Parisian duo Cosmic Neman (left) and Etienne Jaumet have channelled a love for vintage synthesizers, John Carpenter soundtracks and Krautrock into something rather special on their debut album, A Land For Renegades. We cornered drumming zombie Neman to see if we could explode a few myths about the record.
How did you and Etienne get together to form the band?
Etienne and I have been sharing a music studio for a long time and we both had different bands at the time. It just happened that we were sometimes in the studio at the same time and we started jamming together. Etienne is really into collecting old analogue keyboards and synths, and so he was playing with his keyboards with me drumming. It started really naturally like that, just jamming together, and we were like, ‘Hey, maybe we should do something with that – it’s fun’. We started to do improvised shows in Paris and some of our friends were like, ‘Oh, you guys gotta record something’. So that’s how it started – I don’t think we really thought that at some point we’d do an album or anything.
How did it come to that point?
Before signing to Versatile Records, we released these six tracks on vinyl and a friend of ours really wanted to release it in Paris on a small label called Boomboomtchak. That’s how it started, and then we played a show in Paris and the guys from Versatile were at the show and really liked it, and afterwards they called us and asked if we wanted to do a record, and I was like, ‘Oh, cool!’. It was really like the old times, I didn’t imagine that there were still people doing things this way. It was very exciting, especially that they’re a label more into electronic stuff, which is not really my and Etienne’s background. So it’s interesting, there’s a mix between these guys and us.
Is the label based in Paris?
Yeah, they have people like I:Cube and [top electro producer] Joakim.
Was the album recorded in the same studio that you got together in?
Yeah, this is where we have our stuff. This guy, Antoine Gaillet recorded it, great sound engineer. He also recorded the last M83 album [Before The Dawn Heals Us].
Is it true that the album was conceived as the soundtrack for a horror film? Is that true or is it a myth?
It wasn’t our idea, the guys who wrote the bio came up with the idea. Anyone listening to the album can make up his own story from listening to the music, but we didn’t write the story. We were like, ‘This is fun, let’s keep it!’.
I read that before I heard the album so it was in my head, but there is a certain narrative arc to it, certainly with the vocal samples and all the spooky noises. It works.
Obviously we had some ideas, and the music is instrumental music so it’s obviously cinematic more than a pop song, so even the title of the tracks, like in the liner notes I said that all the music’s been inspired by [controversial 1971 pseudo-documentary] Punishment Park by Peter Watkins. It’s just an idea for people when they listen to the album. Lots of the titles are really like the beginning of the Seventies in America; the end of the American dream, like horror movies and stuff. That was the background of it.
So it’s not totally invented – you are really into horror movies?
Yeah, obviously I love John Carpenter scores and The Goblins – I really love these guys and listen to them a lot. It’s really inspiring. They use the same instruments we do, old analogue sound effects and stuff, so obviously you want to see what these guys did with these instruments.
And do your own take on it?
For instance, if you take Assault on Precinct 13, the John Carpenter movie, the music is basically a few keyboard bars, really simple, and there’s so much emotion on it. I think it’s one of the first soundtracks like that – really simple with simple keyboard lines. This is what we tried with playing music, how to make the people feel different emotions like fear. It’s funny trying to do that with instruments.
There’s a definite sense of tension and suspense in the music – is that something you’re trying to get across? Do you enjoy conveying that in music?
I think it’s interesting, with the experiments in the late Sixties like the dreamachine [click here for more info] and stuff like that, how to make people in a certain state with sound and light. They were into psychedelic stuff like how to recreate the effects of drugs and stuff with sound. I like the idea, and I think it’s a lot easier with analogue instruments because they have such warmth in their sounds. It’s a lot more live than computer sounds. That’s the whole thing. Trying to get the power from these instruments; the energy. When you listen to the record it’s not maybe as obvious as when you see us live, it’s hard to record it.
[...] Continued from part 1 [...]