6 Music's Tour de France: Who's in our musical peloton?

By Paul Stokes

As the world's greatest bike race approaches its conclusion, we celebrate some of the host country’s greatest music makers.

This year's Tour de France started in Düsseldorf, where Kraftwerk pulled focus with a gig and by designing a bike for German rider Tony Martin (although in the event Wales' Geraint Thomas won the opening stage, so 1-0 to the Manic Street Preachers). To readdress the balance we’ve delved into our archives and created a musical peloton containing some of France's greatest musicians.

There are nine riders in a tour cycling team, so here are nine acts with nine clips worthy of the yellow jersey.

You can follow all the race action live on BBC Radio 5 Live and via BBC Sport.

And there'll be a further celebration of French music on Now Playing @6Music, live Sunday 23 July, 6-8pm, and on-demand via the 6 Music website for the following 30 days.

Since bonding over being the only school boys in 90s Versailles (the French town outside Paris, not the BBC Two drama) to know who Pixies were, Phoenix have been together for most of their adult lives. To keep things fresh, the group's philosophy is to make each album as different from the last one as possible. This versatility has not only produced an array of records influenced by everyone from D'Angelo to Steve Reich, but they've even served as a backing band for fellow countrymen Air.

Their latest album Ti Amo has fused Giorgio Moroder-esque synths and vintage Italian pop onto Phoenix’s DNA, as much like the Tour itself the band provide a French stage for the world’s best.

Watch below to see them playing the title track live in session.

• More from Phoenix on BBC Music

This band can match most modern cycling teams with their truly international nature. Frontman Frànçois Marry was born in Saintes and studied in La Rochelle (a town anyone who did GCSE French using the Tricolore textbooks will know well) on France’s west coast, before relocating to Bristol, and then moving on to Brussels.

Musically, it’s also a heady mix including British indie (Marry was a touring musician for Camera Obscura), French rhymes and African rhythms. Yet all these elements click into gear, with their latest album Solid Mirage happily merging jangly guitars and Afrobeats. Listen to their recent session for 6 Music to see why Frànçois is the King Of The Mountains.

• More from François & the Atlas Mountains on BBC Music

While boyhood friends Phoenix loved American alt-rock, Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo and Thomas Bangalter bonded over synthesizers. Versailles' other band (there were apparently regular kickabouts involving the future of French music) didn’t get off to a winning start as their first group, Darlin', was dismissed by defunct British music paper Melody Maker as sounding like "a daft punky thrash"… but that gave them an idea.

Since then the pair have continually redefined digital and electronic music, pushing technology to its limits on records like Discovery and Homework, while on Random Access Memories they built a 21st century dance album using the same techniques once employed on Frank Sinatra records. They’ve also turned themselves into two anonymous robot characters in the process, which is pretty cool, although Lauren Laverne did get some human contact when she interviewed them in 2013.

• More from Daft Punk on BBC Music

Though formed and based in London, Savages are spearheaded by dynamism and chic of French singer Jehnny Beth. Real name Camille Berthomier, her artistic life started in acting before she fronted duo John & Jehn. However, it's with Savages that’s she found her true calling, creating two enthralling albums and delivering a series of explosive live performances, as you can see from the band’s set at the BBC 6 Music Festival in 2016.

• More from Savages on BBC Music

If Daft Punk represent the clean, robotic lines of French dance music, then Justice are its dark underbelly. Also a duo, Gaspard Augé and Xavier de Rosnay are leather clad, unshaven disco knights, creating gritty bangers with the sweaty swagger of a rock band. Marrying France’s love of euphoric house with the classic cigarette-smoking image of its cool crooners (see Serge Gainsbourg below), they create truly decadent dance as this track from their 2017 Glastonbury Festival set demonstrates.

• More from Justice on BBC Music

Nantes native Héloïse Letissier (Christine), has combined the guile and style of her French heritage with the outrageous showmanship she witnessed while spending time amongst the stars of London’s drag scene (the Queens). Terming the results “freakpop”, her 2014 debut album Chaleur Humaine became a slow burn, global hit.

Along with this sensuous cocktail, the record also saw Letissier pay hommage to two of her fellow countrymen. Paradis Perdus is a cover of a Jean Michel Jarre and French singer-songwriter Christophe's 1974 collaboration – while she added a twist of Kanye West by working in lyrics from Heartless.

A second “creepy and sexy” album is promised, although that feeling already informs her stylised live shows, as these highlights from Christine And The Queens’ 2016 Glastonbury set show.

• More from Christine and the Queens on BBC Music

Conjuring into existence a series of audio worlds to explore, there was something both psychedelic yet playful about Melody’s Echo Chamber’s 2012 self-titled debut. The project of Puyricard-born Melody Prochet, she collaborated with Tame Impala’s Kevin Parker on the record, who helped to tease out a series of dreamy and intoxicating soundscapes.

A follow-up from Melody was expected this year, but last month her family announced she had been involved in an unspecified accident that will require surgery and months of recuperation. We wish her a full recovery, so for now celebrate her music with the session she played for Lauren Laverne in 2012.

• More from Melody's Echo Chamber on BBC Music

Initially a duo and originally from Antibes on the Mediterranean cost, there was always a clear fascination with American culture around producer Anthony Gonzalez’s work, so it should be no surprise he went it alone and ended-up in Los Angeles. Film is clearly a key influence in the static-drenched soundtracks M83 create, but it is the strong tradition of French cinema as much as Hollywood endings that informs the music. Indeed, it’s when Gonzalez’s Californian surroundings lap against his Franco roots that M83 best work happens, with recent albums Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming and Junk proving to be both big and epic, yet intriguingly whimsical records.

Watch highlights from M83’s 2016 Glastonbury set to get the picture.

• More from M83 on BBC Music

“All of my generation spent our teenage years listening to Serge,” Phoenix’s Christian Mazzalai recently told Q when discussing Gainsbourg’s influence over modern French music. The snare sound on Requiem Pour Un Con and the unhinged whoops on Bonnie And Clyde ensure he’s left a strong mark on its production; while he pointed the way song-wise, darting between effortlessly cool tracks and pop controversy – with Je t'aime and his reimagining of the French National anthem as reggae track Aux Arems Et Cætera challenging the norms.

In addition, the wordplay of his lyrics is so good it even shines out via a cut’n’paste online translator (if you can’t understand French). Even though Serge passed away in 1991, he’s still the leader of the pack.

Listen to Jane Birkin talking to Mark Radcliffe and Stuart Maconie about the influence of her former partner and artistic foil.

• More from Serge Gainsbourg on BBC Music

One of the unique features of international cycling is that many of the riders who take part in the Tour de France have no hope of winning… ever. They’re called domestiques, and their job is to shepherd the genuine contenders up hills, fetch them water bottles and generally protect them. Well our musical peloton are in luck, you can’t get more domesticated than 6 Music's Shaun Keaveny and Gideon Coe - the latter has even has made the ultimate bike related playlist - although we don’t think tandems are allowed on Le Tour…