Album de la Semaine : True Widow - Avvolgere

True Widow
Avvolgere

Interview de True Widow, par Sep Gohardani de Soundsphere Magazine

Soundsphere Magazine: What can you tell me about the band’s roots? How did you get together?
Tim Starks: Dan [Phillips, guitarist and vocalist] and I have known each other for a really long time and tinkered with music off and on but he always had other projects going on. After a while he found himself without a current project and he had this batch of songs so we’d just get together when we weren’t working and jam on his songs. Then we wanted to find a bass player and wanted to hear a girl’s voice on some of the songs so some people recommended Nicole [Estill, bassist and vocalist] to us and we went and saw her old band play. We were in to it and invited her to come over and from there everything just kinda clicked.
We were still just doing that on our downtime really so it was more of a hobby, nobody really thought much about it other than just getting together and making some noise.

SM: How do you view your evolution as a band since the early days? Would you say your latest album ‘Circumambulation’ is more compact?
TS: Yeah, the third album’s more stripped down I would say. You know, the first and second albums were double LPs and the latest is a single LP, but we don’t really have a gameplan as far as that goes, we just kinda wing it. I would say the main difference now is just that we write more on the road because we tour a lot but for the most part it’s the same. Whenever we had the day off from work we’d get together and hang out and now because we do more band stuff in general there’ll be times when we just get together and hang out and don’t actually do anything musical.

The cover of the band’s latest album ‘Circumambulation’

SM: Did you want to be a drummer in a band before the band started, or did it all just come about?
TS: I never really had any aspirations to play drums, man. Dan was auditioning a few different drummers but we had all of our gear in our warehouse so we shared our jam space together which meant I was hearing it just from being at home. I knew he was getting frustrated because nothing was working out, and then one day he was like “why don’t you try?”
I was musical before that, I’d played other instruments before but it’s been a lot of fun, I’ve really taken to it I think. I enjoy it just as much as any instrument I play now.

SM: Awesome. Would you say the band has any particular influences in terms of what you listen to and what you decide to bring out?
TS: Influences have always been weird because the three of us are pretty different about our personal tastes. We’re three decisively individual individuals. There’s a few things that we share in common and those tend to open doors to other things but for the most part we try and build off of what we’ve done before, not repeat that but try and stay creative in that same vein you know. It’s more about looking back to our work in the past and building that than looking for new inspiration. Sometimes we’ll hear stuff and everyone will get stoked on it or whatever but that doesn’t necessarily cross in to what we’re trying to accomplish.

SM: Was it always the case that you were going to be a band in your particular genre or was it just that sound that you liked the most and you decided as a group would be the one that worked?
TS: The latter, I think. We had an idea of sounds, not a full band sound but like a guitar sound or a floor tom sound. We had these specific ideas but we also wanted to try and merge sounds together that might not necessarily be an instant fit and I think that’s something that still keeps us on our toes. We set up a lot of barricades for ourselves of stuff that we just weren’t gonna do as opposed to what we were gonna do. That’s kinda how we went forward in getting to where we got in the end.

SM: We saw that you toured with Kurt Vile at the end of last year, how was that experience?
TS: Yeah, we came here to this venue actually in December. It was awesome, man. We met him several years ago and we ended up doing a few US tours with him. After a while he asked us whether we were interested in going out again which came just after we had just done a whole US tour with Chelsea Wolfe and we sorta wanted to tour other places, so when Kurt came to us and told us he was going out to Europe so we were just like “alright, we’re in!” So we came over and did that, and even though we had already been working on booking a tour for ourselves the Kurt deal ended up being cool because Kurt allowed us to play some pretty incredible venues, some massive places that we haven’t played on our own and we just had a lot of fun with him.
It definitely didn’t feel like we were as far from home as when we had come over here ourselves when it was pretty daunting but he made us feel more at home out here. I imagine we’ll probably do more shows with Kurt, it’s a good fit and we all like each other a lot. Tours in the past have always gone well, so there’s no reason why not.

SM: You mentioned earlier that you wanted a female voice to go with Dan’s on the records. Was that because some songs were written that way or was it a more aesthetic choice on your behalf?
TS: We’d heard other bands and liked that they had that dynamic, so we wanted to see if it worked for us. As soon as we got Nicole hooked in then it became a deal where Dan was writing specifically for her. She’s really come on in her own right in the last couple of records and our eyes opened up to all these different possibilities and what we could do with it. We just try and get her up there as much as possible, you know. She’s got a great voice.

SM: She definitely does. How does the song-writing process work? Do you normally go in to the studio with something or are some of the songs more improvised while you’re in there?
TS: We don’t do much writing in the studio since just from a financial end it doesn’t make much sense. It’s better for us to get in and get out so we’ll gather up songs until we feel like we have enough to go in and then try and do a session like that. If we have time we might demo ourselves and we have in the past, but with the newest record that we did we didn’t do any of the stuff ourselves and just went straight in there and recorded everything which was pretty cool.
After that we didn’t know if we even wanted to demo the stuff anymore since the record worked out alright, and also because we used to record ourselves on a little ADAT or something so we could work out what we really liked for when we went in to the studio, but if you’ve fallen in love with a demo version of a song it’s really hard to recreate that infatuation in the studio. It’s part of our roots and maybe we would like to go back and make an EP ourselves to recapture some of that since we’ve realised we might actually sound a lot better than we thought we did just jamming! A little three-song thing in between records maybe.


