Contents

Interview Baden Baden
Interview Adam Kesher
Interview Black Box Revelation

Baden Baden

A: Alexandre (Icky Thump)
E: Eric (Baden Baden) – G: Guillaume (Baden Baden) – Gab (Baden Baden) – J: Julien (Baden Baden)

A So the first question is going to be whether you’ve found a new explanation for Baden Baden because last time you told me that,…

E What did we tell you last time?

A Bah that there was none, well not one

E Really? Who told you that?

A It’s you!

(laughter)

E So since then we’ve been working a lot on the question. Because at the beginning, when you’re looking for a name, you’re very instinctive, and unconsciously we came up with Baden Baden. It sounded really good, without really knowing why. And as we kept asking ourselves the question, we started thinking, why Baden Baden? And now I don’t know if we know much more, but…
Gab Bah it evokes a lot of things, the sound is pretty, it flows well. We liked the redundancy of the double word Baden (…) Baden too.
G And it doesn’t put too many labels on it. You can imagine all sorts of things, and you don’t necessarily know what the music might be about. And you have a very, very wide range of imagery.

A Is it because your father was in Baden Baden?

G And yes too.
E He’ll love my dad
G (laughs) that’s good
E Because every time I talk about him,… but no, it wasn’t me who came up with Baden Baden, because when we were looking for the name, I think it was Guillaume who said Baden Baden, and everyone liked it. And it spoke to me, because my father, when he was very young, lived in Baden Baden, and so in his imagination it remains an extraordinary childhood memory. So I’ve always heard about it without ever having been there.
Gab Yes, it’s childhood imagery…
E A place, a country I’ve never been to, and so you fantasize about it, and it fits in well with the music.

A And now with the EP we’re going to talk about next, last time I asked you if the tour was going well. Because last year, it seems to me, you were preparing for it.

G Actually, we’re at the beginning of our tour.

A Yeah with last night and all,…

G Yes
E Actually, we’ve got a lot more structure in our heads than we did a year ago. Because last year we wanted to make an album, do a tour, do lots of things. But since we’ve been working with a manager, Simon. He’s helped us a lot, in terms of organizing a medium-term plan for the band. It’s about doing things in the right order, i.e. releasing an EP in…

A In November

E A seven-track… Six tracks, so it’s a good start, a good support, it’s a good recording experience through this first EP. And then, ideally, we’d like to do an album next year, with ten or twelve tracks. And this EP gives us a framework for doing things in the right order. And now, with him, there’s a ten/fifteen date tour.

A And what are the approximate dates?

G There were festivals this summer
J Yes, we’re doing another one here, Les Nuits de Champagne, it’s an Off festival.
G Otherwise we did Rock en Seine in August, the Plage du Glazart,…
Gab But other than that, we’re opening for Shout Out Louds three times, then we’re opening for Kaolin as well, and that’s that…
J Then we have solo dates…
Gab Yes, and solo dates too
G Basically, we’ve got about fifteen dates up to mid-December, and the aim of these dates is to make a big splash with the EP, and to make sure the live shows go off without a hitch.

A So can you tell us a bit about the EP?

G Yes, a little (laughs)
E There’s nothing secret about it!
J There are six titles. Three titles that have already been revealed, and three more yet to be revealed. And in Itune version
Gab Digitale (laughs)
J We can have one more piece
G It’s a song that’s very close to our hearts, and we love playing it live
Gab Of these seven tracks, two are in French and five in English.

A And which title, precisely,…

Gab Last Song
G It’s a song we’ve had since the beginning. It’s one of Eric’s pieces, which is very close to his heart, and which we all love very much. It’s very post-rock, it’s been setting the mood for a very long time, and on stage, yes, it’s a song we like a lot, and we play it for seven minutes, seven/eight minutes, and it really sets the mood.

A And writing songs in both French and English, does that allow you to reach a wider audience? Because we really get the impression that some bands choose one language and stick to it.

E Before the band, I used to write in English/French, but afterwards, when we started the band, we tended to write in English, for the sake of consistency and so on. In fact, the first time we sang a song in French, it was a cover of Emily Loizeau’s “L’autre bout du monde”, and we really enjoyed playing it. The more we got into it, the more we thought it was a pity not to sing in French, because it’s a different kind of pleasure to write.
Gab It’s a different kind of pleasure for Eric to write, but also for us to play the songs and compose in French.
G You’ve always written a lot in French too, so it’s quite natural.
E Then it happened naturally. Before the band, the songs I wrote in French sounded different, I don’t know why. That’s why we started in English, and then little by little there was a coherence that came about, in French as well as in English, so we went for it, or maybe in our heads too, we stopped stopping ourselves.

