When the introductory words of “L’Ombre de la Bête” (2022, À la Zim!/Parentheses Records), the collaborative release by Nantes-born musicians François Robin (member and co-founder of the collective À LA ZIM! And known to be a talented sound designer as well as a kind of proper ambassador of the veuze, the Breton bagpipe, belonging to the sonic equipment used on this album, together with a violon, an Armenian doudouk, and a mizmar) and Mathias Delplanque (hyperactive composer, sound designer, music teacher and critic – I’m pretty sure that many of our readers already met his name or his projects) quoted “the iconographic imagination of Jerome Bosch, the cinematographic universe of David Lynch and the 8-bit digital culture of the 80s”, I thought they belonged to the repertoire of some charlatan music promoter. Well, I have to admit those cultural references make sense and I invite you to enjoy the awesome sound forged by these Nantaises. We had a talk one month ago about that with their authors. Here are their words.
Chain D.L.K.: Hey guys! How are you doing?
Mathias Delplanque: Hi guys! I’m fine, thank you! Very happy to have this exchange with you, it’s always a great pleasure. As it is summer, as we are not touring together at the moment, and as we don’t live in the same city, we have decided to answer your questions on our own. I hope you don’t mind…
François Robin: I’m very well, thank you. It’s time for festivals and outdoor concerts. I really appreciate playing again in front of fervent, joyful, and numerous audiences, after these last two years marked by so many bans in our profession. And the sun was there (almost too bright)!
Chain D.L.K.: Our readers should already know the name of Mathias before this talk, as we did other interviews on other occasions and I introduced some of his releases. In spite of this, would you introduce yourself in your own words anyway?
Mathias Delplanque: I’m 48. I’m French. I live in Nantes. I’m a musician working with electronic instruments (I prefer to say that, rather than “I am an electronic musician”, which doesn’t really make sense to me anymore). I’ve been composing music since I was 20. I work solo or in collaboration with other (generally acoustic) musicians. For ten years, I have composed a lot of music for contemporary dance.
François Robin: I am a musician. I live near Nantes, in Saint-Nazaire, an industrial town at the mouth of the Loire. I play the veuze, a French bagpipe from the south of Brittany. I started playing it with my father, who is also a veuze player. I play traditional music and dance, and I still do a lot of dancing. But since 2007, I have also developed a whole sound research work around my bagpipes, which led me to practice and confront myself with electronic music. I compose a lot with the computer. I also play the violin, the Armenian duduk, and various wind instruments from all over the world… Furthermore, I also work for contemporary dance and for Theatre…
Chain D.L.K.: How did your artistic and musical paths intersect? Do you remember the subject of your first talking?
Mathias Delplanque: Francois and I met during a workshop that I organized in Berlin a few years ago, around the question of “electronic music in live conditions”. It was first a beautiful human encounter, but it took a few years before we started working together, despite our interest in each other. It was Francois who started it all, by inviting me to participate in what is initially his project: L’Ombre de la Bête. If it hadn’t been for François, I’m not sure if I had accepted to participate in a project with a bagpiper (private running gag, sorry… I am so grateful to him for taking me on this adventure. I have rarely worked with someone in such a simple and fluid way. And I simply LOVE playing live with that guy…).
From a certain point of view, one could say that we both come from totally opposite universes. We don’t have the same musical background, we don’t have necessarily the same musical tastes, and we didn’t hang out in the same musical circles… But to be honest, we never really thought about this stuff in our working sessions. And anyway, the reality is much more complex. While being a talented player of veuze (and many other traditional instruments), Francois is also an electronic musician. He used electronic devices long before he knew me. And for my part, my interest in ancient instruments and in musical forms from various popular traditions goes back quite a long time. And most of all, I think we share the same human and artistic curiosity. And also this idea that you can work very seriously without being totally serious…
François Robin: Not much to add, I agree with everything Mathias has just said. I discovered Mathias’ music during a concert in Nantes where he was playing with a flutist, and then I said to myself: OK, this guy is great, that’s exactly what I want to do by mixing my bagpipes and electro… I listened to his music and records a lot. In my solo practice, I tried to take inspiration from his way of playing, his live configuration, and his relationship with acoustic instruments… With very different results.
