Interview with Pensees Nocturnes 2009

by Bradley Smith

Your debut album Vacuum is quite a journey both emotionally and musically.  Can you tell me what this album embodies to you and how it is an expression of yourself?  What sorts of personal sacrifices did you put into the music?

Actually I would say it is more a kind of relief than sacrifices. Something you keep in yourself because of this appropriateness that society imposes on you but that you have to evacuate somehow. Music makes it possible to encode these ideas and feelings into notes and to express this pain and frustration without being constrained by decency. That’s why I won’t tell what I had to express and what’s more it is not necessary because this encoding allows everybody else to understand this music whereas it started from my personal experience.

As I understand it, Vacuum was your first experience with recording and composition.  I imagine it was quite a learning experience.  Can you tell me some of the things that you have gained knowledge regarding this experience?  How will your approach be different next time?  Does taking care of all these aspects change your view on your own music?

Sure I don’t see “Vacuum” in the same way as I did when I created it, but more precisely I would say I have a totally different vision of music generally speaking. I think that can be broadened to every activities but I don’t listen to a song like before that’s to say in a passive way. Now I’m an active listener: I understand the structures, the composition, the way the instruments are played and combined... I’m now able to distinguish real musicians from clowns that encumber the Black Metal scene.

I have had enough time to assess “Vacuum” and there are many things I would like to change. “Classical” parts will be more complex and unexpected, the production will be better (the best way to learn is to do)... But I think the most important thing I learn is not to rush and be modest. I have composed “Vacuum” very quickly and that didn’t make it possible to stand back to assess the rendering. Now I try everything that comes to my mind and record it to see the result. If it is worth I keep it otherwise I just try something else. It’s always frustrating to work for nothing but the most important is the rendering and that’s something I needed to learn.

The way you incorporate classical influences into your compositions there seems to be a strong connection both in style and atmosphere between Metal and Classical music.  Do you think that most metal oriented people overlook the benefits and dark artistry that lives within classical music?  Why do you think that is?

Indeed Classical Music is far more complex and complete in the emotions it expresses since you can find anger, fear, sadness, etc... and even unhealthy atmospheres and dissonances especially in contemporary works. I think to understand the fact that most Metallers (it’s shorter) dismiss Classical Music you have to take into account the sociological aspects and not reduce a style to the music. Metal is nearly a way to live, to behave... You just have to go to a festival to see how almost everybody is wearing the same clothes (funny for a style which advocates rebellion, individuality and misanthropy), move similarly, drink the same thing, etc... This behaviour is in contradiction with the rigour and the quality of Classical Music and that’s why they don’t even take a look to this rich genre. I think it’s a shame and that’s what I wanted to avoid with Pensées Nocturnes: to take only account of the Music and avoid all these clichés that constrain Black Metal and prevent it developing.   

Incidentally I want to focus on Chopin and why you feel that he stands out above others.  I know you used two pieces of his music on the album and as I read the band’s name is a tribute of sorts to him.  Why did you decide to do this and what exactly moved you to name the project after his work?

To begin with the fact I have chosen to pay homage to Chopin doesn’t mean he stands above others. You can imagine I haven’t had enough time to make a reference to every composer I like but Chopin’s Nocturnes have accompanied so many of my nights that I couldn’t miss this implied reference. Actually with Pensées Nocturnes I wanted to retranscribe what you can feel at nightfall when alone listening to a piece so deep that it involves a spiritual dimension and Chopin’s Nocturnes correspond to this description. “Nocturnes” means “nocturnal” in French (and “pensées” means “thoughts”).

You incorporated a large section of Blues music into the track Coups De Bleus.  It seems strange at first to hear it then I am surprised when I think that I can’t remember anyone else using Blues in their compositions since emotionally there are a lot of emotional similarities between Blues and Metal.  Why do you think that no one has really approached this and what comparisons can you make between blues and metal?

I think this can be compared to the question concerning Classical Music. Even if the emotions and the sonorities can be similar, people are often too much influenced by denominations and it seems they have the duty to defend their style against others. It’s a shame because it’s just words but maybe to talk about semantics isn’t really appropriate here. As for the comparison I would say that these styles both express melancholy, nostalgia and sadness even if the Blues is more based on the experience of sharing whereas Metal is more to be listened to while alone.

