BTS WITH ALCEST AT MELTDOWN FESTIVAL 2018
ALCEST: L'OISEAU DE PROIE
When I got the email from Alcest’s management saying that the band’s frontman would be available to interview and that media passes would be arranged for my wingwoman Léonore and I, my reaction was both that of animal joy and bewilderment.
Alcest has been the soundtrack to my adult life since Souvenirs d’un autre monde was released in 2007 (I would have been 20 years old).
The mid-late 2000s genuinely felt like a bit of a goldrush for bands who were pushing the boundaries of atmospheric metal. 2006 yielded a particularly high calibre of such releases, including, Negura Bunget’s Om, Drudkh’s Songs of Grief and Solitude and Agalloch’s solid follow up to The Mantle with Ashes Against the Grain to name just a few.
Alcest performing live at the Southbank inside the Queen Elizabeth Hall. 17 June 2018.
Shortly after this time, friends and people from bands who I respected, from Chicago in the US to Aix-en-Provence in France, started to gravitate towards this phenomenon from Bagnols-sur-Cèze who had just dropped their debut album. With this sudden culmination of interest, I decided to give them a listen.
For those who don’t already know, Alcest’s association with black metal largely spans from their formative days and the release of the 4-track demo tape entitled, Tristesse Hivernale in 2001. Their subsequent EP and albums are complete departures from this genre and yet much of Alcest’s overall work still contains small kernels of black metal energy (evoked by double kicks, piercing screams, tremolo picking and heavily distorted guitars). Where black metal selects positively (but quite exclusively) towards traits such as dissonance, minor scales and a typically low quality of production however, Alcest embraced a brighter sound, with clear verse-chorus sections and simple but beautiful melodic passages which conveyed fragility through innocence as well as melancholia.
Where a lesser band might have languished or destroyed the fragile surface tension between black metal and post-rock, Alcest not only remained airborne, they positively soared (though not without the occasional blast beats!); like a bird harnessing thermal air columns, to gain and adjust altitude.
Fast forward more than ten years later and Alcest have secured their position as the stalwarts of "blackgaze", with two split albums, two EPs including one live performance at the BBC, and five studio albums of which the latest is Kodama released in 2016.
Furthermore, they are arguably responsible for emboldening a wave of black-gaze bands such as Deafheaven who have found considerable acclaim in the US. They have also helped to support like-minded projects, such as Sylvaine, which is spearheaded by fellow multi-instrumentalist, Kathrine Shepard (Shepard notably provided vocals for the track 'Kodama' whilst Alcest frontman, Neige, has contributed percussively to the project's Wistful album, appearing also on their forthcoming album Atoms Aligned, Coming Undone).
I have been working with Winterhalter, the drummer, for quite a long time now and he tells me what he thinks with a more objective point of view but [Alcest] comes from a very personal place.
The success of Alcest's work appears to spring, at least partly, from their symbiotic relationship with nature in the Romantic sense in addition to the profound level of trust established between the band's founding member, Neige (Stéphane Paut) and Winterhalter (Jean Duflandre) who have worked together since 2009. On their tours, the Alcest contingent is shored up by the long-serving (dare I say, legendary) musicians Indria Saray and Zero. In a break with tradition, Saray also played bass on the last album.
At the very apex of the Alcest pyramid is Neige's abiding memories of other worlds, which provide the prism for the group's musical direction and album cover art. What is interesting is that while many bands actively cultivate a distinct sound or explore specific concepts for individual albums (Bathory's Blood on Ice being one such well known example), the quintessence of Alcest is precisely the 'concept' - the potential for a reality (or several) which exists beyond our own but which cannot be intuited by our senses:
It's very strange. You know when I am composing for Alcest, there is this Alcest 'thing'... it's a certain type of melody... It's a part of me and I know it's the expression of this part of me that I feel doesn't really belong to this place. Maybe everyone is coming from a different place...
With the Kodama album, the concept evolved in response to the growing influence of filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki's work, most notably the film Princess Mononoke, which explores the duality of the natural world versus the human world. In Princess Mononoke, as evidenced elsewhere in Japanese folklore, the Kodama are the spirits that inhabit the trees and are the "sign that the woods are healthy".
