What inspired you to first start making music? And how did you come to be in your current incarnation? Or if you prefer, a brief bio about you.
I make music since I was 15 and I now am 39 years old, I was especially
guitarist, vocalist or bassist in metal bands but I am very eclectic and listen to a lot of things.
I wanted to do something more accessible and about 2 years ago I did a synthwave project under my own name. But in the end the basic synthwave bored me and I wanted to replace the 80s synthpop by something more rock with contributions of indie, coldwave, post punk, shoegaze influences.
Provide us with some info about your latest release…
The album was composed in little less than a year, it consists of 10 tracks, it’s a mix of synthwave, post rock, new wave, cold wave,… exclusively recorded with hardware synthetizers, Gretsch guitar with delay pedal and vocoder. It will be released on Blackjack Illuminist Records.
Which ones would you consider your main influences both music-wise & non-music-wise?
For musical influences I’ll give you some names to get an idea:
Depeche Mode, Ultravox, The Sound, Roxy Music, A Flock Of Seagulls, Spear Of Destiny, Tangerine Dream, Slowdive, Billy Idol, John Carpenter or Mark Isham’s film scores in the 80s but also more recent stuff like M83, Carpenter Brut or Survive.
For non musical influences I was inspired a lot by the culture of my region, Lorraine in France. All titles are references of rural and mysterious folklore, legendary creatures from regional popular beliefs, old proverbs and popular expressions of regional language.
In what way does your sound differ from the rest genre-related artists/bands and why should we listen to your music? In other words, how would you describe your sound?
In synthwave cliché you can easily imagine a sunset with a guy listening to Samantha Fox in his DeLorean, personally it would be rather an old Peugeot 205 crossing a forest in the middle of the night with Bauhaus in the car stereo.
Please name your 3 desert islands albums, movies & books…
Favorites albums :
Depeche Mode « Songs of Faith And Devotion »
Laibach « Nato »
The Sound « In The Hothouse »
Favorites films :
Pan’s Labyrinth
Neverending Story
The Sixth Sense
Favorites books :
Hellboy comics of Mike Mignola, for a special collection I would say
“The Storm and the Fury”.
The First Temple, Göbekli Tepe of Klaus Schmidt
Shamans of Prehistory of Jean Clottes / David Lewis-Williams
Do you prefer studio or performing live and why?
I think I prefer the studio, I really like the work of composition and sound research with my synthesizers.
Is there any funny-unique story you would like to share with us, always in relation to your music ‘career’?
Twenty years ago, paper fanzines were still prevalent, a guy had interviewed my first band. When I received my copy, in the beginning the zine was correct but in the middle the guy explains that his typewriter broke and he finished the zine with his handwriting which was very dirty.
Which track of your own would you point out as the most unique and why?
I would say the title “Le Champ Des Morts”. It was the first song I composed but I was not satisfied in the beginning. After that I wrote other songs with the contribution of rock guitars and the vocoder. I added these new elements to the tracks and suddenly it really took shape.
Would you like to share with our readers your future plans?
I’m working on a new songs for Feu Follet and an album from my other band “Hercynia Silva”, it’s dark rock metal and it will be released in August.
Free question!!! (Ask yourself a question) you wish to answer and haven’t been given the opportunity…
Probably a technical question about synthesizers where I could talk about using an LFO with a clock multiplier in an FM input.
Curated by: Christos Doukakis
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