*(image credit below)
"(...)Peter's truck knocks over several of the clutching creatures.One Zombie, caught directly under the front wheels, is still alive and clutching at the air. Several creatures jump at Peter's driver side window.
Roger, grabbing his gun, moves to leave his truck on Peter's side, but the trucks are too close. His door won't openenough to get out. He rolls down his window. Peter has noticed Roger's door won't open, and the Trooper fumbles with the gear shift in order to pull away, but he hears Roger shouting:
Roger: THE WINDOWS...OPEN YOUR WINDOW...YOUR WINDOW...
Peter dives across the cab and rolls down the passenger window.
Roger leans out his open window, trying to get his weapon into firing position. One or two Zombies are squeezing through the narrow space between the truck. They are just about to reach Roger when he fires, killing the lead ghoul. More Zombies move around Roger's cab, moments away from him.(...)" **
Zombie Zombie is not a new horror movie, but a French band composed of Etienne Jaumet (originally saxophonist and sound engineer) who's playing synthetizers, and Cosmic Neman, the drummer. Their music is worthy of an original soundtrack though, and I would easily drive this road until death set me free...
Roger, grabbing his gun, moves to leave his truck on Peter's side, but the trucks are too close. His door won't openenough to get out. He rolls down his window. Peter has noticed Roger's door won't open, and the Trooper fumbles with the gear shift in order to pull away, but he hears Roger shouting:
Roger: THE WINDOWS...OPEN YOUR WINDOW...YOUR WINDOW...
Peter dives across the cab and rolls down the passenger window.
Roger leans out his open window, trying to get his weapon into firing position. One or two Zombies are squeezing through the narrow space between the truck. They are just about to reach Roger when he fires, killing the lead ghoul. More Zombies move around Roger's cab, moments away from him.(...)" **
Zombie Zombie is not a new horror movie, but a French band composed of Etienne Jaumet (originally saxophonist and sound engineer) who's playing synthetizers, and Cosmic Neman, the drummer. Their music is worthy of an original soundtrack though, and I would easily drive this road until death set me free...
F-R: Where did you both meet?
Neman: We know each other from different parisian acquaintances. We shared the same studio in Main d'Oeuvres, in Paris, which is still our studio for about 10 years now. We naturally started to play together.
F-R: You both seem to be very influenced by a cinema atmosphere...
Neman: In term of music we share the same taste for horror movies, from Goblin's music of Dario Argento's movies, or Carpenter, to Romero. Those people really have influenced us also because they use the same instruments as us.
F-R: Your album could easily be the original soundtrack of a film...
Neman: When we did the record, we set a film atmosphere with the titles of each track. It was all about the end of the American dream, at the end of the 60's, with references of films like Punishment Park of Peter Watkins. I often use a tape recorder and I use sentences from different movies that I add to our music, and actually there was this backdrop behind but we didn't mean to make it like a real original soundtrack.
F-R: If someone would like to make a movie out of your music, would it be possible?
Neman: Yes of course!
Etienne: Sure, someone very talented! (smile)
F-R: That would be an idea to make a video music for each track of your album, like a series that all together will make a whole movie.
Neman: Yes, it would be so great!
Etienne: When we did the tracks, I was trying to follow my imagination, to evoke some atmospheres, to try to tell something but with sounds.
Neman: The instrumental music is evocative. We're trying to provoke emotions with sounds, for instance how to create anguish, you know, this kind of emotions.
F-R: Versatile records is mostly a techno/electro label. How did you meet them?
Etienne: Well, they came to us.
Neman: The label manager saw one of our show during a D-i-r-t-y party at le Point Ephémère, in Paris, and he really liked it. He called us the day after and told us that he really liked our show and that he'd like to make an album with us. It was simple like that.
Like a lot of electro labels, they are opening up to rock music and I think we're in-between rock and electro.
F-R: What about your scene?