"Kodama" (木魅) from the Gazu Hyakki Yagyō by Toriyama Sekien. Source: Wikipedia
ALCEST AU PAYS DES MERVEILLES: LIVE AT MELTDOWN FESTIVAL
Watching Alcest play a full set at the Southbank Centre in London as part of the 2018 Meltdown Festival, a series of events curated by none other than Robert Smith of the Cure, was a revelatory experience entirely befitting of their vision.
Unlike other occasions where I have seen Alcest perform (whether filling the support slot on tour with Opeth or appearing as part of the tight billing at various metal festivals), this was the first time I was seeing them occupy the main stage. With ample time to prepare lighting and sound checking, it felt as though something close to otherworldly had been availed by the stage technicians (the live photos taken by Caitlin Mogridge are a testament to that effect).
There is also something unusually reverent about going to see a band like Alcest play at a venue like the Queen Elizabeth Hall at the Southbank which is entirely seated. Row upon row of metalheads (amongst some indie kids and others) sat patiently, as if awaiting some hallowed event. For the uninitiated, seated venues can of course present challenges (I am still savouring the images I have mentally inventoried of metallers collectively windmilling in their chairs). However as someone who is slightly below average height and invariably finds they cannot see the woods for the trees (no offense intended to tall people), I found I was able to take in the full panorama of the show.
This had a completely unexpected impact on me. Physically sensing the music resound in the hall and seeing at once the spectacle unfold on stage with a depth of field that was unfamiliar to me, was strangely emotional. I would not be surprised if it took something with the magnitude of seeing the Aurora Borealis for the first time to rival that feeling.
Halfway through the opening track I stole a glance at Léonore and my immediate neighbours in an attempt to gauge the reaction and saw people staring completely transfixed. Alcest were at this moment, I realised, completely in their element. Another thing that I clearly recall is how very few people seemed to be filming on their phones. Flash photography is often monitored at venues like the Southbank but I doubt this was the reason most people sat in absolutely rapture. Even the earthier distortion of tracks like Souvenirs d'un autre monde and Onyx had a haunting clarity to them which made you hang on to every note.
The Southbank setlist. The Kodama album was played in its entirety.
1 Kodama
2 Eclosion
3 Je suis d’ailleurs
4 Untouched
5 Oiseaux de proie
6 Onyx
7 Autre temps
8 Souvenirs d’un autre monde
9 Percées de lumière
10 Là où naissent les couleurs nouvelles
11 Délivrance
After the show, we hung around for awhile by the merch stand, until it was time to meet Winterhalter and set up for the interview with Neige. When we finally met, I was bowled over by their genuine warmth and generosity, given the physical demands of the tour and how mentally taxing life on the road must be (they had played Download Festival in France just a day before and were preparing for their imminent tour of South America).
Winterhalter beamed as we shook hands in the lounge and mentioned that they had also met fans from various Alliances Françaises around the world on their tours. I ended up emitting a load of nervous fan energy in French but they were more than good-natured and were quick to compensate for any power imbalance, asking us if we wanted water or a beer while we waited.
In conversation with Neige (Stéphane Paut). 17 June 2018
We were then directed to a small soundproof room where Léonore and I set up our two cameras. Neige appeared shortly after and likewise radiated with enthusiasm and positivity, insisting that we switch to first names terms, confirming once again their salt-of-the-earth as a group of people.
And that's exactly how Alcest are: hardworking and wonderfully sincere people who care about their fans as much as their music (the opposite, ironically, of the protagonist 'Alceste' of Molière's play Le Misanthrope). Needless to say, everything fell into place with the interview and having felt reasonably nervous at the start, I realised I had allowed my guard to drop entirely by time the interview was fully underway (this resulted in hours of painstaking work trying to cut out my pointless interruptions and follow up points on the dreaded Premiere Pro!). Speaking with Neige did however make me appreciate not only just how calm and serene he is as a person (something which translates well into Alcest's dream-like passages) but also how thoughtful and detailed he is in the answers he provides and we discussed everything from hyper-masculinity in metal, to the influence of anime on certain generations in France, to the relationship between nature and technology, Slowdive and silent meditation.
The shortened interview with Neige at the London Southbank Meltdown Festival will be posted to our dedicated Alcest page in due course. You can also follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram for more updates.
