Intervista Alcest (Neige)

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Hi Neige, how are you doing?

Very well and you? Are you doing okay?

I’m good, thanks! Let’s talk about “Spiritual Instinct”, I read in the press release that it was the lengthiest recording process of your career, it took from January to May 2019. Why did it take so long? Was it planned to be such a long process, or did you have any issues?

Of course it was not planned, we actually planned to make a short recording because the writing of the album was very spontaneous, you know, quite fast and everything, so we thought in the studio it would be a little bit of the same thing but actually it was the opposite: it took us a really long time to find our sound, to record everything and to mix.
This time we recorded on tape, so we took a tape recorder and it took a lot of time, because it’s an all different way of working as opposed to the digital.
We put a lot of pressure on ourselves because we really liked the sound and everything on “Kodama” and we wanted to have something just as good, or even better, for the new one and it’s not easy because we didn’t have a real deadline, so you tend to spend much time working on small details.
So, yeah, it was not easy.

Was it the first time you recorded on tape? Was it challenging or the same business as usual?

For the drums we already did it on “Kodama”, but for the guitars, the bass and stuff like that it was the first time.
Yeah, there was a lot of preparation, you have to prepare the tapes every day, the equipment, it’s a big hassle, it’s a very big hassle and it made us lose a lot of time, so we’re not sure we’ll do it again in the future.

You talked about the songwriting being fast and spontaneous, when did that happen? Did you write while you were touring, or after you got back home?

I was writing when I was coming back home after every tour for “Kodama”, it was quite spread, it could be months between the different songs, but usually when I was starting working on a song I would finish it in a quite short time which is unusual for me because I always take a quite long time to finish the songs.
This time it was quite spontaneous and different.

Can you explain to me the meaning of the album title, “Spiritual Instinct”? And why is in English, something you’ve only done once before (with “Shelter”)?

The English is for a very simple reason, it’s because it doesn’t sound as good in French, and I prefer this title in English, but all the lyrics are in French.
For the meaning, it’s a bit of a summary of what has been my spiritual life up to now, because I’ve always been into spirituality but on the other hand I’m not into religion, so I have a lot of beliefs, I believe in things like afterlife, a lot of different things, but I’m not following any organised religion.
I want to discover things by myself, I don’t want any master, any priest to listen to, I’ve always been very independent in terms of spirituality.
At the same time it’s something that I really need in my life, spirituality has been so important for me and especially in periods when you tour a lot and you kind of loose touch with it, you kind of loose touch with yourself, but you can still hear it kind of scream inside you.
I chose the word “instinct” because of this need of spirituality in my life, just like if I needed to eat or to breath, it’s a real instinct for me and I’m sure I’m not the only person.

With “Kodama” you had the Japanese concept and the confrontation between natural world and human world. Is there any kind of concept in this new album? Is spirituality the concept?

Yeah, it’s more or less about this and about how to also manage to evolve as a person in your life and become a better person.
This record was darker, I put a lot more dark things because, yeah, the thing when you start a spiritual journey is that you have to look at yourself in the mirror and see yourself exactly as you are, with the good and the bad things, and it can happen that you have to face some demons.
That’s a part of the concept, this opposition between very primal and more down to earth and sometimes dark sides as opposed to something much higher and much more spiritual.
I always have the feeling that I am almost two persons, someone who has to live here and someone who’s also looking in the sky, it’s not easy to combine these two different aspects, you know.

I’ve been listening to the album for the last few days and I agree with you, it’s very dark and also very heavy, very Metal. What inspired you to push so much on the heavy side of Alcest?

I didn’t choose, you know, when I took my guitar to write some new stuff that’s just what happened, I guess I just had some darkness to put outside of me.
As I told you it’s been a quite intense and difficult period because we’ve been very, very busy and I probably have lost touch with myself and I became quite anxious, I’ve had a lot of sleeping issues too, since two years I don’t sleep anymore in a normal way.
I think it was necessary to use these feeling in the music, as well as the beautiful feelings.

The artwork is very minimal, who drew it? Did you give him any input?

I’m always behind everything, for everything visual I always have a very specific idea of what we need.
It’s been created by Parisian duo, and illustrator duo called Førtifem, they are very good friends of mine, they’ve been working on “Kodama” as well.
The idea was to…you can see the opposition I told you about in the creature, it has a very noble and reflective face, beautiful angel wings, but it also has the claws and the more animal and primal side, the more instinctive side, in a way, and that’s again the combination of two opposites.
It looks vary alien, very strange, I’ve always felt myself like some kind of alien, an outsider not fitting anywhere, I’ve never been fitting where I was at in my life, and even Alcest is a very different type of band, people, when they ask us what type of music we do, I don’t even know what to say.
So, there’s always this feeling of not being really from here, and I can really see something like this in this creature too, it’s a very enigmatic and otherworldly creature.