Neman: People like Turzi is part of our scene in Paris. We like to collaborate with people like them when we perform live. Sylvestre, the drummer did the design cover of our album. They have a label called Pan European. They've released a very nice compilation called Voyage, with unknown artists, and it is a very interesting scene.
Aqua Nebula Oscillator, Total Peace, all these bands are part of a micro parisian scene, but they are trying to show that there is not only French Touch or Yelle in France.
Etienne: David from Herman Düne also worked on our album.
Neman: Our scene can be related to Sonic Boom who played with Spacemen 3, I grew up listening to this band. At present, we're playing with Silver Apples who are the pioneers of this kind of music and they still are. They were the first to use analog synthetizers and did music with.
Etienne: I don't feel stuck to a music scene. We can easily talk about cinema. There are different film atmopsheres in our texts.
Neman: We can also talk about the French psychedlic scene. People like to talk about Krautrock in Germany, but in France a lot of stuff happened.
Etienne: Very incredible bands!
Neman: Such as the band Alpes, with Catherine Ribeiro who has changed a lot.
Etienne: She is now doing music as "Chanson Française". The Alpes were making their own instruments. It was very exciting.
Oh, I also like Gilbert Artman, of Urban Sax. All these people are extremely talented, they are not anecdotal hipsters.
Neman: They are mainly related to an experimental, contemporary art scene.
Etienne: To get back to cinema, what I think is interesting in John Carpenter's work, is that he composed the music of his own films. I really like the connivance between both things. With few notes of synths and a beat-box, he can make a very strong original soundtrack. I would love to get to this level.
Neman: Francois de Roubaix who made the music of a lot of famous French movies such as La Scoumoune, Le Vieux Fusil, or Le Samouraï, but also the music of the animation series Chapi Chapo, was making music with a lot of old synths, he was passionate with scuba diving , and he was supposed to make the soundtrack of : Le Monde Du Silence, the documentary film made by Cousteau, which he did. But Cousteau was not this kind of avant-gardist in term of music, and he refused it. It was a drama in De Roubaix's life, but the music exists. The record has been re-edited, and it's really beautiful. It's like small electronic sounds, really tripping.
Etienne: this project was really important to him, I'm sure that the film would have been really good with his music.
F-R: Are you gonna try to approach the cinema?
Etienne: No, we don't do approaches.
Neman: I gave our cd to Dario Argento, with my telephone number, but I never got any news. (laugh)
Notes on zombies:
** Extract: DAWN OFTHE DEAD (The working draft 1977)by George A. Romero
* Image from the book : Eine Pinot Grigio, Bitte / Bernadette Corporation / Sternberg Press.
"A novel-in-disguise, Eine Pinot Grigio, Bitte is a dark foray into capitalism gone awry. Set against a backdrop of decadent zombies, the screenplay follows John Delp and Aude as they shoot a movie in the cities of Paris, Berlin, and Mexico City. With its wild and messy sense for the absurd, Eine Pinot Grigio, Bitte unravels that conventional Hollywood repertoire of screenwriting all to better recycle both fiction and the real. "
F-R: You both seem to be very influenced by a cinema atmosphere...
Neman: In term of music we share the same taste for horror movies, from Goblin's music of Dario Argento's movies, or Carpenter, to Romero. Those people really have influenced us also because they use the same instruments as us.
F-R: Your album could easily be the original soundtrack of a film...
Neman: When we did the record, we set a film atmosphere with the titles of each track. It was all about the end of the American dream, at the end of the 60's, with references of films like Punishment Park of Peter Watkins. I often use a tape recorder and I use sentences from different movies that I add to our music, and actually there was this backdrop behind but we didn't mean to make it like a real original soundtrack.
F-R: If someone would like to make a movie out of your music, would it be possible?
Neman: Yes of course!
Etienne: Sure, someone very talented! (smile)
F-R: That would be an idea to make a video music for each track of your album, like a series that all together will make a whole movie.
