On their third album „Diabolicus Felinae Pandemonium“ the French jesters and cat lovers PRYAPISME have once more proven that the border between ingenuity and insanity is a thin one. The musical chameleons show themselves to be capable of far more than just joking around. Drummer and eccentric Aymeric Thomas gives some insight into the band’s work while casually talking about non-stop errections, cats with megalomania and his top notch knowledge of the German language.
Hello! Thanks for letting us do this interview with you. How are you?
I’m ok, thank you! We’re happy that the album is finally out so we can begin to focus on live shows.
Some of our readers may not know you, so please introduce yourself and your band PRYAPISME to get started. How would you describe your music?
Ok, so it’s very hard to describe us. I’m the drummer and one of the two original members of the band. I became the main composer. We begun when we were in high school, and from the start, we never decided to do anything precisely. We just compose the music we would like to hear. It’s a mixture of what we all like, without trying to put any boundaries to stay in a granitic music style. It can be described as “Rocococore”: core because it’s often violent music with heavy guitar riffing, fast drumming and distorted synths, and rococo, because we use too much different influences, too much notes and frills so our music is maybe overloaded.
You melt various musical styles into a strange mixture, which sounds quite freaky. What’s your intention behind mixing so many genres?
We have no any particular intentions, we just do what we like. Sometimes we can use a freaky part ironically because we are funny guys but most of the time we try to make heartfelt tributes to the music we love. We like to combine genres together also because we live in a multicultural period of time. With the rise of the internet, the different music styles are tending to crack and evolve. Lots of artists are doing mixtures and use multiple influences, and we just do the same thing just a bit more deeper and in a more extreme way.
Do you find it boring if a band just plays one ordinary genre?
Not necessarily, but I must admit I’m more and more frustrated when I listen to new albums. I like to be surprised and most of the time, when I listen an album for the first time, I have the impression that I already know what it’s going to be. Always the same melodies, always the same developments. I have the impression that everything has already been created, and the true mutation of music will come over strange mixtures and border crossing. That being said, I can really appreciate a good album of an ordinary genre from time to time. I listen a lot of pure ambient or electro-industrial music for example. And I can enjoy an old school black metal album to wake up on the morning during my breakfast.
Which musicians serve as inspiration for you?
It’s hard to respond in the name of all the band because we all have been influenced by so many different artists. I guess the leading bands that we all love are Mr Bungle, Estradasphere, Naked City and John Zorn. We all enjoy classical and contemporary music, 70’s avant rock, lots of metal sub genres, video-games and film OST, electronic music, balkan, arabic, indian, balinese, chinese and latin music. We enjoy and listen to almost everything really.
As already mentioned, your bandname is PRYAPISME. What’s the meaning behind that word and why did you choose it as your bandname?
We choose it because we were young. And drunk. It means to have a non-stopping erection. We just customised the spelling. We were 17 years old and our hormones were boiling. If we knew back then that our band will last more than 15 years, we may have chosen a different name. Something like “The Perfect Triangle Of Metaphysic’s Salad” or “Spinoza’s Big Band And His Mighty Trumpets Of Death” or maybe “There Is An Octopus In My Sliding Drawer, He Tastes Like Papyrus”. Or even: “@@@V2.7: The Church Of The Space Disclosure -TAB”. We have plenty of names that would be better than PRYAPISME. But they are quite long I guess.
The band already exists since 2000, still „Diabolicus Felinae Pandemonium“ is just your third full album. Why does it take you so long to release a new full-length album?
We took 10 years to release our first album because 1) we were lazy 2) we didn’t have money to pay for a recording studio 3) it took 10 years to buy the gears to make our own home-studio and to know how it works 4) we were not good enough with our instruments at the beginning and we had to rehearse and make a lot of gigs before being ready. 5) we spent a lot of time arguing over artistic decisions before understanding that the democratic way didn’t fit us. So we had to be trustful and let us go deep into our ideas when somebody takes the initiative without questioning everything. Now, it’s all ok, we are more efficient together but it took time. Also we have to say that we all are a bit perfectionistic, and we don’t want to release something which we are not completely happy with.
In between your full-length albums you released other things like EPs. Why did you do that instead of just focusing on full albums?
To focus on an EP is another way of composing music. The shorter format can make us dig deeper into an idea that we can’t develop in a full-length. It’s a very interesting work. We did a pure chiptune EP for example, and that’s a great way to explore a complete and precise aesthetic without being too long. „Futurologie“ was meant to be a track from our full-length album at the beginning. But the track tells a story in itself so we released it on its own. We were able to play around and make a long orchestral version of the track, which was a very cool exercise of style for us. To work on a EP is some kind of a break, to go thoroughly into an idea for a short time. A full-length is more serious and has a bigger background. That’s totally two different ways of composing.
This time you recorded „Diabolicus Felinae Pandemonium“ as a live formation. Why did you choose to do so?
We recruited two session musicians for the live shows back in 2013. They stink but they are really cute. So they quickly became 100% part of the band. This album was recorded with them from the beginning and they also brought lots of ideas and compositions. PRYAPISME was a three members band for a long time but now we are officially five. So it was natural to use this live formation for our new album.
In which way exactly can we imagine the recording process to be different in comparison to that of your earlier releases?
In this album, we were influenced by our live shows. We wanted to have something warmer. Also something less digital and cold than on our previous full-length. The recording process wasn’t too different to be honest. It’s more a question of mix. Anyway, we recorded the drums with news microphones to have a more roomy impact, we used lots of different cabinets for the bass and guitars to get a more natural and crunchy sound. And we tried to program the keyboard instruments in a more realistic way. A big difference is also the influence of more Arabic and oriental sounds.