A Yeah, I was thinking of Plasticine, who really didn’t like doing the cover of Bitch in French.

G Yes, but it mustn’t be under constraint. We’ve always been free, there mustn’t be any artistic constraints…

A Ouai, à la José from Stuck In The Sound, who feels much more at home in English… But apart from that, I had a question: why aren’t the twins on the myspace page anymore?

(laughter)

Gab Actually it was a photo booth, it was the same person, so two photos. But it corresponds to a period in the group. At one point, we had a bit of a crush on this photo, this person, who was a bit of a “mascot”, the emblem of the group, but we moved on to something else.
E It may come back
G It corresponded to a whole imagery, a retro and nostalgic image, which we liked a lot when we wanted to develop the band’s concept, and today, as we’re releasing the EP, we have very beautiful visuals around it. And there’s a graphic designer who worked on it, did the cover art and so on. They’re really beautiful.
Gab We’ve gone off on a different tangent
G It’s more homogeneous.
E And as the band’s music progresses over the years, so does its imagery.
G We’re in the process of talking about making a new video clip.

A Yeah, I really liked BookI’ll put it up after the interview. By the way, what’s your best memory of a stage performance?

J My best memory is of Sare, we played there this summer, in the Basque country
G Oh yes, me too, me too!
Gab It was really nice.
J It’s behind Biarritz, so we ended up going up into the mountains near the Spanish border. It’s an association festival, and they’d set up a stage on the property, of,…of people,…
Gab First edition
J And it’s crazy, the scenery, the people, the whole thing, it was just great! We all really enjoyed ourselves in Sare.
Gab It really was an idyllic setting
G It was really in the middle of nature, there was nothing, a house, a garden…
Gab Super well organized, really nice.
G In the mountains!
Gab We gave a great concert. Everything to feel good
G And a truly international audience: French, Spanish, Basque, English… And they spoke every language
E You could really feel the confidence, that evening everything was super positive, super calm,…
Gab The setting was really magical, like this, in the mountains,…
G It was the USOPOP festival, U-S-O-P-O-P (laughs)

A And your worst memory?

E Ouhou, don’t be mistaken (laughs)
Gab Y en n’en pas, on les oublie!
E In retrospect, I’ve always enjoyed doing it. Afterwards, it’s true that sometimes you play in less-than-ideal conditions and you don’t feel at ease.
G And that’s a drag. But it’s true that the memory forgets bad dates… Even crappy concerts are fun.

A Oh no, not necessarily “rotten”. Just Anoraak, who broke his tibia on stage.

E Who? Anoraak?

A Yes

(laughter)

G Poor guy, it’s horrible! And what do you do then, stop the concert?

A I don’t know, are you falling?

E It’s pretty special (laughs)
J It’s horrible.

[Short discussion about Shout Out Louds, who they are, and where they come from, then,…]

Adam Kesher

A: Alexandre (Icky Thump) – R: Robin (Icky Thump)
J: Julien (Adam Kesher) – G: Gaëtan (Adam Kesher) – Y: Yann (Adam Kesher)

Bruit de loge: Nous (Icky Thump & Adam Kesher)

A Hum, then the first question, why Adam Kesher this name of a single character?

J Actually, Adam Kesher is a character in a David Lynch film, Mulholland Drive. It’s the character of the director who is persecuted by the mafia, and a Hollywood producer who wants to impose the lead actor on him for his film. And that’s when Gaetan and I were composing songs together before the band, we were looking for a name for this project, and we hadn’t succeeded. And there’s a scene in the film, where there’s a sort of mafioso looking for this guy, and he calls out his name several times, and that kind of stuck with us, and that’s just it.

A And I’d just seen that it was a side project based on Adam Kesher.

J Yeah

G Yeah, Julien and I started out doing harcore in Bordeaux, and the thing is, we realized that we wanted to do something else, and we both had these tracks, and we tried to get a demo around as best we could. And we already knew more or less the other members of Adam Kesher, from the Bordeaux scene. And they liked it, so we thought we could make it plausible and real, and put together a real band. But as a side project at the outset, we didn’t really put in the resources we do today, so it gradually took hold, but it wasn’t at all the basic idea that it should take precedence over other projects, which is what happened in the end. It’s just a matter of meeting people and seeing how things evolve as they go along. It became our main project.