SM: That would be really cool. Does being from Texas have any bearing on your music?
TS: The pace of it maybe. It’s a pretty laid back place.

SM: The music scene we can think of there are bands like The Black Angels or And You Will Know Us By The Trail of Dead and both do have that laid back sound.
TS: We’ve supported Trail of Dead and they were a huge band for me, some of their early records are some of my favourites. For me there is definitely a lineage of Texas music that I take pride in. Once we started getting invitations to go out and play and we were representing Texas it was really cool. A lot of bands in Texas only exist in Texas because it’s a really big place and you can tour it and do pretty well, so you really need an extra leg to get up and out of there. We were fortunate to get that break and we kinda just ran with it.
In terms of the sound, we’ve got a few music videos for our songs that were filmed in Sweden, and people have come to associate us with the cold and these great expanses so maybe us being from Texas doesn’t make sense to them, but Texas has got those sorts of places too. It may be deserts but it’s still a lot of barren land and that feeling of isolation is still there. There are no lyrics that reference Texas specifically or anything though, it’s mainly just a sort of mood influence.

SM: Is there any particular thing about this European tour that you’re looking forward to?
TS: We’re going to a lot of new places like the Czech Republic and Moscow, so I’m really looking forward to all the new experiences and the chance to play to more people. It’s gonna be really cool.

SM: And finally, have you been listening to anyone in particular that you’d like to recommend?
TS: Well, there’s the local Leeds guys Eagulls who I really like and then there’s Windhand who are this super heavy, doomy band. Their records are excellent and even though we like to give our ears a break from rock music and maybe listen to comedy or something on the road we all think their latest record is excellent. If we were heavier and doomier I’d want us to sound like them. They’re just badass, man, you listen to their stuff and you’re like “oh my God this is incredible!”

Line Up :
Dan Phillips
Nicole Estill
Timothy "Slim" Starks

Label :
Relapse Records

Tracklist :
01 – Back Shredder
02 – Theurgist
03 – F W T S L T M
04 – The Trapper And The Trapped
05 – O O T P V
06 – Entheogen
07 – To All That He Elong
08 – Sante
09 – Grey Erasure
10 – What Finds Me

Album de la Semaine : Emma Ruth Rundle - Marked For Death

Emma Ruth Rundle
Marked For Death

Interview d'Emma Ruth Rundle, par Sargent House

TSH: Firstly congratulations on such a profound album with ‘Some Heavy Ocean’… Though it was exhausting emotionally and marked by personal struggles, how cathartic and compelling was it to express your convictions and state of mind with this collection of enthralling songs?

Emma: Thank you very much. Writing and recording “Some Heavy Ocean” was a trying, yet cathartic experience. As the songs became more fleshed out and instruments other than guitar were added I certainly felt something like a sense of relief.

TSH: It’s been mentioned that you literally moved into Sargent House’s home studio in Echo Park, sequestering yourself for two months writing and recording, what was the level of focus like during this period?

Emma: This is true - I stayed locked away down there for a bit and woke up each day to work. It was an intense time and the focus was there but that’s not to say there was no experimentation. Each song required its own approach and arrangement. Because there was no deadline and I was working out of the home studio, there was a lot of leeway in how and when we did things. For instance, if I felt that recording vocals for a certain song would be done best at night in an upstairs room, we could wait the day and prepare for that. Recording this record was unlike any other recording experience I’ve had.

Album de la Semaine : Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - Skeleton Tree

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
Skeleton Tree

Interview de Nick Cave, par Les Inrocks

Ton album est plutôt crépusculaire : le genre de disque d’un homme revenu assagi de tous les excès…
Nick Cave – Un album de vieux sage ? Je ne sais pas comment ça a pu arriver (rires)… Je n’avais aucune intention de faire un disque calme, il s’est juste imposé de lui-même. C’est un album très français : il a été enregistré le ventre plein de nourriture et de vins locaux au studio la Fabrique, en Provence. Le lieu a vraiment eu une forte influence sur l’ambiance du disque, son atmosphère m’a submergé… Après une semaine de vie commune dans ce cadre, nous nous sommes assis pour écouter les premières prises et nous n’en revenions pas : nous n’avions aucune intention musicale en arrivant, mais là, clairement, le lieu avait décidé pour nous. Nous n’avions encore jamais fait un tel disque, avec une telle cohérence, une continuité dans les textes et la musique. Jamais nous n’avions accordé une telle place au silence.
D’habitude, la tension rôdait, menaçait avant d’exploser. Là, les chansons jouent avec cette tension, la maîtrisent…
J’étais estomaqué par ce mélange de calme et de nervosité. C’est vrai, les chansons n’explosent pas mais je peux parfaitement entendre ce qu’elles seraient devenues sur n’importe quel autre de mes albums, là où elles se seraient fissurées, là où elles seraient parties dans le vacarme. Il y a une vraie impression de contrôle… Je ne sais pas si c’est de la sagesse, car ça impliquerait un côté pontifiant, évangélique. Je n’écoute jamais un album pour apprendre quelque chose, pour découvrir la sagesse : je l’écoute pour être embarqué dans un autre monde, malmené, défié… Un bon disque me fait sortir de la réalité, puis m’y raccompagne.
Depuis des années, avec Grinderman, tu joues un rock très physique, animal. Ce nouvel album en est-il l’andidote ?
Avec les Bad Seeds, nous avons toujours enchaîné des albums très différents, déroutants même. La réaction du public à ces mutations, on s’en fiche royalement : tout ce qui compte, c’est de maintenir les Bad Seeds en vie, en survie. Et l’ennui, la routine, l’absence de défis, ça nous tuerait. Mais ce qui nous sauve vraiment, c’est que nous n’habitons pas dans la même ville, qu’on ne se voit pas tous les jours (rires)… On s’assemble en cas de besoin, pour un projet précis. Le but, c’est de se mettre au service des chansons, quel que soit le danger. Chaque membre du groupe connaît son rôle, comme des agents dormants.
Quand même, les guitares sont très en retrait…
Pour une raison pratique : notre putain de guitariste, Mick Harvey, a quitté les Bad Seeds. Avec lui, nous avions toujours tendance à remplir les blancs, Mick rajoutait ses tempêtes de guitares partout (il l’imite)… On avait l’intention de le remplacer mais quand nous avons écouté les premières prises, tout cet espace entre les instruments nous a impressionnés. C’était trop beau pour être souillé par des guitares. On a juste rajouté des choeurs, notamment ceux de l’école du village. Aucun des gamins ne parlait anglais, c’était magnifique… Quand on jouait une chanson, on ne savait jamais où elle nous menait, combien de temps elle durerait… Même moi, je n’avais pas le plan de vol. C’est une façon de conserver la beauté et le danger.
Quel genre de beauté ?
Je passe ma vie à tenter de revivre des épisodes de mon enfance. Il m’est arrivé des choses qui m’ont changé (silence)… Ma notion de la beauté est très liée à ma petite enfance. Écrire, c’est ma façon de retrouver ces impressions, cette lumière.

