Alber Jupiter is a french duo from Rennes, Nicolas Terroitin ( Bass, Vocals) and Jonathan Sonney ( Drums, Spds ). It’s like they say, Follakzoid ( I love Foolakzoid ) and others they mention on the interview bellow are a really big influence in their sound, but they definitely managed to escape to a collage and were able to do something of their own. Their debut "We Are Jus Floating in Space" was out in May and since then they've been touring France and UK and now Portugal, with two dates in the next week: on the 20th Figueira da Foz with Heavy Cross of Flowers and the next day Oporto! Another chance to listen to a band that will clearly grow and is taking all the right opportunities to do it. When we exchanged emails I still didn't know Alber Jupiter were coming to Portugal and although I resent that they're not coming any were near, at the same I'm very happy that a band is touring Portugal in their first tour, and let's not forget that Portugal is not just Lisbon... Don't miss it!! I could add a couple of things more but my suggestion is for you to get a relaxed 42 minutes listening to the album! All the links at the end of the interview
Alber Jupiter - Photo by Davy Mougin
Songs to Nowhere - Could you introduce Alber Jupiter to our readers and perhaps talk about how you guys met and how the band started?
Alber Jupiter - We are a duet from Brittany, France. Jonathan plays the drums and Nicolas the bass. We are two friends, who met almost ten years ago. At that time, we were playing in a kind of prog-funk-rock band, mainly influenced by Mr. Bungle, it was totally different than what we are doing now. After the band split, we stayed good friends but didn't really play music together during a few years.
One day, we went to a festival in Switzerland and listened to a band we didn't know, Follakzoid. a krautrock band from Chile. We really stayed mesmerized by their concert and when we came back home, we started to jam, playing krautrock “like Follakzoid”. Of course, we couldn't play exactly like this band and our music was as well colored by other personal influences. Some of these jams were good enough to make a song of them.
STN – Is there a story behind the name of the band? Could you share it with our
readers?
Alber Jupiter - Nicolas saw the 1977 movie “The hill have eyes”, with a bad bad character called Papa Jupiter. We found the name funny, and we searched for a better word to change “Papa”. We found “Albert” funnier, then it became “Alber”.
STN – Is this your first band?
Alber Jupiter - We were each of us in a few bands, that played different kinds of music. But it is the first project we created from the beginning, that's why the compositions are much more personal.
STN – Where do you get your inspiration to compose and how would you describe your creative process?
Alber Jupiter - It is always the same: we start to jam together, eating a lot of chocolate (we are chocolate lovers) and we record it. After the jam, when we think it is good, we listen to it, eating a lot of chocolate (black chocolate, of course, the others are not chocolate) and we keep the good ideas, cutting and pasting, to make a beginning of the structure, a “draft”. Then we play it and try to improve it, eating a lot of chocolate (we love chocolate).
Alber Jupiter - Fangs
STN – Who did the álbum artwork?
Alber Jupiter - A friend of ours called Harry Hadler made it. His work is amazing, he sometimes makes artworks for other artists, like Miët, and his visuals are always great. You can have a look on his website https://www.harryhadler.com/
Songs To Nowhere - How would you position yourselves at this point in gender or more and how would you describe your sound and who are your biggest influences?
Alber Jupiter - After the spanking, we had when we listened to Föllakzoid for the first time, we decided to play krautrock music. So our music is consciously mainly influenced by krautrock, that is to say, the german psychedelic rock scene of the '70s, with bands like Can, Faust, Neu! … We kept those repetitive grooves very typical of this kind of music.
We also have other influences that bring, more unconsciously, other colors to this basis: we grew up listening to Pink Floyd, we also love Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Swans, Mogwaï, The Black Angels...
Alber Jupiter - We Are Just Floating in Space
STN – In this time, what were the biggest challenges the band had to face?
Alber Jupiter - When we decided to create the band after the first jams, we thought it would be cool to be only the two of us, just bass and drums. But it is a quite unusual line up for a band, and it was hard to make something “full”, like a “whole band” and not boring! We tried and experimented, and little by little we achieved to have something satisfying for us.
Alber Jupiter - The recording of our album was a big challenge too. It was our first “real” studio experience. We recorded most of the takes “live”, that is to say, we recorded the bass and the drums at the same time. It is more difficult than doing overdubs because if one of us failed, we had to start again from the beginning. But it was for us the best way to record an album because it sounds much better, more real, it has more energy and feeling. We were under stress and with the recordings, we heard all the music failings better. But Amaury Sauvé was very professional and knew how to record the best of us. He helped us to improve our sound, our groove. He is also a very good drummer and gave to Jonathan a lot of good advice. Now we are proud of this album.
Alber Jupiter - Uber en colère (Live at La Scène Michelet)
STN – What about the internet and new technologies impact on music? Do you have an opinion you would do like to share about this?
Alber Jupiter - We think the internet is a very good way to spread music, and culture in general, all over the world. Everyone who has a connection can listen to all the music he wants, and discover new things every day, for free. Sometimes this “over information” can have disadvantages, it is hard to focus on something. But we discovered a lot of new things like that. And now, anybody can listen to our music, even on the other side of the planet... People from USA, Australia, Norway, Russia, ask us to send them a copy of our album. We always are very surprised.
STN – “We are Just Floating in Space” was out this year, pretty fresh yet. Did you have to left out any songs?
Alber Jupiter - We left a couple of songs out. When you record a vinyl, you can't record more than 19 minutes of music per face, otherwise, it will be to the detriment of the quality of the sound, especially the bass frequencies... All our songs are quite long, so we had to make some choices. But it was a good thing, as we realized those songs weren't good enough or too different from the others.
STN – When can we expect a show from Alber Jupiter in Portugal?
Alber Jupiter - Very soon! We will have a small tour in Portugal in September, you can check our tour dates on our Facebook or Bandcamp.
STN – The last word is yours!
Alber Jupiter - Let's eat some chocolate!
Thank You!!!
Interview by Isabel Maria
+ Info
Bandcamp Alber Jupiter
Facebook - Alber Jupiter
Youtube Alber Jupiter
Sem comentários:
Enviar um comentário