A By the way, other projects, other influences, I found some pretty crazy stuff on the net, with comparison ranges from Justice to Artic Monkeys.

J I think both are off the mark. But there’s this one webzine in the U.S. that put Muse and Bloc Party together, and it wasn’t very good. But no, I don’t see Justice apart from the fact that we’re French, and that the French are on a bit of a roll, with a sort of French Touch.

R It’s the wick

J It’s the fuse maybe (laughs) But I think we’re more at home with fuses than Justice. But Artic Monkeys, which I don’t think any of us in the band like, is pretty bad.

Lodge noise: downright bad, even.

J Well, it’s not bad, but after that it never really spoke to me. If anything, I’d rather hear about the Strokes.

A What are the band’s influences?

J For the last record, we listened a lot to disco, well what we call space disco, stuff from the 80s, a bit weird, stuff with violin passages, a bit pompous. So Arthur Russel stuff, and other current stuff that picks up on all that culture, notably DFA Records (editor’s note: LCD Soundsytem, Hot Chip,…), or even guys like Dirty in France. We also listen to a lot of mainstream stuff, like Michael Jackson, Prince, Depech Mode and the Beach Boys. It’s a really wide range. Otherwise, we’ve all listened to a lot of indie rock, 90s stuff, from Nirvana to Pavement.

A And did you bring back any harcore stuff?

J Nah, not really, just a stage thing.

G Yes, maybe a stage thing, but Adam Kesher’s basic idea was really to exploit ideas that we hadn’t really used before. It wasn’t about coming up with that. We really wanted to do something different. Anyway, I did harcore when I was a kid, and it was great. But after that, it’s totally different. Are the two approaches totally different? It’s not the same way of making music, of writing songs. It’s extremely different.

J Plus we’re not vegetarian (laughs)

G Yes, which is a big problem on the harcore scene. But on the one hand, in harcore, there’s a desire to attack and surprise, and to land on your feet as best you can. On the other hand, it’s about seducing as many people as possible, which isn’t the same challenge at all. In other words, on the one hand you’re going to play very hard and very fast, and on the other hand you’re going to do the opposite.

A And seduction. As Anoraak is about to go on stage right now, I’m thinking about it. Does the fact that Pony Pony Run Run won a Victoire de la Musique award help you with your musical style?

J No, Pony Pony Run Run doesn’t help us at all. I’m thinking more of Phoenix, who sing with a French accent abroad. They’ve shown that it’s not a barrier at all. Even being seductive. Not like Plasticines, who were picked up in the States as yéyé chicks, because there’s a whole fantasy about French women singing nah nah nah nah nah, like France Gall.

Roo not them.

J I think Phoenix is different, that they’re taken more seriously, and less as just a fun thing from Paris. Plasticines almost look like they’re going to show up with berets and everything. I think Phoenix is really the example, the band that showed that you can do really cool stuff and still be French internationally.

G After Pony Pony Run Run won a Victoire de la musique award, in absolute terms, even if I’m not a fan of what they do. I think it’s really good, really positive in that it’s also a sign. Given that the Victoires de la Musique are linked to everything that’s framed. The fact that a group that sings in English should receive one is a step forward. Because the complex that exists in France with regard to Anglo-Saxon music is fading, and singing in English isn’t the same as denying your country. I think it’s great that this barrier has been broken.

A Let’s come back to you a little more, in the last album, well, what’s there, well, yeah, what can you say about it?

Lodge noise: laughter

A Yeah, we’re going to go big (laughs)

G It’s an album that’s very, very different from the first one we did. It’s not the same approach at all, it’s much more pop. On the first one, there was a real indie rock feel, which is what we really wanted to reflect at the time.

J Then it wasn’t the same line-up. There are two fewer people, and Pierrick, the bassist, is new. He was the one who produced the first record, and who produced this one to some extent. With the change of personnel, the sound has evolved, it’s more minimal. There’s one less guitar already. We worked with Dave One, from Chromeo, who produced the record, and who arrived when we’d made quite a lot of progress, when we had quite a few tracks, and he tried to tighten up the range, choosing the ten tracks he felt were the most coherent. We reworked the drums, sounds and vocals with him. Then we confronted two musical universes. He often quotes Phil Collins, Indochine… In other words, things we’re not too familiar with.