Line Up :

Nick Cave

Thomas Wydler

Martyn P. Casey

Conway Savage

Warren Ellis

Jim Sclavunos

Ed Kuepper

Label :

Bad Seed Ltd.

Tracklist :

01 – Jesus Alone
02 – Rings of Saturn
03 – Girl in Amber
04 – Magneto
05 – Anthrocene
06 – I Need You
07 – Distant Sky
08 – Skeleton Tree

Album de la Semaine : Thee Oh Sees - A Weird Exits

Thee Oh Sees
A Weird Exits

Interview de John Dwyer, par Je ne suis pas une fille

Comment les membres de Thee Oh Sees se sont rencontrés ? 
John : On habitait tous plus ou moins dans les mêmes quartiers à San Francisco… En réalité nous jouions tous dans différents groupes avant ça, j’ai du voir chaque membre du groupe en jouer avec un autre.
Et toi tu faisais quoi avant de créer ce joli groupe ?
J’étais dans un groupe, Coachwips ça s’appelait, c’était mon dernier projet important disons. Ma vie n’a été faite que de musique depuis que je suis sorti du lycée.
La composition des morceaux se fait en groupe où c’est plutôt toi qui diriges tout ? 
Un peu des deux… Certains disques viennent entièrement de moi, d’autres du groupe entier. Le plus souvent, ils viennent me voir avec ce qu’ils ont fait de mes démos, ça peut donner les morceaux qu’on retrouve sur les albums.
Pour enregistrer autant, il faut en avoir des idées. La tournée aide à garder le rythme ? 
Tourner c’est fun c’est sûr, mais c’est avant tout du travail. La plupart des idées me viennent quand je me pose à la maison ou quand je m’installe ci et là pendant une bonne semaine pour ne faire que ça.
Floating Coffin est particulièrement étrange, presque expérimental par moments. C’est voulu ?
Et non, tout est venu naturellement… la bizarrerie est cool, j’imagine qu’on peut s’estimer chanceux que ce soit sorti de cette façon.
Et l’énergie du live, elle est venue naturellement aussi ?
(Réfléchit un peu, ndlr) Mmh… La plus grosse partie vient du public. Mais de toute manière, qui voudrait aller voir un concert qui ne serait pas un minimum excitant ?!
Touché. Quelques rituels avant de monter sur scène créer cette excitation ?
Un peu de stretch et un bon Jameson avec glace.
On a évoqué l’inspiration à l’instant, mais qu’est-ce qui t’inspire réellement ?
Tous les aspects habituels (jeu de mots en anglais avec usual suspects, ndlr) : l’amour, les conflits, l’art, la nature, la drogue… la vie !
Tu réussirais à choisir ton meilleur concert des Thee Oh Sees ?
Oh non, ce serait comme choisir entre ses propres enfants, je les aime tous. Ce n’est pas possible. Par contre il y en a eu un qui était particulièrement dur… On ouvrait pour Pavement à Central et le show était sponsorisée par Mastercard (il grimace avec humour, ndlr). C’était l’ingé son la difficulté, un vrai connard. Je commence à me dire que t’auras peut-être préféré une anecdote pour drôle ahah.
Des idées pour la suite ? 
On va tourner aux USA en octobre avec deux groupes, Blind Shake et OBN III’s. Après ça, nous allons nous poser et faire une pause pour quelques temps. J’ai maintenant envie de travailler sur de nouvelles idées.
Parlons un peu matos. C’est quoi ta guitare ? Hybride SG/Travis Bean/manche en plexy ? 
Une guitare custom, faite juste pour moi ! C’est un ami qui les fait, Kevin. Il tient une boutique en Floride qui s’appelle Electric Guitar Company, il est vraiment capable de faire quoi que ce soit… C’est fou comme j’aime cet instrument. Mais sinon cette guitare, ma copine l’appelle Sexcalibur (rires).
Tu es très attaché à ton matériel ? Certains prétendent pouvoir jouer sur n’importe quels instruments… 
Oui j’y suis vraiment très attaché. J’envie pas mal les groupes qui peuvent jouer sur n’importe quoi, moi j’essaie de faire du mieux que je peux pour sonner pareil d’un endroit à l’autre. Une grosse partie de mon job réside là-dedans, en cette consistance.
L’idée d’utiliser une Jazzmaster en basse, elle vient de qui ? 
Oh et bien de Petey (ledit bassiste, ndlr)… ce truc c’est son monstre à lui.
J’ai entendu dire que t’avais un label, Castle Face Rds et que tu le dirigeais avec des amis… 
J’adore faire le patron chez Castle Face, on tient ça avec deux amis. Principalement, on permet à des jeunes groupes de réaliser leur premier album, du moins c’est que je tente de faire. Nous sommes constamment en quête d’excitation pour nos oreilles, de trucs qui démontent. Il est possible que j’ai une vision bien différente des autres labels, sur comment ça doit marcher. Le plus important, c’est pas que les groupes nous remplissent les poches. En tout j’ai sans doute bossé avec 15 labels… sur ceux-là, seulement 3 m’ont payé. On veut changer ça pour les petits labels.

