Probably named after Monsieur and Madame Verdurin, the prominent bourgeois couple and salon hosts, from Marcel Proust’s novel In Search of Lost Time, Verdurin only released one 7″ as a band. Which is a shame.

The band formed by Olivier Roussilhe on vocals, guitar, bass and keys, Emmanuel Fillon on drums and Sophie Mercier on flute, released “Sur La Moquette” 7″ in 1997 on the French label Plastic Pancake (Plastic Pancake 003). This record had just three songs, “Sur La Moquette” on the A side and “Mademoiselle De Ponsac” and “Dans un Pouf” on the B side. The songs were recorded by Benoit Cubaynes.

Plastic Pancake of course being the label of Pierre-Antoine Delpino, someone I used to see a lot at Indietracks, back in the day…

I have to look of course who is Mademoiselle de Ponsac. There doesn’t seem to be one. There’s one de Polignac. Is there a town Ponsac then? There isn’t. there exists an ancient medieval town and commune in the Haute-Vienne department called Châteauponsac which historically was called Ponsac-la-Montagne. Could that be?

We also know that Olivier was previously in a band called Lol that reeleased an EP in 1994 called “Gombrowicz EP”. Would love to hear this one. The other two members don’t seem to have any other bands listed on Discogs.

On the blog there is one mention of Olivier, on the interview I did with Fabien Garcia about his old band Caramel. He mentions Olivier recorded their first demo.

I find a blog post from 2024 on the blog Haar Brut. Here the cover art is discussed, if it is a screen capture of Olivier Assayas’ film Irma Vep. That Jean-Pierre Léaud and maybe Maggie Cheung are pictured.

We also learn that the band hailed from Toulouse. How cool. I really liked this city when I visited it last year.

And that’s really all I could find about them. Anyone remembers them? Are there more songs recorded? Did they play live much? Who’d know!

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Listen
Verdurin – Sur la Moquette