A You mentioned Phoenix earlier, and it reminds me a little of what Philippe Zdar did in terms of production.

J Yeah, Zdar was the producer on their record, while we were the remixers on two tracks. Then we remixed in his studio. But the production work is really Dave One’s on our thing, whereas it’s actually Zdar for Phoenix.

A And are you going to continue with the minimal or not? (laughter)

Lodge noise: laughter

J Doing minimal techno

G We decided to all move to Berlin, and start making minimal. (laughter) And more seriously, to defend our records and do more concerts. There’s a digital single coming out in January. It’s called “Attraction” and we want to defend it. It’s a calmer track from the record, quite beautiful. So we’re working on a video to accompany it. It’s very concrete, we’re not projecting months and months into the future. And we’re not projecting ourselves onto a third album yet – the last one came out two months ago.

A How’s the album tour going?

G Yes, we’re doing Marseille, Clermont, Strasbourg, Rouen. Then we’re also going to Lisbon, for the Super Bock festival, I don’t know if you know?

J It’s great beer!

G It’s super beer as the name suggests, but super Portuguese beer!

J We’re playing in London too, and then in 2011 we’ll be doing England, Germany, Belgium, the United States and Switzerland.

Bruit de loge: Switzerland, I love Switzerland.

A And then a question a little simpler and stupid, but I like, the worst memory?

Lodge noise: laughter

G So Julien at one point had this rather strange habit of smashing himself up on stage. One of his most impressive moments was at Le Batofar in Paris. But it had already happened in Lorient, where we’d seen Julien disappear from the stage. And in Lorient it was impressive because sometimes there’s barely two meters between the security barriers, and he fell between them, he could really have broken his neck. And at the Batofar he did even better, falling and taking his return with him, which really could have crushed his head. (laughter) But it’s kind of strange because we kept playing, and I was thinking: “We’re so fucking professional, we keep on playing even though the singer might be dead.” And at the same time it was pretty creepy, because there was this moment of waiting, where we didn’t really know what the hell Julien was doing, until we saw his microphone moving across the stage to find Julien singing again. And miraculously survived (laughs).

J More recently, a disgusting thing was done to us in England. We thought it was a technical problem, so we stayed on stage. stage and people laughed.

Sound of dressing room: I think it’s because they didn’t like it, and then it was too late (laughs).

G But we’ve got a lot of bad memories to tell (laughs) it’s a nightmare.

A When you were talking about falling off the stage, I had an image of Val Kilmer falling off the stage in Stone’s The Doors.

Bruit de loge : I saw it a long time ago / It came out 20 years ago? / 20 years ago? / Yeah / I love the Doors

A Bref I had an image of Morrison falling on stage, so if Adam Kesher was a drug?

J Uh I don’t know, maybe Jean-Luc Delarue

Lodge noise: laughter

J No, but modern drugs, Md

G Make you want to fall in love

A And the best memory of all?

G I think it was in Evreux, for rock dans tous ses états, a really long time ago. And we were well into the evening with Julien, and we ended up drinking with Philippe Katerine, and we pissed him off, or tried to piss him off. And it didn’t work at all, he’s much too nice.

J Beaucoup trop cool!

G The very young, very stupid public, jumping on pop like big turbines, that’s good!

A Speaking of stupid audiences, I don’t know if you’ve heard of the Stuck In The Sound thing, where they got tomatoes in the face.

Lodge noise: Violent bursts of laughter

A I can’t remember which festival it was at

Noise from the dressing room: Laughter / You’ve got to be kidding me / Laughter

A Ah no, it wasn’t tomatoes but ketchup and mayo

J At the same time, it didn’t affect the singer’s hair, who always wears a hood (laughs).

G We did a tour with the Stucks, and frankly, there’s nothing to throw sauce at them.

J I know that at Hellfest, Slipknot had dead rabbits and bottles of piss thrown at them…(laughs)

At Hellfest, though, the audience is pretty cool.

J Yeah, but it’s Slipknot,…Metal fans think they’re a really shitty upstart band.

Bruit de loge: We didn’t have that, we had people who didn’t give a shit because we weren’t in the right place at the right time, but nothing that threw shit on stage.