Line Up :

John Dwyer
Tim Hellman
Ryan Moutinho
Dan Rincon

Label :

Castle Face Records

Tracklist :

01 – Dead Man’s Gun
02 – Ticklish Warrior
03 – Jammed Entrance
04 – Plastic Plant
05 – Gelatinous Cube
06 – Unwrap the Fiend Pt. 2
07 – Crawl out from the Fall Out
08 – The Axis

Album de la Semaine : Muscle And Marrow - Love

Muscle And Marrow
Love

Interview de Muscle And Marrow, par Brandy Crowe de The Deli

Where are you both from?

Keith: I’m from outer Portland, essentially Beaverton. I went to Beaverton High School and college in Bloomington, Indiana. 

Kira, you’re from Oklahoma? What was it like growing up there?

Kira: I grew up in an affluent part of Oklahoma City. I went to private school my entire life, then catholic high school for one year. My big rebellion was deciding I wanted to go to a public high school to finish. There I continued to rebel in all the ways I could, i.e. reading Bukowski and drinking too much. It was a sheltered environment, but my upbringing was a bit chaotic. My mom struggled with addiction issues, and my father and I had a complicated relationship, though I’m close to both of them now. I inherited my deep love for art from my father and any artistic talent I may have from my mother, who played multiple instruments and sang. She instilled music in me from a young age, and my father, literature and a general feeling of longing, romanticism even.

I have to ask, have you ever been in a tornado? Do you miss thunderstorms? 

Kira: I have been in many, one very dangerous one, but luckily no one I have ever known has died in one. My family and friends are safe, but my thoughts are with those who weren’t as lucky. And yes I do miss thunderstorms! I love that sound while you’re falling asleep, though I was terrified of them when I was a kid. However, I was terrified of everything as a kid.

Did you always pursue music?  Why did you choose to relocate to  Portland?

Kira: Oklahoma City has come quite a long way regarding venues and avenues for young artists to grow and find community, but to sum up simply why I left, when I was growing up being an artist was not part of the consciousness there, it simply was not a possibility one considered.  I didn’t always specifically pursue music, but I always knew I wanted something else than what was being offered to me. Complacency terrifies me; or rather, my capacity for complacency terrifies me.

How did you come to call yourself Muscle & Marrow?

Kira: The phrase “Muscle and Marrow” was taken from a poem I wrote. I like to think that both the muscle and the marrow is inside myself and Keith, metaphorically speaking, instead of one of us being the marrow and one of us being the muscle. Marrow is a reference to bone, to the fragility of life, to what can be fractured, and muscle to strength and redemption. When I wrote the poem my life was in the process of completely changing, and of being put back together again. I was rebuilding the story for myself and I wanted a phrase that could hold both the break and the restoration.

You also work as a writer and editor? What are some differences and similarities between writing/editing books and the songwriting process?

Kira: I’m an editor and writer for Housefire books, a small press here in Portland, and just finished editing an ebook by John Barrios, a local writer. Primarily however my focus is very much on music currently, though I grieve having the luxury and time to write the way I used to. I love both mediums because there are things I could say in a poem I could never say in a song and vice versa, though I am trying, as I evolve, to merge those two things more and more. The song “Eager Little Mouth” has some pretty bizarre and violent images in it, which is much more like the poems I write, so that’s the direction I want to keep going. When I first started writing songs I wrote much more simplistically, lyrically speaking, and the songs were more like straightforward regret or heartbreak. Now I joke it’s more like an abstraction of general self-loathing (or fear, or isolation, or anger). I like lyrics that can dismantle you. Those are my favorite poems too, the ones where you sort of die because you surrender yourself to a different language and world.

              When I write poems or stories, I sit in front of my typewriter in my pajamas and occasionally pace around the house. When I write songs I sit with my guitar in my pajamas and occasionally pace around the house. The processes are different in the sense that my poems tend to be extremely verbose, whereas our songs tend to gravitate more towards wailing, some sort of primitive release, devoid of cognition even at times.  

Who are some of your favorite authors and musicians?