Pensees Nocturnes has a very untraditional approach when it comes to its compositions as you manage to weave a lot of experimentation into your music.  It seems that this is a continuing theme for the French Scene with bands like Deathspell Omega, Blut Aus Nord, Peste Noir, Glorior Belli, and a ton more.  Why do you think there is such boundary smashing going on in the French Scene? 

Well all these bands are mainly studio project and don’t work together so they don’t know each other. I haven’t any explication and I would say it’s purely coincidental. I don’t really see it that way since I put music before side issues (country, musicians, concept,...) and you can imagine it’s not because these bands are French that I chose to do such music.  I think with the development of the Internet this notion of nationality has no significance anymore (in music) and I’m not particularly proud of this fact even if indeed it seems we have a strong Black Metal scene. I’m not led by any kind of chauvinism, only the way I feel the music.

I want to talk about emotion since to me that is a unifying theme in Pensees Nocturnes.  The album instils a feeling of inner torment and overriding sadness within its notes.  What emotions are you trying to achieve with Pensees Nocturnes and how do you view these emotions as cathartic experience? 

To take up what I said in the first question, Pensees Nocturnes is clearly a way to evacuate everything negative I keep in myself. But I don’t want to try to express these emotions in words because it is ridiculously simplistic. That’s a distinctive feature of the brain to catalogue all it can feel, to put concepts and words on everything but what’s sadness, melancholy, joy, gaiety? A word cannot reveal all the degrees and variations of our feelings whereas music can. I’ve chosen notes rather than words to express myself and I’m sorry but I’m not going to change my mind for you.

It would appear from your interviews that you are into existential philosophy and consider your music as “a way to live.”  Can you delve a little deeper into how you view human activities as futile and what exactly they are distracting us from?  How does a person clear their minds from distraction?  Aren’t our activities, though mostly invested in distractions, still a form of living and how does one define “living?”

So, yes the fact that human lives rest on their share of illusions and are led by a never-ending hope is undeniable but as far as I remember I’ve never said it was something negative and to fight against. It’s even something that allows people to live and maybe the only sort of solution we have. I mean paradoxically enough what’s music except a form of hope and dream? Even Nietzsche, of whom we know the opinion about Catholicism, said “Life needs illusions”.

Since you’ve already read some interviews, you know that “Vacuum” refers to the pointlessness of humans’ activities.  Religion, politics, science, philosophical ideals, all these illusions which keep our mind busy and keep us away from our condition.  Nothing we do has an existential foundation aside from spending time.  As if life comes down to everything that allows us to forget life… Thus I can’t tell what we try to avoid, surely nothing and that’s why our condition is so pathetic.

But to take up Tchekhov’s thought “we have to live anyway” and that’s where you must have seen an existential theory in what I said. This kind of nihilism makes it possible to see life from a totally different point of view and to try to create something from this absurdity, something that you have chosen, something that doesn’t have to be conventional or “normal”.  I think it’s what we can call “living”.

I know you consider Vaccum to be a part of the past and are currently looking towards the future.  Is it easy to divorce yourself from your creation even though it is still a part of your life?  What sorts of feelings do you have when it comes creating an album and how do you feel once it has been birthed to the world?

You seem to find this behaviour strange but you have to think as a composer and not only as a listener. The only point of composing is the process of creation, especially for a one man band which by definition doesn’t play live. Once it’s done it’s done. You do something else.  When you’ve written a review, what do you do next?  Once it’s written it’s written.  People will read it, will comment on your critique but you don’t stay lifeless, pleased by your work.  The only benefit is the process of creation (and the free promo album sure).  That’s the same for me.  I’m constantly composing and playing music, that’s the only reason I do this.  What people think or say doesn’t matter because I’m already working on something else.  What you see is only the result of many hours of work but you arrive when it’s all over.

I know you have already started working on the new album so what can we expect and what are the upcoming plans for Pensees Nocturnes and yourself?

Well I’ve done quite a few things but there is still a lot to do.  I can’t say a lot of things then except that it will be something less kind, more unhealthy and dissonant with many surprises. Nothing is really planed, I prefer to avoid as far as I can every constraint, even time constraint: I’ll take all the time I need to produce something that totally fits to what I want.

I’ll leave your any final words with which to leave us a poem or a grain a philosophical wisdom.

Thank you for showing interest in Pensees Nocturnes and these interesting questions.  I don’t know how to say goodbye so I will just leave here one of my favourite quotation. It’s from the French playwright called Jacques Deval: "God loved birds and created trees. Man loved birds and created cages."