Deutsche Übersetzung...

Hey Yann, greetings!

You agreed to do this interview for metal1.info and let´s begin with an introduction of La Rumeur des Chaînes. So please tell us about your band because I´m sure that several readers of our zine don´t know you.
- LRDC is the name of the 3songs album on which we've been working these last years, Alex (guitars and lyrics), Sylvain (bass guitar) and me. Music is blending Black Metal-like basis with numerous classical influenced orchestrations, but also with jazzy touches.

The reviews you received for your EP "La Rumeur des Chaînes" are fabolous, almost euphoric. I can underline these critics as you can see in my review. The fact of getting very well results for the EP will make you glad, won´t it?
- Of course it's something you can't expect when you're releasing your first CD. So much time passed totally immerged in these songs, and the judgement you have from them is far from being objective. We wanted both songs and record sounding perfect to us, because we knew that we wouldn't have many occasions to make this album, but it doesn't give any sign about how people will react. In the end it's a really good surprise. We wanted to share our creations, but we didn't expect people being that receptive!

I read at your page that "La Rumeur des Chaînes" was downloaded 1600-times and it´s actually sold out. I think you didn´t expect this, right? Do you plan a second edition?
- We promoted the CD over almost one hundred forums in many countries, and I must concede that when you're starting from nothing, it seems to be the perfect way to make people listen to your songs. Sold-out is a big word considering the small amount of CDs we had (half has been sent for promotion), but we want to keep the possibility for people to get the whole artwork. It's important to still have a link we the visual concept. That's why a second edition could soon be released!

Beside musical quality you also set a great store by the layout of the EP, how important was it for you?
- The basic idea was to set a link between the scenario told by music, the evocations of lyrics and a picture illustrating the song. Each of these components is bringing its own idea of a theme.
Lucian Stanculescu's pictures were fitting quite well with this idea, because he's used to work with very symbolic drawings, focused on one single element. They were both original and dark, and we thought it was then possible to connect them to our project. It has been a really nice collaboration.

I don´t understand french and most of our readers, too, so could you please explain the topics of your lyrics and do you have any inspirations for them?
- About topics, they're quite black metal in a way. They're about how mankind loses its place in nature order, about bad influences men have on each other, and the strength and independence that the individual should have. But even if lyrics place is important, as I told you just before, knowledge of French language won't help you to fully understand them (actually it's still the case for me!). From the musical structure and a basic theme which we decided together, Alex wrote multi-layered stories with a lot of puns and double meanings, strange rare words as well. Resulting texts let a lot of space for imagination. Once guided by music, some sentences make suddenly sense.

You mix Black Metal with jazz and classic, how did you get the idea to do this?
- Classic instrumentations appeared quite progressively in compositions, just as I wanted more and more complex structures, and needed instruments to play the different layers by keeping their singularity. I was first listening to bands that tried the mix before, and then switched to some compositors sharing the same kind of ambiances. The field of possibilities is still really wide concerning the melting between extreme metal and classical music.
Jazz was quite unexpected. It just came from a song written by Alex with a lot of melodic brass parts, but no intention of mixing jazz and metal. It's only when we decided to use this song for the EP, that we boosted both brass and metal aspects, adding jazz rythmics in tremolo-played parts and brass accentuations on blasted parts. It became "Erythème". Just sounded well!

Do you have any sources of inspirations in classic or jazz music?
- It's only several years that I'm really interested in classical music, so this world is still quite unknown to me. I've started with discovering Mussorgsky, Dvorak and Rimski-Korsakov, which still are the ones I like the most.
About jazz, all I can say is that I'm more interested in gypsy jazz, but I have no culture at all. I could barely quote an artist name, except maybe Django Reinhardt. Between these two influences, you can also find Danny Elfman soundtracks.

I have to tell you that I sometimes hear jazz, I like this kind of music. A night club in Paris, improvised jazz, that sounds great, doesn´t it? But with New Orleans jazz I have my problems, I don´t like it. Do you have certain preferences?
- Maybe in several years I'll be able to answer to this question ;)

Now we come to the part I really looked forward to because as an editor for a metalzine you don´t do this every day. We, at metal1.info, have a small "questionsgame" and I changed it a little bit. What´s your opinion regarding to
- I wish I have had a musical education since I was a child, but it's not the case. You'll have to make do with the ones I know a bit.

-Bela Bartok
I've discovered the "Marvellous Mandarin" quite recently thanks to Tormentor's "Recipe Ferrum". I'm really fond of the violent and dissonant parts. I'll check out his other works.

-Antonin Dvorak
The one I know the best from your list. One of La Rumeur des Chaines main influence.

-Gustav Mahler

-Dmitri Schostakowitsch

-Richard Wagner
He's supposed to be the main influence of all romantic influenced BM bands. I must admit that I still don't know anything else from him except the Walkyries theme.

-Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy

-Frederic Chopin

- Mmmh, considering the emptiness of my answers, I think I'll be working hard on opening my classical influences for the next time you send me a quiz!


But let´s talk about metalmusic because we do this interview for a metalzine. Do you have any formative influences for your style?
- I feel more comfortable now? For me, the band which managed to combine both violence and sadness of BM and complexity and melodies of classical music: Obtained Enslavement. I I'm looking for their heirs for ages. Then, on different aspects, many bands or albums have had their importance in LRDC orientation (Emperor, Opeth, Sigh, Enslaved, Waltari, Haggard, Hollenthon?)

What´s the background of your bandname respective you don´t really have one, do you?
- The easiest analogy I've found to explain my point of view is cinema. You first know and remember a movie by its name. As far as there is no n°2, a movie title is enough. Then, when you really liked the movie, you generally check out the director's name and find his previous works without problem. And his different movies may be of completely different styles and backgrounds, involving different actors, etc?
So what do we have? La Rumeur des Chaines is our first production. The three of us have been like actors, co-directors and co-producers. What's then? A total liberty for the future, no stress for giving a sequel to this project, a flexible line-up which may include as many people as needed, no bounds to a specific public. Just writing, summoning people and recording.
But this is possible only because we're not touring, and because music is written so slowly that evolution is sensible between songs. For me, writing two homogenous full albums under the same name would probably mean keeping the same musical direction during ten years. That's not a part of my projects.

Any ideas for the next step for La Rumeur des Chaînes, will you release a complete album?
- The next project is in progress. It will be as complete as LRDC is, but probably closer to the usual album length ;) The idea is to work separately on the musical influences we mixed in LRDC. It will demand wider musical knowledges than I have, and a lot of things to learn about orchestrations. This time, I would like to avoid computers as much as possible when recording to have a much more live feeling, which couldn't be done with LRDC. We will probably have rehearsals with a real drummer when the recording time will come, and guest musicians might be involved. But it's only a dream for the moment.

Are there any reasons for your decision to define La Rumeur des Chaînes as a studio-project only? Well, you´ll need some guest-musicians for live-appearances, is this the only barrier?
- To sum up, we could perfectly become a band in the future if: we live in the same area, our professional life lets enough free time for regular rehearsals, we can summon the musicians we need on stage. Unfortunately, none of these conditions are summoned at present, but who knows..?

We´re at the end of this interview, thank you for the time you spent in answering my questions. The last words are yours.
- Thanks a lot. We hope you'll hear from us in the next years.

Interview von: Patrick