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Interview conducted
in June 2004
LATEST RELEASE:
"Absente Terebentine" |
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| |  | |   | | By Laure Cornaire | | Photos Code@17 |
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With five albums, the most recent being "Absente Terebenthine", Morthem Vlade Art managed to establish a real esteem for themselves, all the while continuing what they're doing in a totally free way, never afraid of taking risks. As to talk to us about their influences and collaborations (remixes for Clan of Xymox, Trisomie 21 and Indochine), we asked Emmanuell D. and Gregg Anthe to play the "blind test "game with us. From Bowie to the Mamas and Papas, from Autechre to Alizée, they got it all right!
DAVID BOWIE: Heroes
Emmanuell and Gregg (together): Bowie!
Gregg: Heroes, you're being nice here, it's easy. So, no, bowie isn't an influence at all, I discovered him very late through a Wanadoo commercial... (laughs)
Emmanuell: I first heard Bowie when I was 11 in his video of China Girl on TV. Each time, I was angry because I wanted to be the Chinese woman! Actually, I first heard Let's Dance, then I listened to older stuff. I was in high school then, and you had to choose your side between Bowie or Michael Jackson.
Gregg: Same for me, I first heard "Let's Dance" and his first records never really attracted me. Afterwards, I heard "Low" and "Heroes" which are my favourite albums.
Your voice has sometimes been likend to Bowie's. What do you think of that?
Gregg: I must feel what Peter Murphy has felt. Or what Bowie has felt at the begining, when everybody kept talking about Scott Walker to him. It must have unconsciously influenced my way of singing and I try to avoid this. But, even as I try to be myself, I realise that I sing like this.
Emmanuell: Especially since we like crooners' voices so much, like Scott Walker's and Brian Ferry's.
BAUHAUS: The Three Shadows, Part 2
Gregg: Yeah, that's Bauhaus, The Three Shadows. We made a cover of it... Bauhaus, it's like Virgin Prunes: excellent, huge, very classy.
Emmanuell: It's funny to realise that relatively unknown artists influenced the well known ones. I've got the impression they don't want success, but they've got a real esteem success anyway. It's strange, when you think about it, what makes that a band will become more renown than another. For instance, I think of Trent Reznor, when Rozz Williams died, he said that the latter had been a big influence on him.
Gregg: Yes, it's like Martin Gore talking about Tuxedomoon. Tuxedomoon is a band who never have a big success, but they influenced many people.
Why did you cover The Three Shadows?
Gregg: Three days before his TV show ("Rock Press Club" on Cable TV Jimmy), Philippe Manœuvre asked us to make a cover. We thought it could be interesting, so we listened to Joy Division, Bauhaus… It had to be acoustic, and as it was a track I've been playing on guitar for a long time, we chose this one. So we did a guitar and vocal version, but I think it's not a very good one!
Emmanuell: Cover songs aren't really our stuff.
Gregg: it would be more interesting to do something with Peter Murphy.
Indeed, if you had to work with someone, who would that be?
Gregg: Peter Murphy, Gavin Friday… Rozz Williams is someone I really would have liked to work with, because we met him just before he died. It's hard to answer this question because you have to meet people and then, it's a question of feeling. I think of Rozz Williams because we talked to him and I felt there was something going on between us. We met him in the Arapaho's backstages in Paris. He did a terrible cocktail for me... even he was grimacing! We talked about music and other things, it was really good.
Emmanuell: Otherwise, it could be a band like Sonic Youth. We come from very different musical backgrounds, but I know that they really like the Nouvelle Vague in cinema, so maybe there could be common points...
MORTHEM VLADE ART: Beyond Sorrow
Gregg: That's us! Do you want to talk about the first album?
Emmanuell: Actually, you have to look at our five albums. It's a whole, when you look at them, you see there's a lead. This styles' evolution is our way of working, we're receivers. If there's a change, I think that the break appeared between "Organic But Not Mental" and "Antechamber", because on "Herbo Dou Diable" and "Organic" there was still some goth sounds.
Gregg: On the five records, "Herbo" is the strangest. If our first album had been "Organic", I think that people wouldn't have insisted so much on our different records.
Emmanuell: What we often explain, is that you always fumble a bit when you start something new. You have to find a solid base before starting, and "Herbo" was our base. The more we progress, the more we're critical and the more we try to explore new stuff. But, in fact, we always have to re-define the same thing.
Gregg: For a while, we found it difficult to assume our first productions: the demos and "Herbo". We thought it wasn't finished and not refined enough. We were a bit immature back then.
AUTECHRE: Clipper
Gregg: That may be Autechre… I had a band before Morthem in which I only did electronic music and Autechre was a revelation to me. The trituration of the sound has never been as far as it is with Autechre. Then, what I really like are the bands which are inspired by this sound like the Notwist, for instance, they put some electronica in pop music. What they did on "Neon Golden" was very subtle. There's another very well-done album which was a bit ignored, it's "Vespertine" of Björk. I think it's very good, even if I don't like Björk at all.