Neman: Yes, it would be so great!
Etienne: When we did the tracks, I was trying to follow my imagination, to evoke some atmospheres, to try to tell something but with sounds.
Neman: The instrumental music is evocative. We're trying to provoke emotions with sounds, for instance how to create anguish, you know, this kind of emotions.
F-R: Versatile records is mostly a techno/electro label. How did you meet them?
Etienne: Well, they came to us.
Neman: The label manager saw one of our show during a D-i-r-t-y party at le Point Ephémère, in Paris, and he really liked it. He called us the day after and told us that he really liked our show and that he'd like to make an album with us. It was simple like that.
Like a lot of electro labels, they are opening up to rock music and I think we're in-between rock and electro.
F-R: What about your scene?
Neman: People like Turzi is part of our scene in Paris. We like to collaborate with people like them when we perform live. Sylvestre, the drummer did the design cover of our album. They have a label called Pan European. They've released a very nice compilation called Voyage, with unknown artists, and it is a very interesting scene.
Aqua Nebula Oscillator, Total Peace, all these bands are part of a micro parisian scene, but they are trying to show that there is not only French Touch or Yelle in France.
Etienne: David from Herman Düne also worked on our album.
Neman: Our scene can be related to Sonic Boom who played with Spacemen 3, I grew up listening to this band. At present, we're playing with Silver Apples who are the pioneers of this kind of music and they still are. They were the first to use analog synthetizers and did music with.
Etienne: I don't feel stuck to a music scene. We can easily talk about cinema. There are different film atmopsheres in our texts.
Neman: We can also talk about the French psychedlic scene. People like to talk about Krautrock in Germany, but in France a lot of stuff happened.
Etienne: Very incredible bands!
Neman: Such as the band Alpes, with Catherine Ribeiro who has changed a lot.
Etienne: She is now doing music as "Chanson Française". The Alpes were making their own instruments. It was very exciting.
Oh, I also like Gilbert Artman, of Urban Sax. All these people are extremely talented, they are not anecdotal hipsters.
Neman: They are mainly related to an experimental, contemporary art scene.
Etienne: To get back to cinema, what I think is interesting in John Carpenter's work, is that he composed the music of his own films. I really like the connivance between both things. With few notes of synths and a beat-box, he can make a very strong original soundtrack. I would love to get to this level.
Neman: Francois de Roubaix who made the music of a lot of famous French movies such as La Scoumoune, Le Vieux Fusil, or Le Samouraï, but also the music of the animation series Chapi Chapo, was making music with a lot of old synths, he was passionate with scuba diving , and he was supposed to make the soundtrack of : Le Monde Du Silence, the documentary film made by Cousteau, which he did. But Cousteau was not this kind of avant-gardist in term of music, and he refused it. It was a drama in De Roubaix's life, but the music exists. The record has been re-edited, and it's really beautiful. It's like small electronic sounds, really tripping.
Etienne: this project was really important to him, I'm sure that the film would have been really good with his music.
F-R: Are you gonna try to approach the cinema?
Etienne: No, we don't do approaches.
Neman: I gave our cd to Dario Argento, with my telephone number, but I never got any news. (laugh)
Notes on zombies:
** Extract: DAWN OFTHE DEAD (The working draft 1977)by George A. Romero
* Image from the book : Eine Pinot Grigio, Bitte / Bernadette Corporation / Sternberg Press.
"A novel-in-disguise, Eine Pinot Grigio, Bitte is a dark foray into capitalism gone awry. Set against a backdrop of decadent zombies, the screenplay follows John Delp and Aude as they shoot a movie in the cities of Paris, Berlin, and Mexico City. With its wild and messy sense for the absurd, Eine Pinot Grigio, Bitte unravels that conventional Hollywood repertoire of screenwriting all to better recycle both fiction and the real. "
Zombie Zombie: A land for Renegades / Versatile Records
Released on March 3.
