“The album talks a lot about my brother Harri who died of leukemia”, Jari Perche-Heinonen ex-EV reignites the flame of rock with his project TALVI

A figure in Nantes rock, Jari Perche-Heinonen, bassist of the legendary group EV, returns to his first love, rock, with a new project called TALVI and an introspective first album, Rouge Sang. Encounter…

Everyone who is even a little interested in the Nantes rock scene knows the character. A hell of a character! Jari Perche-Heinonen is at the origin, with his brother Harri, of the group EV which shook up the music scene here and elsewhere between 1981 and 2007 with rather energetic Celtic-Finnish rock.

More than 25 years of existence, five studio albums, two live albums, hundreds of concerts in France and abroad, great fame and an intimate tragedy for Jari: the disappearance of his brother Harri following acute leukemia in 1997.

In 2007, no more Celtic-Finnish rock, no more rock itself, Jari put on the costume of Jean-Claude Crystal who proclaimed himself a specialist in dead or disappearing singers. And to perform on stage hits by Claude François, Joe Dassin, the Rubettes and other Johnny Hallyday with a spirit of joyful parody.

With Quartier Batignolles, another project, Jari has been revisiting the musette and French song since Aznavour to Piaf, via Bourvil, Brassens or even Gainsbourg.

Doing variety covers is good, bringing the musette up to date is great – and it keeps your man alive – but a little something was seriously missing from our musician who ended up launching it only a few years agoa few months now TALVI.

To find out a little more about this new project, we visited the Arpège studio in Sorinières in the Nantes area. A huge sound and crazy energy welcome us, the group multiplies the rehearsal sessions for the concerts to come. Wouldn’t it be precisely this energy and this big sound that Jari lacked? This is the first question we asked him:

“Quite…”he agrees, while claiming another expectation: “fcomposition area! The covers are very nice. I’m having fun doing Quartier Batignolles and Jean-Claude Crystal, but I wanted to create and compose…”

TALVI is five letters, a name easy to remember and a tribute to your brother…

“It’s a Finnish word that means winter. In this album, in the lyrics, I talk a lot about my brother who was the drummer of EV and my brother was born on December 21, the first day of winter . So I called it TALVI, a Finnish word, but which is easily pronounceable in French, even if we don’t understand it.

If the group has no concerts to its credit at the moment, it already has an album, called Rouge sangeleven rock tracks, very rock, with a touch of metal and some Celtic touches. In particular, we hear bombard on several songs.

“It’s a nod to EV. I discovered this music thanks to our guitarist at the time, Gweltaz, who spoke Breton and that had a big impact on me. In EV’s albums, we had a lot of guests from the traditional world. I also wanted to include some in songs that are not Celtic, but we can very well mix bombarde with rock pieces.

From Finnish to French: a new signature

Unlike EV’s repertoire, mainly sung in Breton and Finnish, TALVI gives a large place to lyrics in French with strong themes such as death, separation, absence… Jari tells us about the title Where are you going?

“The album talks a lot about my brother Harri who died of leukemia in ’97. And ‘Where are you going?’… Where do you go once you’re dead? Where are we going? Is he there? A few days after his death, I remember, it’s as if I saw him passing through the garden… It’s about that, about the image of missing people who are. still there, who are undoubtedly coming to say goodbye to us”.

Only one song on the album is not in French. It is about Sang which brings us once again to this deceased brother by declining the title word in several languages. A new concept?

“I had that word in mind a lot. And then, I said it in Finnish, verta, in French, in Breton, I thought it would be fun to say it in other languages ​​too. Listen, I don’t know if I created a concept, but I found it nice in this song. “The international side…”.

In terms of influences, Jari has remained on his path…

“It’s going to be, I think, the same influences as when I was 18 or 20. I really liked the Beatles and the Stones. And then, a lot of new wave, rock, metal too. There you go, roughly speaking, to put it simply, I listened to a lot of stuff like Depeche Mode, Cure, and more cutting-edge stuff like Opposition, Echo & The Bunnymen, Lotus Eaters…”

Since we are still in a period of wisheswe asked him what we should wish him for 2025…

“Concerts, concerts, concerts. Reuniting with the public, also rediscovering the old ones who followed us at the time of EV, with whom I am still in contact. We rehearse for that, precisely, with my little champions, Mathieu on guitar, Ludo also on guitar, Pierre-Yves on drums”.

While waiting to find them on stage, the album Rouge sang is already available for purchase on Jari’s Facebook account but also for download on BandCamp and soon on the usual streaming platforms.

These are good times. You feel like the Beatles.

On the CD cover as well as in the pages of the booklet, designed by Anne Jourdain, “a long-time friend,” Jari tells us, EV fans will find a familiar silhouette…

“On the very first 45s and the first EV posters from the 80s, we had a small logo, a character seen from behind with an anorak, a pair of binoculars, an adventurer, an explorer. And I I always liked this logo which was very new wave, very mysterious. We adapted this character to update it a little, to give it a post-apocalyptic side, more current. years EV”.

Precisely, these EV years, what is THE memory that he definitely keeps with him?

“It’s still trips abroad, even if we don’t play in stadiums. But playing abroad is still something. Well, the neighboring countries, Belgium, Switzerland, but we also went to Finland, Hungary, often to Wales. So, it’s good times. You feel like the Beatles.

More information on TALVI here

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