What about Radiohead, they also mixed organic and electronic sounds?
Gregg: "Kid A" isn't a bad album, but I don't really like their first albums...
Emmanuell: I think, Radiohead is too clinical. I know it may sound strange... What I really didn't like was one of their video: all computer graphics, it was taking place in a street and all the people were grey, Tom Yorke was sitting on a bench and there was a rose growing... I thought it was really demagogic and too Manichean. I don't like them because they don't go far enough! But of course, music-wise, they do some interesting stuff.
THE MAMAS AND THE PAPAS: California Dreamin'
Emmanuell: The Beach Boys! No… California Dreamin' that's not the Beach Boys, it's the Mamas and Papas. When I was in high school, I listened to a lot of 70s stuff. I had my period The Doors, Joplin, Hendrix, etc… I really like this song because it reminds me of a special memory when I went to Scotland. We had a funny kind of odyssey there. I went to join some friends who played in a band called the Beggars, and we found ourselves in the flat of the Wet Wet Wet's dealer. In the evening, they were coming to get their drugs in this flat, it was kind of funny! I found that the Wet Wet Wet's singer was very different than on TV! It was a very big flat where one member of the Silencers was also living... The whole Scottish rock world was coming there!!
INDOCHINE: Marilyn
Gregg: Oh no, that's disgusting... (laughs)!
Emmanuell: What could we say...
How did you end up remixing this title?
Gregg: Their producer called us to ask us to remix Marilyn. He sent us the album we didn't like at all. Then, as for the track Marilyn, well, the lyrics didn't seem... er..., it's hard to talk about it...
Emmanuell: Actually the lyrics of Marilyn were too much in the Indochine spirit! You know, what they were doing before, with the theme of the sexual ambiguity... If we had to do something for a commercial band, then we'd prefer doing it for an old band that is really into its own stuff. We've got nothing against them! Of course, what they do doesn't make us dream nor think, but it's honourable.
Gregg: Why are we trying to justify ourselves? They're far from being the worst! It would have been worse to work for Placebo! One of the criteria to do this remix, was to know what I could do with it. The lyrics talks about things happening behind closed doors, so I wanted to do something very intimist by putting the voice forwards and by removing the huge amount of reverberation. I found the result quite interesting.
DOMINIQUE A: Le Twenty-Two bar
Gregg: Dominique A! I love it!
Emmanuell: Yes, he's really great: his poetry, his sublime lyrics, his magnificent voice and his not too obvious compositions. He's the most interesting thing in French music right now! There's no other. Of course, I don't know everything, but we often hear "So and so, the worthy heir of Brel or Gainsbourg", I think it's a shame to compare such big names to such guys. With Dominique A, we're really in the renewal of the quality French songwriting, like Piaf's, Brel's and Gainsbourg's. Dominique A is apart, because in this renewal, there's a "I'm a loser, I only do it to have a laugh... but I'll take the money" side that I hate.
LTNO: Boys
Emmanuell: We played with them last week.
Gregg: I didn't know Ltno's music at all. The only thing I had heard was the album "12 Têtes mortes" of the Tétines Noires. So, we met Emmanuel last week and he's really a lovely guy. Unfortunately, we didn't see their concert because we played first and we had to do interviews just afterwards. But the next time, I'll go to see them. On the other hand, we know what their ex-drummer, Jérôme Soudan do with Mimetic, Von Magnet and Art Zoyd.
Are you in contact with other French bands that belong to this same scene?
Emmanuell: Actually, the band we know best isn't French, it's the Clan of Xymox. We're great friends! We spent New Year's eve in Amsterdam with them and we had a snow balls fight in the street! Ronny is a coward who throw snow balls on people's heads and then hides behind cars! We really like them...
ALIZÉE: Lolita
Emmanuell: That's Lolita of… what's her name? I like it! I think she's pretty and I think it's a good idea to put forward men pedophile's side, which is a reality! I think it's very hypocritical to talk about paedophilia so much when you see what the underwear shops are selling to teenage girls as young as 11, and that nowadays, women have to dress like little girls to entice guys... That's the paradox of modern society. I think we're in a pedophilic society and we have to assume it! Nowadays youth is power.
Gregg: That's a shame because young people don't have anything interesting to say! Listen to Lolita!
Emmanuell: The artists have in them the desire to fight, to rebel. I think that's necessarily in relation with childhood and teens, which are the more exciting parts of life, afterwards, we always try to come back to that.
Good question: can you go on playing rock music when you're old?
Gregg: We couldn't answer this question before. Old rockers are something new. When you see Iggy Pop, you think it's possible. When you see the Rolling Stones...
Emmanuell: It's not a question of fitness, it's more a question of state of mind, of endless struggle. I think you can play music until the end, look at Gainsbourg, Johnny Cash and so on... I think there's also the quest for creation. To look for an eternal renewal. And tough luck if it's in vain! Even if Mick Jagger hasn't the same agility than when he was 20, there's almost a desperate side in this deed, and I like it! | | | | | | | |
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