I read that in the deluxe edition of the album will feature a remix of “Sapphire” by Perturbator. His music is of course very different from yours, how did this collaboration come about?

He’s a fan of Alcest and I’m a fan of Perturbator and we live in the same city, so we are friends, so that’s it.
We just like each other’s music and we started to make something really special, the combination of the two different styles, I think it’s really exciting.
I heard the remix some time ago and it’s really great, so I’m really happy.

Did he do all the work on his own, or did the two of you work on it together?

No, he did everything on his own.
I asked him to do a remix of this track and I didn’t give him much directions to follow, and it just turned up great.
He did pretty much everything by himself.

The last time we spoke I asked you about the possibility of you recording a live album. You were into the idea, but you didn’t have any plans. Is there any update on this?

It’s exactly the same now, I mean, we like the idea but it seems like it’s complicated to make it really happen, I don’t know why.
I don’t know, yeah, we should take the time to do it.
The thing is we don’t have so much time and it’s all a question of priorities, right? What you do in your life, and for us I guess that’s not a priority, but I know that some people would really like to have a live album of Alcest, so that’s something we should think about.

When we spoke, during the tour of “Kodama” you played almost every day for more than a month, will your next tour be as intense?

Yeah, I guess, I guess it will be lots and lots of touring in the world, but maybe this time we will try to make it a bit more smooth, you can’t tour that much for so many years and not feel exhausted, you know?
I guess we have to be a little bit more careful with how we are touring and how much time we spend on the road.

You’ve been with Prophecy Records for your whole career, what pushed you to work with Nuclear Blast this time, and how was it to work with such a big label?

You know, we spent almost all our career on Prophecy and they did a very nice job for us, but we felt that at this point of our career we needed to try a different way of working and have a bigger network, bigger promotion and everything and I’m not sure it was possible with Prophecy.
Why Nuclear Blast? It was because we met a lot of labels, we had appointments with labels and with Nuclear Blast we just loved they were talking to us.
We thought they would be more like, I don’t know, a bit more like business-oriented, actually it was all the opposite: all they cared about was the band, they really liked our vision as a band and they didn’t want to interfere with it.
So far it’s been, I think it’s been one of the best things that happened to us recently.
They’ve been a real pleasure to work with, and they’re so supportive, it’s crazy.

After all these nice words I’m curious: often you can read on the internet people complaining about Nuclear Blast, saying that it seems like they are pushing some kind of productions on bands…

Yeah [puffs].

…were you pushed in any way to sound in a certain way?

People have no idea how things work, it’s crazy.
They say things without knowing, this was really ridiculous.
They have no idea of what type of contract we signed, they have no idea of what was dealt with the label and they said that we are going to change our sound.
Anyways, no, they didn’t interfere at any stage of the making of the album because the album was already recorded when we signed with Nuclear Blast, and also this is something from the ‘90s, the label asking the band to work with a certain producer or to have a certain type of sound, they don’t do that anymore.
Now they see that it’s smarter to trust the band and to trust the vision of the band, I’m quite sure that there are not many labels that still ask bands to do things in a certain way.

Recently many artists voiced their opinions about streaming platforms like Spotify, what is your view on these services?

It’s a vast question, I guess it’s okay.
Maybe for a smaller band it’s not really good, for a bigger band I guess it’s okay because maybe they don’t need as much of the physical copies input to make a living.
For me, I don’t know, I don’t have Spotify yet, I plan to do an account but I’m very old school, I listen to physical music.
At some points I guess you need to also adapt to the new ways, people are using it and you can’t just live in the past.
I don’t really have an opinion about it, I just want as many people as possible to listen to our music, I’m not even speaking about money, sales or anything, I just would like people to know about us so maybe the best possible way is to indeed be on these platforms.

Also, when people find out about you and listen to you on these platforms, maybe they’ll decide to come see you live, right?

Absolutely, absolutely, that’s something I didn’t mention but it’s completely true.
If there are a lot of people who discover you online, there is nothing nowadays that can replace going to a real concert, so at least people are still going to see bands.

That was my last question, do you have a final message for our readers?

I’m really sad that we don’t come to play more often in Italy, it’s a place where we used to play a lot and maybe the market changed a bit, I just wish we could play in Italy more and we really like our fans in Italy, they are very…I mean, I can see that they really understand Alcest, maybe it’s because I’m also from the Mediterranean side of France.

Maybe we have some things in common.

Exactly, yeah.
I just hope that we will back soon.

Davide Sciaky