Kira: For musicians: Scout Niblett, St Vincent, Shannon Wright, Chelsea Wolfe, Mount Eerie, Liars. Some of my favorite authors are Virginia Woolf, Dorothea Lasky, David Foster Wallace, Lindsay Ruoff.

Keith: For music my current favorite musicians are Swans, Silver Mt Zion, King Dude, and Vic Chesnutt.

So, you are a couple. How did the two of you meet? It seems you didn't originally plan to play together. He was helping to produce and yet you seem to be flowing well on stage and gaining attention. You mentioned in another interview that it takes the relationship to another level?

Keith: We met in a bookstore. Things evolved organically. I went from producing and playing drums on the recordings to being a full time band member and we’re both happy with the way things turned out.

What was the recording process like for the Eager Little Mouth EP? Any plans to get anything on cassette or vinyl?

Kira: The recording process took place in my basement and they don’t necessarily reflect our current live sound anymore so we have plans to record a full length in October(ish) and hopefully yes that will be out on vinyl. 

Keith: A big part of recording music is knowing when your ideas should prevail and when the artist’s should, when to listen and when to speak. That line becomes less clearly defined when you’re working with someone with whom you have an intimate relationship so the recording process at times for me was atypical, but now that we have been working together for a significant amount of time and evolving musically we feel much more prepared to head back into the studio and much more comfortable collaborating.

What can you tell me about the plans for the future full-length?

Kira: We’re thinking around October we’ll head into the studio, after taking August and September off to finish writing some songs and prepare to record. There will be a different version of the song “Eager Little Mouth” on it, but other than that it will be all new songs. We’re fortunate to have some special guests on one song for vocals-my friend Ali of Death Songs, and Dasha who plays bass for Brainstorm. There will be some songs written on piano by Keith as well, which we’re really excited about.

Keith: We’re particularly interested in combining different textures and sounds. Instead of something linear we want contrast, droning distortion, thrashing drums with vocals that are sonically pleasing, yet lyrically those vocals can be jarring.

And you are starting a short tour soon? Where are you headed?

Kira: In July we’re going to Tacoma, Spokane, Olympia and Seattle. After we release the full length, we have  plans for a larger tour.

Your bio states M&M is "interested in the morose, the ugly, the jarring and the soft."  Can you elaborate or give examples of what is meant by that? And how it is projected into the music? There is a lot of distortion, pauses, and dark, emotional vocals.

Kira: I love sounds, and I love sounds that aren’t necessarily pretty. Just like the lyrics, I also want you to feel dismantled by some of the sounds we make. I am a woman, and I am a woman who has a “pretty” voice, but I’m also confused, lonely, angry, complex just like everyone else, so to create music that is only pretty has never resonated with me. It’s important to me to create music that communicates something more whole than that, and not to be self-aggrandizing, because I’m not saying we are succeeding in that, but that is the goal, to create sounds that are sometimes ugly, sometimes soft, sometimes jarring through heavy distortion, an emphasis on volume fluctuations, through guttural vocals. I want the music, particularly live, to be so intense, to be such a raw expression of what it is to be alive that you are almost uncomfortable. We’re trying to create another language for you, another world. I’ve always been drawn to a dark aesthetic, to something that although might sound or might be rooted in loneliness, when expressed through art, it can make some lonely person suddenly less lonely, that unifying feeling of collective isolation or sadness or anger. That is a powerful thing.

Keith: I have always been drawn to beauty tempered with the grotesque and the vulgar, and that is what we attempt to do, because that is what it feels like to be alive, and it’s what moves us. It seems intuitively to me that that is a universal thing to some extent, and all we can hope for is that some people are also moved by this expression, or even more simply, that we are succeeding in this expression. Then I suppose we can worry about whether other people are also moved by it.

Line Up :

Kira Clark (guitar, vocals)
Keith McGraw (drums, samples)

Label :

The Flenser

Tracklist :

01 – My Fear
02 – Black Hole
03 – Womb
04 – The Drooling Mouth
05 – Sacs of Teeth
06 – Bereft Body
07 – Light

Album de la Semaine : Poison Point - Motorpsychold

Poison Point
Motorpsychold

Critique de l'album, par Watchman de Nightfall

Poison Point est un projet de darkwave /synthpunk créé en janvier 2015 par l’artiste et multi-instrumentiste lyonnais Timothée Gainet. Après une première démo 3 titres, 2016 voit l’arrivée d’un premier véritable album intitulé “Motorpsychold”, sorti sous la bannière du label indépendant Third Coming Records.
Hypnotique, futuriste voire robotique sont les mots qui nous viennent d’emblée à l’esprit lorsque l’on prend la peine de se pencher sur cette œuvre atypique : véritable bande-son d’une chevauchée nocturne et urbaine en plein décor post-apocalyptique.
Sur un beat généralement soutenu, parfois frénétique, les notes acérées et galopantes de basse se frayent un passage au milieu de nappes de synthétiseurs tantôt sombres et angoissantes, tantôt mélodiques et virevoltantes. Pas de doute, l’esprit coldwave minimaliste des Grands Anciens (Joy Division, The Cure) est bien présent. De même qu’une touche noise et indus à la Killing Joke/Sonic Youth, et aussi l’influence de formations expérimentales plus récentes comme The Soft Moon, Charles de Goal ou encore Komplikations. À la façon d’un gourou, la voix froide et appuyée de Tim déclame quant à elle ses paroles au-dessus de ce maelström musical diablement cohérent et maîtrisé. On a véritablement l’impression qu’un cyborg s’est emparé de la chaire du prêtre pour prêcher à des ouailles en pleine transe, pris dans la fièvre d’une rave-party spatiale et lunaire.
Produire un premier album de qualité n’est à l’heure actuelle plus tellement chose rare. En revanche, en composer un qui, en plus de la musique vous propose de vivre une véritable expérience à la fois sonore et sensorielle relève là carrément de la performance. Marchant directement dans les pas des vétérans français de Guerre Froide, Leitmotiv ou encore Kas Product, Poison Point pourrait bien s’imposer comme la relève du mouvement coldwave/darkwave dans l’Hexagone. À suivre.

