Intervista Alcest (Neige)

Alcest is a French band which, with its peculiar mix of Metal and Shoegaze, created one of the most recognizable sounds of the latest years.
They are very loved in Italy and we couldn’t miss the opportunity to interview their leader Stéphane Paut, also know as Neige, a few days after their gigs in Italy.

Hi Stephan, welcome to TrueMetal!

Thank you for having me.

You’re playing an insane amount of concerts in this tour, more than a month straight with not a single resting day in between! How hard is it? Do you have any particular way to keep up with it?

It’s very exhausting, very, very exhausting; I knew that it would be like this and I have not the most endurance in the world, but it’s okay.
I still have my voice, I’m always afraid to lose it…yeah, we try to take it easy, to not do too many crazy things like parties every day and stuff, so sometimes we have to be reasonable and go to sleep as early as we can.
Yeah, I try to keep in good shape and here we are; I think it depends on the day, some days we are really tired and some days are fine.

With all these concerts you’ve been playing you are seeing a lot of different venues, does the venue have any influence on your live performance or on the setlist?

No, it’s funny, it’s a question that I’m asked a lot of times, where I prefer to play, venues, festivals vs. club shows, I have NO preference, it only depends on the mood I am in.
We can do great show in tiny clubs and we can do great shows in huge festivals, there are no rules, or bad shows too, you know, the venue doesn’t really matter.

With Kodama you brought back some classic Alcest element while taking in some new external influences from the Japanese culture, how are those two thing related? Will we see other external influences in the future?

Yeah, the Japanese thing is new but it’s something that I’ve always been connected to, because I’ve been a fan of Japan for a long time and I’ve never introduced this influence in Alcest, but this time it seemed really right, because we’ve been touring two times in Japan and it had such a big impression on me, when I came back to France I really wanted to do something with it, you know, to do something with all these things we have seen and that we have discovered in Japan, it was so inspiring.
After “Shelter” we really felt that we really needed to connect again with our own sound, because “Shelter” was really influenced by other bands, other genres, and I think that we needed to sound like Alcest again.
I think that “Kodama” has a lot of new elements, it’s not just like an album in exactly the same vein as our previous one, it’s very different for me, it’s a completely different journey.

You already have a song in a language different than French, have you ever thought of having a song in Japanese in Kodama?

You mean that I would sing?

You or a guest, it the same

No, not really.
There was English on the previous record just for one song, I’m not singing in English, it was a guest, there’s French and also there is an invented language that I’m having on every album.
There is on every album one or two songs that don’t have lyrics and it’s quite funny because people always ask “So, what are the lyrics of this song?” and the song just have no lyrics, that’s quite cool that people think that it’s proper lyrics.

So what’s the importance of the lyrics in a song? Do they have the same relevance as the music?

The music always comes first, but it doesn’t mean that the lyrics are not important, they’re as important as the music, they’re just not my thing, you know, to write lyrics.
Also that’s why sometimes it’s really convenient for me to not use any lyrics and sometimes just invent things.

You’ve been active with some other bands, both in studio and live, is this a way to find inspiration for your stuff with Alcest or is it just a way to do something different?

It’s just a way to do something different; I was doing it especially before, when I had more time, because now it’s not possible anymore for me to be invested in other bands like rehearsing…I still do some stuff, but it’s just guest appearance, like for example I was doing a guest vocal appearance on the new Heteroir record and I’ve been doing drums last year for Sylvaine.

So yeah, I always try to do things outside of Alcest but it’s not easy when I’m lacking of time and it’s like holidays for me, I have no pressure, no responsibilities, I don’t like to compose for other bands, I don’t like to write lyrics for other bands, so they give me the lyrics tell me where to sing and I do it.

Your music to some extent might sound not very Metal to the metalheads and not very Shoegaze to fans of Shoegaze, do you ever feel conflicted about it or wish you had a different fanbase?

We have a great fanbase because we have a mix of Shoegaze people and metalheads, so it’s perfect, it’s either metalheads that listen to Shoegaze or Shoegaze people who listen also to Metal.
15 years ago, when I started to be in the Metal scene, it was very, very separate, all the genres were very different, people weren’t mixing with each other, you couldn’t listen to Black Metal and Indie Rock, it wasn’t possible, and now almost every Black Metal guy also listen to very different genres, and I think we were one of the firsts bands to really mix the two very different universes.
I think this is the originality of the project, the fact that we are not really part of the Metal scene and not really part of the Shoegaze scene.

A recent news is that Peste Noire, a band you also worked with in the past (drums on “Aryan Supremacy”), has been excluded from some festivals because of their ideology, what do you think about it?

I prefer not to answer to this question, no comment.

You recently played “Ecailles de Lune” in its entirety, will there be other similar concerts with you playing maybe some other album?

Yeah, yeah, we’d love it, we just need to have the opportunity, to be invited by some festival to play the first record maybe…

So you’d leave it to special occasions like particular festivals, not for normal gigs?

It depends, if we got the offer it could be either.

Your music could be described as very spiritual and otherworldly; does it reflect your view on life? Are you religious?

Spirituality and religion is very different; I am very spiritual but I hate religion.
I really don’t like organized religion and the fact that they are using fate for things that really have nothing to do with…it’s just the purpose of having a connection with a spiritual being.
You don’t need to follow any dogma or to read any book to have a spiritual life, you can feel the spirituality in everything, you can go have a walk in the nature and you’ll feel the spiritual side of life.

You don’t need anyone to tell you what to do or not to do, I am deeply against religion and I believe in God.

Going back to the new album, do you think that this period of fear and uncertainty, especially in France, influenced “Kodama”?

Yeah, in a way it surely did.
Not in the beginning of the process because the songs, most of the songs, were written before the events, but for example the outro was made after, and the outro is very, very dark.
The sound too, we wanted something very, very hard and with a lot of energy, a lot of anger.
This is something with had in our mind when we started to work on the record from the start, but I think that everything that happened in Paris just had pushed this thing even further.
It really had a big impact on me.

You’ve played 4 gigs in Italy making it one of the countries where you played the most in this tour, how’s your relationship with the Italian fans?

Italy has been really great, the shows were full, people were very, very enthusiastic, the venues are not always so good, the conditions are not always so good…I heard that the venues inside the cities are closing in Italy, so many are in the suburbs, so it’s not very well located…yeah, the conditions were not so good, but it was okay and the fans were great, it’s one of our favourite audience in Europe and I know that a lot of our biggest fans are from Italy.

With 5 studio albums in your discography and so many gigs in the tour this might be a good time for a live album, have you considered recording one?

Yeah, I just don’t know exactly in what occasion.
We have to think about it, sit down and…but people don’t even buy regular albums anymore, so would they buy a live album? I’m not so sure…
I don’t know if we really want to have a live album, I really prefer the studio side of Alcest.

So at the moment it’s not in your plans?

No, no, it’s possible of course, but it’s not in our close future.

Thank you, message for the readers

We really, really loved the shows in Italy, the response we got was fantastic, we really hope that people will keep coming to see us in Italy and we’ll try to play as much as we can!

Davide Sciaky (with the contribution of Carlo Mauri)