Apart from the recording, where do you spot the biggest differences between your newest album and the ones before?
We focused on analog synths, like we do on stage. Lots of electronic parts are not programmed but played with anolog drum machines and real synths. We also have two guitarists, one playing with a plectrum and one with his fingers, and we wanted to hear the dichotomy between them. Also we wanted to hear the sounds of the amplifiers, a more roomy and natural drum without lots of treatment like on our previous album. The use of the bass is also very new to us, we wanted a bass player that we hear and not some sub synth frequencies fade in the mix like before. So the idea was to get a warmer record, with more presence of the actual musicians and a bit less programmed instruments.
You also hired some guest musicians. Why did you think was it necessary to include guest musicians on the album and how did you get in touch with them?
The contra-bassist, Matt, already played on our previous EP and we wanted to have this instrument for some jazzy moments again on the album. He’s a friend who has a very cool band of chiptune music called Please Loose Battle. I also play with some members of PRYAPISME and Matt in Speedrunning The Apocalypse!!!, a cover band of video game music with a speedrunner on video during live shows. One of the other guests is Adrien, who also shares a band with our bassist called Zibeline. He’s a wonderful musician with great skills and we wanted him to play the saxophone on two tracks. If it was up to me, PRYAPISME would have a full time sax player. I love that instrument. I also play clarinets but I already play drums and electronic on stage. I wish I can buy myself a new pair of arms one day… One of the other guests is Gautier, who also shares a band with me called Sebastockholm. I sampled him while he destroyed a wall with a sledgehammer and put him in a track. It’s always cool to invite friends in an album. It expands the music and it’s a good way to see each other again around a fresh beer.
Which track of the album do you think is your most accomplished and why?
Hard question! From „Hyperblast Supercollider“, my favourite track is still and was right from the beginning “Je Suis Venu, J’ai Vu, J’ai Sagouinu” but on „Diabolicus“, I don’t really have a preference yet. I would say “Totipotence D’un Erg” but I can’t really tell why. Maybe it’s because it tells a nice story in my head, with a cinematographic approach and I had great fun when I composed it. But if you ask me tomorrow, I may choose another one.
Your music is almost completely instrumental, there are just a few samples and cat noises to be heard. Why? And what do you want to express with the samples?
We don’t have any singer, because we have nothing to say. And if we do one day, I’m sure the texts would be surrealistic. For us, the music tells enough alone. I also don’t really like bands with singers and I mostly listen to instrumental music. The samples are for the most parts something that talks about cats. We recorded our own cats, and also an old neighbour of us that talks about the cats who pooped in her garden. In “Totipotence D’un Erg”, we sampled a friend from a home movie we made together. He says “I will eat each of your cells”. There are a few movie samples too because it fits the ideas of what we had in mind for the music. For example, there is a sample of a porn actress in the second track that cums on the offbeat to pastiche reggae music. There is also a sample of a French historian from the 60’s that says something like “it’s easier to eat priests than eat bankers” [Eat: litteral translation, meaning in this situation to make fun of/to bully, something in between…] All those samples are the only words in our music, the rest are just meows. The listener can understand this however he wants to.
The concept behind your music describes some kind of cat apocalypse. Why do you think will cats one day overrule humans?
We make fun of them but at the same time, cats are parts of our world like never before. In the ancient Egypt civilisation, they already were worshipped. We try to pretend that they are stupid and funny little creatures but in fact, they have a plan for world domination. We just have to look at the million YouTube views for the lol-cats videos on the internet to see that they already rule the world. They are patient but one day, they will show their true evil faces, they will take control of nations, they will transform all our agriculture into meatballs, they will turn every tree into catnip, and finally, they will make funny videos on the internet where humans fall flat on their faces. Hopefully, I’m sure that a few cats in the future will open shelters for abandoned humans. And some of them will tame us.
What fascinates you about cats?
At the beginning of the band, we used to rehearse in a cattery. We were surrounded by more than thirty cats and they are still with us every time we record or mix our music. They are cute but evil. They cuddle but stink when they get to the litter. They are just perfect companions in fact. As I’m writing the answers to this interview, I have one cat with me that stands right in front of the screen of the computer. He also wants to tell you: “::::dfflDJfjjjjjj,,4”.
What are your next plans for PRYAPISME?
Our first plan when we started the band was to find girlfriends with rock’n’roll music, and we all achieved it. Our second plan was to conquer the whole world, so we will continue to try. Also we will do our first music for a video game. I don’t know exactly when it will be out, and I can’t tell more about it now but it will be the next PRYAPISME opus for sure. In the meantime, we will try to play live as much as possible and still give our cats food and love.
We are reaching the end of our interview. At last I’d like to do our traditional Metal1.info-Brainstorming with you:
Nyan cat: To be honest, I just asked my girlfriend. I must have been cryogenised. He’s cute.
Best retro videogame: Of course “Rockman 2 / Megaman 2”. Also “Duck Hunt”.
Best metal genre: the one when at the end the cat fucks the dragon AND the princess
Donald Trump: I prefer Bruce Dickinson.
Cat tree: The most perfect human invention since the printing.
PRYAPISME in ten years: On the executive board of the biggest catnip manufacturing company. And with at least one Grammy award for a new category: being the first band led by cats.
Alright, thanks again for doing this interview with us. The last words shall be yours:
Petra und Monica sind auf den spielplatz mit ein bademutze um fußball zu spielen. Draußen ist es kalt. Die vögel singen. Sie möchten kartoffeln und meerschweinchen zu essen. 7 years of studing german at school… fascinating isn’t it ? Thank you very much, and thanks to the reader.
20. März 2017 Stephan Rajchl