Line up :

Timothée Gainet

Label :

Third Coming Records

Tracklist :

Poison Point-Far Away

×Poison Point-Osiris Temple

×Poison Point-Horreur Boréale

×Poison Point-Drakkar Noir

×Poison Point-My Lips, Your Lips, Apocalypse

×Poison Point-Silent Heart

×Poison Point-Neue Automat

Album de la Semaine : The Kills - Ash & Ice

The Kills
Ash & Ice

Interview de The Kills, par DIY

There’s almost no other band out there with the same razor-sharp instinct of The Kills. You can play pinball-speed dot to dot with their inescapable influence. Stints in The Dead Weather with Jack White are one thing - they’ve also whizzed through brief, bizarre appearances in Hello! thanks to a certain supermodel marriage. By word association alone, The Kills are everywhere. The next few months see them visiting more or less everywhere on tour, too, and in just a few more days, they dart off Stateside to test-drive their new album on stage for the first time. Sufficiently nicotined, and sipping on strong black coffee (these things are necessary pre-noon, according to The Kills) the band have just been asked about the starting point for their fifth record, the too-close-for-comfort track ‘Siberian Nights’. Apparently, they’re not in the mood to play ball.
“It’s about Vladimir Putin,” deadpans Jamie Hince, exchanging a sideways smirk with a visibly amused Alison Mosshart. “With a homoerotic vibe. I wanted to imagine him as a tyrant that’s got a bit of time off. He’s with this man, and he just wants the warmth of a masculine body. They’re cuddling and he says ‘Look, we can get back to being tyrants tomorrow. I’ve got needs, but no-one understands. I love all these people – I even love Pussy Riot – but why don’t they love me?’” he grins. Alison tries, and quickly fails, to stifle a laugh.
“It’s a sweet, sensitive, homoerotic fantasy,” Jamie adds, embellishing further still. “Not my fantasy! [Putin’s] fantasy. I don’t know who his mate is that he wants to cuddle,” he concedes. “Probably Tony Blair.”
It’s a typical interaction between the two. Jamie will happily muse endlessly on any subject, meandering vaguely between topics. Alison, meanwhile, interjects with the odd wry comment, delivering concise summaries with killer comic timing. It’s an innate chemistry that has formed the basis for The Kills since they first paired up around the turn of the Millennium, and sixteen years on, that duality is slap-bang at the sizzling centre of their fifth record, ‘Ash & Ice’. Blazing fire meeting frosty water, black fizzing against steely white. They’re the very definition of chalk and cheese, these two, and yet together, they’re one magnet-bound whole.
“It’s kind of gross actually!” laughs Jamie, recalling the inspiration for their new album’s title. “I chucked my cigarette in a glass of ice. It’s also quite life enhancing, isn’t it?” he asks rhetorically, miming holding the two objects with gusto. “A spliff and a drink!”
‘Ash & Ice’ is a bit like The Kills in spirit, then. Like so many magical artistic duos they’re vocally fascinated by – the stained-glass loving, suited-and-booted eccentrics Gilbert and George, the shock-tactic sibling art duo Jake and Dinos Chapman, the list goes on and on – it’s a project that depends entirely on the dynamic of two opposing people, pushing for the precise same thing. “Yes,” snorts Jamie. “We’re sort of like muddy water.”
“It’s a relationship. It’s a type of relationship,” agrees Alison. “You usually gravitate towards people who have things that you don’t; that are the things that you’re not. You find the whole spectrum, that way, this feeling of completeness. With art, that’s a big thing,” she nods. “It’s really big to have that.”
Like all brilliant creative accidents, The Kills first met by fluke. Alison was over on the other side of the Atlantic on one of her usual spontaneous whims, crashing with a mate, when she heard Jamie mucking around on his guitar through the ceiling. She set out on a mission to find the owner of the strange sonic squalls, and soon afterwards, on another of her drop-of-the-hat impulses, she packed up the contents of her “shithole” flat in the States to form a then-nameless band with Jamie in London. Following their first ever gig together at London’s 12 Bar, Alison got the show’s date (14th February 2002) etched in tattoo ink on her left hand – a fairly fearless statement of commitment if ever there was one. The Kills instantly knew that what they had together was one in a billion.
“We both signed this imaginary pact of commitment, with faith that we would do the same thing,” remembers Jamie. “We would join forces for this creative thing, with double the punch.”

“No-one sends you a memo,” scoffs Alison, reflecting on the exact moment she decided to uproot her entire life and give everything to The Kills. “You can just feel it,” she expands. “I always trust myself in that respect, to the point where people might think I’m insane! I’m just like – nope, this is what we’re doing, this is what is right. You’re going to believe me eventually! Just hang on.” She beams at Jamie. “I read Led Zeppelin talking about it in an old interview,” he continues. “They said that when they played together, they just looked at each other and they just knew that it was one in a fucking billion chance. The chemistry was just like that. After reading that, I applied it to my thing, with her [Alison] and I thought, ooh,” he laughs, “it’s the same.”

