detachment of Daniel Darc and figured out how to make it survive in a stadium. It’s the local DNA that gave them a head start.
The Stranglers — The melodic, upfront bass lines and the prominent use of keyboards were heavily influenced by the JJ Burnel and Dave Greenfield dynamic. In the early days, you can hear that jagged, aggressive melodicism cutting through the pop sheen. They toured as a support act for them in 1981.
Patti Smith — Nicola often cites Horses as the record that taught him about the intersection of poetry and rock and roll. You hear it in his lyrical approach, which often favors surreal imagery and phonetic flow over standard narrative songwriting. It’s where the 'rock' attitude in their pop comes from.