Mathias is a very fine musician who makes his machines groove, who knows how to respect the timbres of the instruments, the particular phrasings, and rhythms of the melodies. I can tell him the same joke: if it hadn’t been for Mathias, I wouldn’t have entrusted my instruments to a guy with glasses who presses lighted buttons (and who also likes it!)…
Chain D.L.K.: Francois, I saw you used a list of uncommon ethnic instruments, but I cannot but notice your words when you used ‘your instrument is animal’. What did you mean? Any word about some of the instruments you used, their history, and the way you learned playing techniques?
François Robin: The animal instrument is my bagpipe. I refer to the many textual, visual, and graphic interpretations that have existed around this instrument for centuries. The iconography of the Middle Ages is full of half-man, half-animal bagpipe players. In addition to the symbolism linked to religion, the shape of the instrument, its construction materials (horn strapping, leather), and the sounds that can be drawn from it confirm this connection.
In certain pieces of L’Ombre de la Bête, I amuse myself by accentuating certain sounds of cries, groans, frictions or breaths. Bagpipe animal character. The veuze is a bagpipe whose shape is similar to the bagpipes used since the Middle Ages in much of Europe. Its practice was important until the beginning of the 20th century in Southern Brittany / Northern Vendée (where I am from).
Otherwise, I also play the Armenian duduk, this magnificent Caucasian oboe that has been heard for several years in film music in particular. Beyond the extraordinary sound of this instrument, I am touched by its proximity to bagpipe playing (drone, continuous sound, ornaments, playing on modality). I learned to play with an extremely gifted Breton musician, Sylvain Barou.
I also use the violin, the first instrument I learned, but rather in pizzicato, with effects. And I also play a Mizmar from Essaouira, a single-reed oboe that I’ve retuned quite a bit.
Chain D.L.K.: Francois, you’re not new to collaborative projects where you borrowed your knowledge and techniques on the instruments you just described in the previous answer. What are the projects who left you something indelible in your knowledge and your soul?
François Robin: For 15 years now that I have been a professional musician, I have participated in or initiated several musical projects. I would find it hard to categorize them as they have all been very rich musical adventures, which have made me progress, and grow, not to mention the human encounters that relate to them.
I can talk about the first concert under my name around the electronic processing of the sound of my instrument: “Trafic Sonore”. It was a trio with bagpipes, flutes, tuba, guitars, and machines. The guitarist Laurent Rousseau, coming from free and improvised music, had around him an “instrumentarium” of his making (prepared guitars, percussion pie dish, microwave sanza, gravel pit, dental sensors, etc.). It all sounded excellent, and it was all super relevant musically, and it was very offbeat and often quite funny. This concert gave me the idea that I had something to explore around my instrument, without limits to creativity, to possible experiences. The only limits are those that we impose on ourselves, consciously or not.
It’s really DIY school, skipping school, not academic, but empirical. And that suits me perfectly. I am also thinking of a trio of musicians that I like: La Circulaire. We confronted our musical universe (bagpipes, machines, flute, and vocals) with that of Korean salmunori percussionists, the Jin-Seo ensemble. The power of their ensemble, the rhythmic trance they reached, stuck to the melodies we had composed. This resulted in some anthology concerts in France and South Korea.
I’ll stop there, but really I can’t categorize all these experiences. I should also tell you about Les Allumes du chalumeau or Comme souffler dans un violoncelle, two great steps in my career where I really made progress in my work on veuze and electro. Two shows that combined video, music, speech, stage work…
Chain D.L.K.: Is there anything in particular about this collaboration with Mathias that makes it different from your previous ones?