Accidents frequently strike The Kills, it turns out. Prior to their second album way back in 2005 it was a broken, unusable Moog synthesiser that took them to the resulting cyclical fuzz of ‘No Wow’. With their last record ‘Blood Pressures,’ a shattered elbow on Jamie’s part led the way to a more taut, synthetic aesthetic. This time around, an apparently calamitous Jamie came a cropper yet again, and broke his finger in a fairly major way. He had to relearn an entirely new method of playing, as you do. “It’s true,” Jamie observes. “Please,” he groans theatrically, “this can’t be the theme!”

“I think that generally helps when you’re creating something,” Jamie goes on. “Stopping in your tracks and thinking ‘how am I going to do this?’. I think you can hear that in art and music, when it’s a triumph over adversity. Triumph over ability – ideas over ability – makes for great sounding records,” he nods.

Both Alison and Jamie subscribe to the idea that, while things can be helpfully nudged in the right direction, it’s impossible to force innovation. While Alison was occupied elsewhere working on the latest Dead Weather album with Jack White, Jamie booked himself a train ticket to the other side of the world. Boarding the Trans-Siberian Express, bound for the Far Eastern city of Vladivostok, his goal was a simple one. He “wanted more out of lyrics.” 6,000 lonely miles in a titchy cabin, overlooking vast expanses of isolated rural Russia is pretty ripe stomping ground for anxious, buttoned-up songwriting – you’d think, anyway. Instead, he returned from his impromptu field trip with a scribble-filled notebook of early ideas that were anything but icy and paranoid. Alison, meanwhile, rocked up at recordings with hundreds of vague blueprints - “[she] creates in explosions,” remarks Jamie. “You’ve got to drink an ocean to piss out a cupful,” he adds, paraphrasing the French realism champ Gustave Flaubert.

“I think you have to be open to receive them,” Alison picks up, referring to the creative mishaps that continually shape The Kills. “You have to be aware of when ideas strike. Sometimes it’s hard to describe. Maybe it’s an accident…” she ponders. “Or maybe it’s being in the right frame of mind.”

Born from isolation, ‘Ash & Ice’ quickly became an album about yearning for connection instead, whatever the cost. Trying to skewer the branches of a ‘Bitter Fruit’ but salivating after it all the same, trying to break a habit but caving into vice, there’s an inherent tension coursing through every shuddering piston-riff. Quiet, vulnerable pockets typically get the The Kills treatment, too; Alison growling of fucked up love and destroyed relationships through clouds of regret and cigarette smoke.

Spiky guitars find a new home on ‘Ash & Ice’, too. Though there’s that ever-characteristic spininess still colouring the likes of lead single ‘Doing It To Death’ and closer ‘Black Tar,’ the duo’s usual drum machine tenacity has morphed into something more meaty, and textured. Often, Jamie’s Hofner guitar takes over the artery-pulse instead, chugging and rattling like an unstoppable freight train. “Maybe that’s cos I lost a finger!” hoots Jamie. He might laugh it off now, but thanks to that hand injury of his, he thought it might be curtains on The Kills as they knew it – for a time, at least. “My hand did have a lot to do with it,” he adds. “I felt like I wasn’t going to play guitar again, didn’t I?” he asks, looking across to Alison. Six surgeries, and a tendon transplant later, though, he’s still shredding.

You only have to look as far as Jamie’s Putin-related tomfoolery earlier today to hazard a strong guess that he’s not really a subscriber to overthinking. But still, there’s a determination to ‘Ash & Ice’ that can only spring out of impossible obstacles. This is an album dominated by all-consuming hunger, and limitless infatuation – a blinkered pursuit of the one thing that makes you tick. Shaken off its tracks by a lust-locomotive in ‘Days of Why and How,’ and loyal to the bitter end on ‘Heart of a Dog,’ The Kills’ latest record hungers for connection to chaos. It’s a conscious mission that took the duo out of their comfortable recording bubble in Benton Harbor, Michigan, and saw them setting up studio the other side of America in alien LA.

“I liked recording in Michigan because it was like locking ourselves away and building this secret machine,” Jamie says. “But you do tend to find, while no distractions help you work harder, it’s also not really getting any outside stimuli for creativity. Songs tend to be more introspective, maybe, relying on imagination. There were a lot of stories on our last album [‘Blood Pressures’].” he concludes. “We really wanted to mix it up, invite some opportunity. We wanted a bit more chaos. We wanted to absorb that into the record.”

The Kills got their wish for mayhem, and then some. “I recall a hotbed of criminal activity,” deadpans Alison. “We were up in the mountains,” remembers Jamie, “and you’d get the coyotes coming up, and a minute later, these… what are those other things?” he asks Alison. “Racoons,” he exclaims. “Racoons, in the hot-tub!” His bandmate looks vaguely bewildered, and throughly unconvinced. “I never saw them in the hot tub…” Alison mutters.

“Well, that little fountain thing,” Jamie justifies. “Whatever that was!”

“There was that crane, too,” Alison smiles. “We had wildlife, but we also had gang members. All sorts of things, running through the yard. Constant entertainment.”