A And with Katerine’s new album, are you doing a date with him?

J No, but we did do a song called P Katerine, about Philippe Katerine and Michel Houellebecq, which was really fashionable at the time, like French writers and singers who were a bit detached like that. Chronicle of a shitty life, but sublimating it.

G But we listened to his latest album, and we think it’s really cool. This guy is a major figure in French chanson.

J In the end, he takes a dada thing, a non-elitist thing, almost a conceptual work, and turns it into something that really works, that people sing along to at festivals. It’s brilliant!

G I really want to see people at a festival in front of Liberté, liberté mon cul, égalité mon cul, fraternité mon cul.

A And why Houellebecq?

J The reference to the dandy who has spun out and is talking about something pretty boring.

A Bah I don’t know if you saw in the last one, the exact Wikipedia pages.

J Yes, it totally fits in with his extremely flat, post-modern thing. Cold and contemporary.

A Ouai, I’ve got a Houellebecq poem in my head right now, about a secretary and the elevator,… It’s in a Beigbeder I think,…

I don’t like Beigbeder though, well the books.

A All I know is that he takes a big fee from TDA, four thousand francs a disc push.

Y Are you brothers or not?

R Brothers?

Y Yeah

R We’ve been asked for two evenings in a row.

A No, yesterday we were asked if we were twins… But we were also asked if we were the BB Brune or a couple,…

R But we’re not brothers

Y Are you sure? Did you ask your parents?

J You never know (laughs)

In Ouep, a year ago we couldn’t see each other!

Black Box Revelation

A short interview in a radio studio before leaving for the hotel. Or how to do a 20-minute interview in five!

A Who’s who? And who does what?

D I’m Dries, the drummer with Black Box Revelation. I’m a drummer, and it’s my life.
J And I’m Jan Paternoster, the guitarist, the singer, one of the two members of this fucking band.

A And how did you train him, since when?

J Before The Black Box Revelation, we played in various bands, but we didn’t really enjoy it. We started a project, and after a year it started to take shape. We were freer and had more fun. We’re not going to say that everything was launched at once, but with the album and some good dates, it really helped us to get going.

A Yes, but it doesn’t say why Black Box Revelation, so why?

D We flew to China and had an accident. We found a strange black box, as if emptied. We recovered the data, and listening to it we discovered a multitude of sounds. And that’s the story behind our name.

A And does your first album come out of the box in the same way as your second? Are there any differences?

J The latter is more psychedelic and bluesy, more live-oriented too. Whereas the first one was more garage rock. This new blues is more direct and straightforward. And by going in this psychedelic direction, we’ve taken a more Back Box Revelation route. Yes, more us. It gives us more freedom. We really like that vibe. The new blues is a lot more like us, yes, a lot more!

A And the tour goes well?

D Yeah

A It’s often “Sold Out” according to the newspapers

D Tonight? Or always? It really depends on the country. In Belgium almost all the time, in France quite often, and in the rest of Europe it happens. But in Paris it’s sold out, yes.

A So all’s well

D Yes, it’s great, we’re touring Europe making music.

A And in the USA?

D We’ve done some big showcases and festivals over there, and it’s very good for live shows to go to the USA.
J We’ve been from LA to NY, and we’ve played in venues where the Rolling Stones themselves have played, which are great experiences!

A What’s next for you?

J A third album, and creating a lot. Staying in the studios, looking for new sounds, new styles, new ways of making us evolve. And then, back on the road!
D ON THE ROAD! OH YEAH!

A Oh yeah! And what’s rock? What’s rock’n’rolla?

D Huuum! It’s yeahhh! It’s awesome.
J Staying at home making music, and loving that life. We’re two guys and, well…
D We’re just two, two guys making music and it’s already crazy.

A And when you’re fifty, what will you be doing?

D Music! (laughter)
J We’ll try to stay in shape by eating vegetables (laughs), but OUR vegetables. And we’ll make “jam, a little jam house to sell jam”. (In French during the interview).

A And before we finish this quick interview, what would you like to say?

D Go online, check out our myspace page, and enjoy the moment with our music.

Baden Baden
Adam Kesher
The Black Box Revelation

Alexandre Fisselier – [email protected]
Mathilde François
ICKY THUMP
Robin Adili (Icky Thump)

Cette publication est également disponible en : Français (French)

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