François Robin: The first difference is that after 12 years of research on sound processing, I wanted to entrust the electro controls to Mathias. I wanted to get back to my act as an acoustic musician and focus on my instruments. And let another musician manage the machines and play with them. The “added value” is enormous. We play as a duo, we interact, and we improvise. Solo, my arrangements were much more written, and the interactions were more limited.
In terms of sound, everything is more precise. Mathias has a huge musical culture, and also a great experience, and you can hear it in all his sound productions. His sound culture is demanding and advanced.
Chain D.L.K.: Did you meet any issues in integrating (to say so) your attitudes and skills in the development of “L’Ombre de la Bête”?
François Robin: Yes and no. With Mathias, we quickly found the sound of the duo. There weren’t so many failed tries or “mistakes”. We did not experience any “resistance” between us. It’s already huge: giving birth to a unique sound without too much difficulty!
Nevertheless, on my side, I learned and tried to play in an increasingly simple and refined way. I usually play rather flowery on the bagpipes: ornamented, detached, and quite expressive. The fact, for me, of being solely focused on interpretation, faced with the richness of timbres, processing, and live sampling offered by Mathias, all led me to play lighter, to purify the phrasing. On the melodies, I tried to keep the essential, to create repetitive phrases, ostinatos, without developing while remaining melodic. I try to put the main instruments in their place in the mix. In my practice as a musician, this is very new for me. A work on purity.
Otherwise, the difficulties are also in the two people’s interpretation: the meeting points, the dynamics, and the lengths of certain parts. Not everything is written, there is a lot of freedom in the interpretation, so you have to find points of agreement.
Chain D.L.K.: I can’t hide my admiration for the final result. The sound is really catchy and well-forged. It’s quite an interesting fact you mentioned one of my favorite painters (Hieronymus Bosch) and one of my favorite moviemakers (David Lynch) in the introductory words of “L’Ombre de la Bête”. It also mentioned the 8-bit digital culture of the 80s. Any explanation for these interesting cultural references?
François Robin: Well, thank you very much. In a few words: Bosch for the completely dreamlike and surreal universe of his work. For this zoomorphic character mentioned above too. With him, visual and symbolic inventions, often completely crazy, mix with reality and the hope of a well-ordered world. This mixture always spoke to me.
Lynch is pretty much the same. This surreal aspect. The journey and above all the changeover in a world which is first real and then no longer. With L’Ombre de la Bête, we work the raw material to make it another reality. Another sound image. Lynch is also a big musical reference.
Finally, while I was designing L’Ombre de la Bête, I was thinking about a specific repertoire. I immersed myself in the musical productions of the community of demo makers and creators of video games at the end of the 80s and the beginning of the 90s (on Commodore Amiga in particular). I came across this game I played when I was a teenager: “Shadow of the beast”. It was a small source of inspiration in the composition of the melodic phrases…
Chain D.L.K.: I noticed that most of the tracks feature a kind of crescendo, that sounds like an entrancing progression, that resembled some modern musical searches of old traditions. Did you relisten anything while composing, whose shadows met the ones of the beast?
Mathias Delplanque: It is nicely said… Well, as far as I remember, we didn’t listen to any music before we started working together. We didn’t work that way. We didn’t need it. And I personally really liked that, because it gave me a lot of freedom. When we started working, it was just us, trying to interact with each other, despite our differences and without too many external references. I think it took months (our songs were already written at that time) for us to start sharing our respective musical tastes. Francois made me discover lots of fabulous music that I had never heard of. He also made me re-listen to things I had forgotten, like certain titles from the French group Malicorne. For his part, I remember that he mentioned the song “Minus” by Robert Hood that we had listened to together during our first meeting in Berlin.
To come back to the heart of your question, I would say that, despite appearances, there are many links between our respective musical universes. At the center of it all, there is… trance! Repetitive music. The physicality of sound. The ability of music to take possession of bodies. It’s no secret that techno is rooted in the oldest musical traditions from all over the world.