Everybody needs good neighbours

When Alison first uprooted everything to relocate across an entire ocean, she found herself a little culture-shocked by our island’s peculiar customs. Now, sixteen years later, the tables have turned. Giving life in the States a go, Jamie is permanently confused by Americans. Luckily, he’s got some friendly neighbours to help him through this difficult time.
Jamie: I’m spending more time in America. It’s a trial. I still hang out with British people there though! Miles Kane, Alex Turner, Mike from Royal Blood – they’re my neighbours.
After a two-and-a-half-month stint at their new studio in LA, The Kills found themselves with thirty-odd contending songs, and chewing at the bit to finish ‘Ash & Ice’. After dangling microphones out windows to sample whirring police helicopters, and recording ramshackle vocal takes while crouched on the bathroom tiles, Alison and Jamie headed towards yet another of the polar opposites that shape this album. It took them to the decidedly legendary Electric Lady Studios in New York’s Greenwich Village. Once the stomping ground of Jimi Hendrix, it wound up being the place where The Kills put a full stop on ‘Ash & Ice’.
“It was the perfect antithesis to recording in a house,” Alison explains.
“They did tell us: Jimi Hendrix lived there, in the house we rented in in LA,” realises Jamie, suddenly. “Then obviously we went to Electric Lady, which was his studio. That’s only just dawned on me,” he adds.
“He was throwing lightbulbs at you,” Alison says, without stopping to clarify that she’s referring to the ghost of Jimi, here. Obviously. “Lights were literally falling from the ceiling. Really bizarre.” Hendrix’s spirit, The Kills agree, found its way onto ‘Ash & Ice’ too – in yet another of their strangely coincidental turns.
“I would never in my life have considered using a wah-wah pedal,” says Jamie. “Apart from the fact we were at Electric Lady, and I just thought, ‘Come on, let’s do it!’ I haven’t heard a wah-wah pedal on a record for such a long time, and I still don’t think it’s ready.” The pair burst out laughing. “I think it’s too early for that shit to come back,” hoots Jamie. “But I thought, fuck it! I’m going to do it!”
“Just an itch,” grins Alison.
Though they might be a truly transatlantic band – frog-hopping between continents depending on their mood – The Kills have always been open about one of their main inspirations. Following Alison’s brazen first show tattoo, when the time came to settle on a band name, the pair chose The Kills because it seemed timeless. Both are huge fans of Velvet Underground, in particular, and in early interviews, The Kills often spoke of doing an Andy Warhol, and locking themselves away in a tinfoil coated, self-contained music factory. Unwilling to compromise, the band was born as a place where Alison’s painting, Jamie’s photography, and their collective musical output could all come under the same umbrella. Far from being a nostalgic goalpost, though, Velvet Underground just happen to be an example of that being possible.

On it like a car bonnet

Alison, you look very cool in the ‘Doing It To Death’ video. Sensational balance. Be real with us, though – you definitely fell off that car bonnet a few times, didn’t you?

Alison: [Laughs dismissively] No.

“We don’t have to give anything up to do a band,” states Alison. “We can keep doing all of that stuff, and it can keep being part of one big huge picture.”

A debate between the pair – concerning Jamie’s photography – follows. He’s convinced it isn’t a serious pursuit; Alison thinks otherwise. “It’s your perception! Your seriousness about yourself…” she tells him. “It started just being about wanting to capture things because it might not be like this forever,” he says, brushing it off, “it might all be over. We couldn’t believe we were staying at The Chelsea Hotel!“ he exclaims, referring to the band’s drawn-out residency at New York’s most infamous hotel in the run-up to ‘Blood Pressures’.

Now a closed-down shell, the Chelsea’s days of Patti Smith casually greeting Salvador Dali in the lobby, fringed by glimpses of Allen Ginsberg and Leonard Cohen, are now decades down the chute of history. “Edie Sedgwick set fire to her room,” Jamie says, moving off on a tangent concerning one of Andy Warhol’s superstars who used to reside there. “We used to stay in her room, we requested it deliberately.”

“Sadly we missed that time,” quips Alison dryly. “We came just after.”

The Kills wouldn’t have it any other way. Obsessed with reflecting the here and now, glancing in the rear-view mirror and watching the road peel away just isn’t their style. Jamie Hince and Alison Mosshart continually rev towards new horizons. It’s the killer driving force behind the band.

As much as icons of the past shape The Kills’ artistic vision, they’ve got no time for nostalgia. The drive to surge forward is audible in every note they play. “It’s impossible to avoid,” shrugs Alison, “but you try not to focus on it.” Present moments over rose-tinted reflection, forever rallying against the tide of retrospect; it’s the sole reason The Kills continue to be one of music’s most potent duos. To nick their own self-assured words from comeback statement ‘Doing It To Death’ they’re double sixing it, night after night. Chance might’ve shaped ‘Ash & Ice’ but when it comes to The Kills, the dice is loaded on a winning streak.

Line Up :

Alison "VV" Mosshart
Jamie "Hotel" Hince

Label :

Domino

Tracklist :

01 – Doing It To Death
02 – Heart Of A Dog
03 – Hard Habit To Break
04 – Bitter Fruit
05 – Days Of Why And How
06 – Let It Drop
07 – Hum For Your Buzz
08 – Siberian Nights
09 – That Love
10 – Impossible Tracks
11 – Black Tar
12 – Echo Home
13 – Whirling Eye