If you believe that the chickens are going to win the fight against the men and the machines, than probably you are familiar with the sublimity of Igorrr‘s music. Never stop believing and read this rare interview with the mad creator of Igorrr – Gautier Serre.
Drummo Projid: Hello from the independent Bulgarian media for music – DJambore.com. Your long-awaited return to the music scene is more than stunning. Where do you get inspiration for your music? What is your Muse?
Gautier Serre: Hello from the French countryside! I’m not sure if I get the inspiration from anything specific, everything can be an inspiration as long as it matter in the real life: my chicken «Patrick», the rivers of the south of France, a hoover, Mediterranean food, anything can be a source of musical inspiration.
I’ve read more reviews and publications in metal websites and magazines about your new album “Savage Sinusoid”, than in sites presenting electronic music… How do you define/describe your music?
Igorrr is always hard to present or to describe as it’s not a metal act, even thought we all are metalhead in the band, it’s not either an electronic project, not a baroque either a Balkan band, it’s something which follow my personal tastes in music without any border and without any commercial purpose, meaning that I don’t really care if the music will be liked or understood, I just do what I want to hear.
It started when I was a teenager looking for a band or an artist to listen to, destroying all the limits of music, a band far away from all the horribly boring mainstream musics from TV and radios back then. I didn’t find any band like that, so basically, I just wrote the music I wanted to listen to: this is what inspired me. I love metal, baroque music, electronic or traditional Balkan music and I wanted to have all the music I love in one place, without segregation. I’m making my own «ideal music», like a big party with metalhead, gypsies, electronic music nerds, baroque heads and Indian traditional musicians, playing all together. I guess this album has more reviews in the metal community because the label (Metal Blade Records) which released this album is mostly into metal.
I think your new album “Savage Sinusoid” is a real time-travelling, adventure in the world of myths and legends, a trip in the depths of the pure underground. For me, the album is more a symphony than just a sum of tracks. What are the main values and messages in your album for the audience?
I don’t know really much what to answer, I think the music should speak by itself, rather than being explained by words. Still, I would say the main value is the quality of each second of the music we wanted to create in this album, every sound, every genre of music has been in research for long time to reach the essence of every musical universe. Savage Sinusoid has been in the work for more than 4 years and it has been a very rich experience to make it real, if this album has a value to show up I think it’s this one, to be able to enjoy each little detail fully, as much as the whole thing in global.
What story does “Savage Sinusoid” tell? What is predominant – Chaos or Order?
Some people speak about chaos while listening to my music, Savage Sinusoid or any other album, for me it’s a perfectly natural and logic music, there is no chaos in it, everything is at its right place and has been though and rethought. If there is a story in it, it would be a simple one, sharing and explaining what is my personal vision of music, where every little detail matter.
How did you get such a large team of musicians for the recording of your last album? Tell us, please, any curious story from the studio, behind the scenes.
I had this wish with Savage Sinusoid to use no sample at all, no sample for Balkan music but no sample for Baroque music as well, so I choose to get in touch with specialists of every musical universe I used.
There is Teloch (from Mayhem) playing some black metal parts, Katerina Chrobokova to play the baroque part, Travis Ryan (from Cattle Decapitation) to represent the death metal growl voice, Pierre Mussi to represent the Musette, Laure Le Prunenec to sing the baroque voices, etc… There is actually a big list of many different musicians, each one specialist in their own genre and open minded enough to play beside extremely different people.
There are a couple of funny story behind the scene, there is this one when we use this Helium gaz with Laure to make her voice higher and try some recordings, some recordings that we didn’t keep at the end as it sounded not good. There is also during the ieuD recordings while I was taking the Laurent’s voice at the intro, in order to make his voice emotionally stronger, I decided to play the wrong version of the song on his headphone, a different version of ieuD, with no harpsichord, made to influence his voice to be more deep. You can even see other little stories on YouTube, watching the «Savage Sinusoid Making of».
How did you decide to have a Harpsichord sound in your music? And why did you choose this instrument exactly? Is it the only key to Baroque sound?
By the years, I became to love this instrument. I remember when I first heard a harpsichord playing a baroque piece, I found it very unpleasant, very cold instrument, so much connected with baroque that it cannot really be used now for something else than baroque. This instrument has been so representative of this style of music that I first used it for fun, enjoying the sound of it just for the fun. By spending time analyzing baroque pieces played by an harpsichord, I noticed lots of details and differences coming up, which makes the sound of the instrument very different from one recording to another, step by step, I learned how to really love this instrument for real, and not always for the joke as before.
Having a real harpsichord at the studio was awesome, we have rented a truck to be able to bring the instrument from Praha, CZ Republic, to the French countryside where we had to wait long time for the instrument to get the right temperature of the room in the studio to get it tuned and to have the right sound, then we could start recording.
It was important for me to have this real instrument as on this album I wanted to reach the essence of every musical genre, and I wanted to record this very old instrument with modern microphones to have the best result possible in order to mix the baroque music with other very different styles as death metal or electronics.
What place is the world today? Is your music relevant to all what’s happening in the world today (the pendulum returns from the pole of globalization to the pole of protectionism)?
In some parts, I guess it’s relevant as I’m living in this world while all those things are happening, so I think somehow I’m expressing all this craziness. I’m not sure what things you’re talking about thought…
OK, what do you think about the music mainstream business?
I don’t really know about mainstream business as our music is made for the love of the music, and as you can hear, it hasn’t been made to be popular. Business sells music, while passion gives a sense by what we are doing, meaningless if it’s sellable or not. On our side, we’re just choosing our way to make us satisfied by our music.
According your opinion, what is the greatest musical event of the XX century? And – the biggest event of the XXI century?
I would probably say the greatest musical event of the XX century was the creation and live playing of 4’’33 from John Cage.
About the XXI century, until now I would probably say that the biggest musical event is the composition of Patrick – Chicken Sonata.
Finally, who will win – the man or the machine?
Chickens are going to win because nobody expect them.
IGORRR are performing @ Mixtape 5, Sofia, 3rd of November
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