Chain D.L.K.: Since its very first seconds, listening to “Le puits” bring my mind to places and memories of Jordan, Syria, or Turkey. Besides my imagination/ memory, what’s the story behind that fascinating track?
François Robin: “Le Puits” is basically a traditional melody from my region. But I changed it. And above all, I play it with an Armenian duduk, which gives it a new color and takes the piece completely elsewhere, towards Turkey and Persian music. Mathias’ orchestration, based on his very fine response to the buzzing and phrasing of the instrument, takes the piece into rather ethereal spheres. It’s a good example of what I explained above: fairly clean melodic music, which respects timbres and mixes influences and genres.
Chain D.L.K.: “L’homme à tête de cheval” is another powerfully evocative track. The symbolism related to horses and their hybrid with humans is really impressive and embraces mythology, shamanism, religions, and psychology… why such a title? What’s its relation to its music?
François Robin: It’s just a title found by a musician who didn’t know how to name his piece (laughs…).
OK well, it’s a strong image, linked to the fact that, in this title, the bagpipes only appear after a few minutes. And then it’s always this same reference to medieval iconography. Moreover, it is also in the graphic and visual spirit of the disc. We asked a brilliant illustrator, a friend of Mathias, Quentin Faucompre, to produce the visual of the album: a reinterpretation of these old images between man and animal. His drawing is amazing. We are very proud of this collaboration and its creation.
Chain D.L.K.: Are you going to bring your bicephalous release on the live stage (if not brought yet)?
Mathias Delplanque: In fact, this project started as a live project! Francois first came to me to give birth to a show he had in mind: the confrontation of his instruments and his musical ideas with live electronic processing. He also had in mind that all of this would be broadcast on a surround system. So that’s exactly how we started working. With the notorious help of a person who is in fact the third member of our duo: Ronan Fouquet, the man who is in charge of our sound in our concert, but who also recorded and mixed our album.
So before even thinking about recording this disc, we have repeatedly performed our songs this way: live, in the middle of the audience, and surrounded by a multichannel sound system, which allows us to develop a truly immersive aspect.
It worked (and still works!) very well!
But the pandemic arrived, and we had to stop all the concerts. So we recorded this album! Now we started playing again. I would say that this album gives a good image of our show. But… that you should definitely listen to this music in live conditions!
Chain D.L.K.: Any chances of further collaborative releases in the near future?
Mathias Delplanque: For sure! Firstly, the music from this album became the basis for a choreographic piece by the Swiss dance company Linga called “Cosmos”. Francois and I play our music live at each performance. Another great way to listen to our music…
François Robin: We really want to keep playing these songs on stage. There are concerts to come here in France, but the challenge for us, given the great reception from the European media, will be to try to export our concert outside the borders.
Then I have other musical ideas to submit to Mathias. Other tracks to explore.
Chain D.L.K.: Any other works in progress or forthcoming for the delight of listeners?
Mathias Delplanque: On my side, there are several things to come: a solo album called O Seuil (to be released on Ici d’Ailleurs on September 23), a new album from my duo Keda (to be released on Parentheses Records on September 24), and another solo album called Encore (to be released on Warm Records at the end of the year).
François Robin: At the moment I’m working on a project with twenty bagpipes and bombard players, under the direction of Erwan Keravec (produced by his company Offshore). We’re playing Terry Riley’s In C. It’s a blast! It will be premiered in September at Le 104 in Paris, but there is also a whole tour in France in 2022-2023.
I have a new creation with a blues guitarist. And I’m working with a dancer/performer on a participatory form about learning to dance. I was exceptionally invited to collaborate in the musical creation of a show based on Shakespeare’s Macbeth.
Visit François Robin & Mathias Delplanque on the web:
https://www.mathiasdelplanque.com/
https://parenthesesrecords.bandcamp.com/album/lombre-de-la-b-te