Charlotte Gainsbourg back to music

French pop and film star Charlotte Gainsbourg on Friday returned to music with a dreamy electronic track co-written by one half of Daft Punk.

"Rest," accompanied by a surrealist video that marks Gainsbourg's debut as a director, is the first track off an album of the same name that also features Paul McCartney.

Led by a gentle keyboard melody over a funky but understated bass, the title track shows the influence of its co-writer Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo, part of robot-clad French house masters Daft Punk.

The daughter of legendary chanteur Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin, Charlotte Gainsbourg returns to her distinctively breathy, coquettish voice as she recites the rhyming chorus in French that translates as: "Please stay with me / Do not let me forget you."

The album "Rest," which will come out on November 17 with tracks both in English and French, also features a song written by Paul McCartney entitled "Songbird in a Cage."

She revealed little about the track, although the title is similar to "Blackbird," a classic Beatles tune on which McCartney addressed US race relations.

The bulk of "Rest" she recorded with SebastiAn, the French producer best known for his work with the experimental R&B star Frank Ocean.

Gainsbourg released a video for "Rest" on Apple Music which depicts a slide-show of loosely connected images including lovers in bed, a caged dog, elderly women dancing cheek-to-cheek, and a boy lifting into the sky on a string of balloons.

Gainsbourg said that she initially wanted the video to be shot by Lars von Trier, the polemical Danish director who has cast her in a series of films, most recently the erotic thriller "Nymphomaniac."

She said that von Trier encouraged her to direct the video herself, giving her "the first push I longed for."

"Up to me to deliver my personality in either the archive footage I was choosing or the new images I filmed. Trying to create a repetitive language through this musical loop," she said in a statement.

"Thanks to this first step into directing, I was able to take possession of my own imagery," she said.

Gainsbourg -- who made her musical debut at age 12 in the controversial song "Lemon Incest" with her father -- has long worked closely with well-known artists.

Her last album of new work, 2009's "IRM," was co-written with Los Angeles alternative rock icon Beck.

Source: AFP