Chants Of Maldoror
Interview: Jezus& Suzej (Saqrangel)
Answers: Adolphe, Echo y Loren
The Chants Of Maldoror were formed in December 1994, they got the band’s name from “Les Chants De Maldoror”, a prose poem by Isidore Ducasse (1846/1870), which is considered a masterpiece of the unreal and a decadent manifesto of surrealistic imagery. In June 2000 the first C.O.M.’s full-length cd, “Thy Hurting Heaven” is released through the labels Radio Luxor/SPV, and immediately captures the media attention worldwide, presenting a new evolution of songwriting and leading the band to the status of “European gothrock cult band”.
Their second full lenght album "Every Mask Tells the Truth" was released via
Strobelight Records. Really it is a great deathrock/gothrock álbum.
Your new album "Every Mask Tells the Truth" it is really exquisite! good music, good design art and general content, are you happy with the result? how does the press respond until the moment?
Echo: yeah, we’re happy…the press is reacting quite good! We hope it will go further this way, but sadly we don’t have received yet any sure date about the cd sellings…
Loren: Thanks for your compliments! Of course we’re happy with the final result of the album, since we put so many efforts into it, from the musical production point as well as the packaging/photos/Artwork point. At the moment we’re answering you we don’t have much on the hands to do a fullreply to you question, but it seems that both press and fans are reacting pretty good to the new album.
Strobelight Records is lately a young label with very good releases, How did you contact with them? Are you happy working with them?
Echo: We’re happy to work with Strobelight recs, they’re likeable and professional guys! We’ve already worked with them in the past for their “A New Dark Age vol.1” sampler, wich contains an unreleased song of a couple years ago.
Your voice Adolphe reminds me to Pether Murphy and Rozz Willians. Is your voice natural or did you always want to sound as them?
Adolphe: I'ts natural that I have have some influences.I'm still working to have a much more as possible personal way to sing.
Ultravox's version "We Stand Alone" is really good. Are you fans of that band? Some song of another band that you would like to play in your following album?
Adolphe: Yeah, we really like Ultravox, and to make a cover version it's always a big fun.I'd like to play some Iggy Pop song, but also something by the Beatles could be interesting...and, obviously, BOWIE. Always Bowie!
Loren: Yeah, we’re huge Ultravox fans, and that’s the main reason for us to do that song in our live show from quite a long time, and then put in the album too. There are plenty of song we’d like to coverize, and the stuff ranger from a variety of different styles and sounds, from the Velvet Underground to Kraftwerk to the Rolling Stones!
Among other topics, your lyrics try about the estrangement between the spirit and the flesh. How do you see the relation between both (flesh & spirit) in the current society?
Adolphe: Oh, I'm not so interested in that relation with the actual society.In the current society there's no relation between spirit and flesh...there's only a relation between image and flesh...My lyrics are much more about my personal feelings and my own experiences and complexes...
What do you tell us about the hypocrisy?
Adolphe: The hypocrisy is the law for that world.Hypocrisy rules almost all the relationships on the earth. And the reason is also because the language is based on a fake illusion of understanding.It's not that tragedy...Once you know the rules of that game, you can start playing and sometimes you can also win..
The cover art is really fabulous, it fits perfectly with the title of the disc. Was this painting made exclusively for your album or did you choose of an existent briefcase?
Echo: the cover is a wonderful collage made from David M.
What remembrance do you keep of your shows in Wave-Gotik-Treffen, Autumn Nights and GOTHAM Festival? Now with "Every Mask Tells the Truth", you were invited many other shows?
Echo: These two events have been of much importance for us, ‘cause they make us grow as musicians, but also as a beautiful life experience. After “E.M.T.T.T.” ‘s release we’ve received lots of invitations for shows everywhere, but we’ve played only one at Zurich’s “Dynamo ch” this new years eve…a very nice experience! Now our booking agency, Mother Dance, is organizing a tour for the other offerings we had across Europe
between march and april.
Loren: There are a lot of good memories of those shows that I’ll keep in my heart forever…and I mean also extra-musical things happened while tripping, like place we’ve seen or great people we’ve meet in those place. These are to me the things that make you grow as a person and a human being, not only playng on big or small stages. We are now receiving the first invitation for concerts here in Europe, and it’s useless to say that we’ll try our best to play everywhere the conditions will make it possibile!
For you, where (country) the biggest Deathrock scene is?
Echo: Unfortunately we’re not very much into deathrock as listeners, so I cannot really say…sure is that the country where this kind of music is really successful is Germany…
Well, what are you listening lately, and tell me, some new and good band from Italy?
Adolphe: In these days I'm listening to Arcade Fire, LCD Soundsystem and Franz Ferdinand. A good band from Italy is Almandino Quite De Luxe
Echo: Goldfrapp and Depeche Mode.
Loren: We’re not much into the goth/deathrock listening, so we really don’t know what’s good or what’s not, simply because they are mostly strangers for us! Actually, my cd player is busy spinning out the last Morrissey album, “You Are The Quarry”, in rotation with Patrick Wolf’s “Wind In The Wires” and a Billie Holiday best of.
For those that didn't still listen Chants of Maldoror, describe us musical and lyrically your stuff.
Echo: I think that’s very difficult to speak about our artistic and musical production. Create something and composing music is an intimate and deep experience to me…and it’s impossible to explain in a few words. I hope that every listener well be able to take intense emotions from our music.
Loren: Seductive, intelligent, upsetting and forbidden to superficial people.
Tell us your future plans and your last words...
Echo: A thing that happened in the past is that we talked about future projects who weren’t made any more…now we prefer keep a bit of silence…just a thing: we have lots of new projects, and we are doing very good new songs!
Official
homepage: www.chantsofmaldoror.com
E-mail: info@chantsofmaldoror.com