Pensées Nocturnes interview

Infam

2009. június 28.

0

Hail Vaerohn! How are you nowadays? Do you deal with music these days?

Well I’m fine thank you. A bit depressed by summer… All these tourists and this conventional rejoicing, it’s quite the thing. I’m constantly playing music and working on new projects. Pensées Nocturnes is a long-term project and I’m continually working on it too.

Could we recognize Pensées Nocturnes as your main band? Have you had before it bands? I ask it just because the recent forming year – 2008.

Well there aren’t many things to say about me since Vacuum is practically my first experience. To talk about Metal, I’ve played in some bands (Black Metal, Death Metal) and I’m at the moment paying the guitar in Valhôll which is a kind of Pagan Black Metal with many Brutal parts. I would say indeed that Pensées Nocturnes is my main band because I needed to express myself without other constraints than my imagination which is only possible in a one man band. It’s the project that fits the most to my aspiration even if I often play with a lot of people.

How did you get touched with music? Which was sooner; to listen metal music or playing instruments? What kind of instruments can you play on?

My first experience was a few years of piano lessons but I was too young to understand and to appreciate music. Several years later I began to listen to Hard rock and Heavy Metal with my father’s tapes (AC/DC, Iron Maiden…) before discovering Extreme Metal. Then I began to play the guitar which is my principal instrument because its adaptability allows me to visit many styles. Funnily I got to be attracted to Classical Music when I began to listen to Symphonic Black Metal and particularly Anorexia Nervosa. In addition to guitar I play from time to time the piano, the bass guitar, the drums, the harmonica… I’m used to play with many musicians, to spend evenings improvising (particularly Blues) and to try many instruments. It’s always enriching to try something else even if the guitar stays my principal instrument.

You use synthethizator and you tag your music as black metal. Do you think this duality get on well? Some people say this could be tolerated just when synth is used to create specific atmosphere.

Well some people just like to nit-pick. Some choose to speak and others to do. I have never tried to tag my music and the fact you’ve seen Black Metal or whatever you want on it is not my choice. Honestly, who have the pretention to be able to define exactly what’s Black Metal or whatever style you want? It is just a matter of semantics, something that only keep busy people who can’t do anything with their hands. I don’t have time to discuss this kind of questions which aren’t ones actually. I see music as a whole and I’m just a guy who play music, that’s all. You’re free to think and to say everything you want about my music but that doesn’t matter to me.

Why do you play in Pensées Nocturnes alone? You think your work could be perfect just making it alone?

I play in other bands so it’s something I’ve chosen because it’s really difficult to work in symbiosis within a band and concessions aren’t easily made when related to art. Thus Pensées Nocturnes is a one man band which gives me the opportunity to express myself without other constraints than my imagination. I can do whatever I want without any remark. I can if I want to only put three notes of violin in the whole album and the violinist won’t get disappointed contrary to a Pagan Metal band which has to make its musicians play all the time for example.. Forming a line-up has really a strong influence on the composition and that’s what I wanted to avoid. I don’t know if the rendering is perfect (which is just an idle fancy actually) but it represents what I want and that’s the most important.

What does your name (Vaerohn) mean, and what does Pensées Nocturnes mean and symbolize for you?

To make a word for word translation, “Pensées Nocturnes” means “Nocturnal Thoughts”. I wanted to pay homage to Chopin as testifies “Des-Espoir”. Actually with Pensées Nocturnes I wanted to retranscribe what you can feel at nightfall when alone listening to a piece so deep that it involves a spiritual dimension and Chopin’s Nocturnes correspond to this description. Vaerohn doesn’t really mean anything; it’s just a way to hold myself aloof.

You released your first album, called Vacuum in april via Les Acteurs de l’Ombre Product. Please detail the progress how it was making. What does Vacuum simbolize for you? It’s quite unusual title for a black metal disk, isn’t it? The cover is also very unique, what’s this?

I wrote the first song (“Flore”) in August 2009 and others came quickly. The concept was something I’ve always carried with me but the composition has been a quick process eventually. I’ve mixed Vacuum in December and then I began to work with Les Acteurs de l’Ombre.
“Vacuum” refers to the pointlessness of humans’ activities. Religion, politics, science, philosophical ideals, all these illusions which keep our mind busy and keep us away from our condition. Nothing we do has an existential foundation aside from spending time. As if life comes down to everything that allows us to forget life… The cover is the work of Asphyre.s (and Alexx for the lay out) who works for 3-Crosses. I’ve discovered urban life a short time ago and it totally scares me. All these landscapes made of concrete, showing human propensity to create death… What could be synonymous of lively (gathering so many people at the same place) is just a bunch of lifeless souls, letting time flying without any questions. I’ve after all never felt so alone than in this crowd and that’s something I wanted to express in “Vacuum”.

The titles on Vacuum are written in French. Why is it so? The album is marked out just for French people?

This album is marked out for me. I feel more like singing in French because it’s quite simply my native language. I’m often asked this question but I find it so absurd! I mean why would I bother to express myself in a language I don’t find natural? The only answer I can imagine is promotional considerations but it’s not something I’m interested in. Pensées Nocturnes isn’t a way to convince and gather people, it’s just an outlet, something I need. Choosing French make it possible to play with the language, to turn it over and over, which is something more interesting that only put ideas and impossible in a language you don’t master enough.
What’s more music is universally understandable and I don’t think lyrics are indispensable to understand it.

How did your contact with Les Acteurs de l’Ombre Product begin? Who was the ’’founder’’ of the other person?

Les Acteurs de l’Ombre is well-known non profit-making organization in France for organizing Metal concerts with seriousness and honesty. I know them for giving them a hand from time to time. Gerald, the former president, had the idea of creating a label a long time ago and he has been really taken with Vacuum which drove him to set off on this adventure. I didn’t hesitate one second to work with such a professional organization. To be honest signing with this label has been a huge chance for Pensées Nocturnes. I don’t think “Vacuum” would have received as much support with any other label. It’s real pleasure to work with people led by passion for music. They bet a lot by signing an unknown band which develops an atypical music and doesn’t play live so I hope the organization will be able to make this release profitable.

You mix black metal with ambient if my definition works that’s why your music sounds very deep and cryptic. Is this composition purposive?

Your other project called Valhôll. It sounds mythological enough, isn’t it? Do you think the honourable people automatically got to Valhalla?
Well I don’t know if it’s the right place to talk about this band but Valhôll has nothing to do with religion or mythology even if indeed it refers to pride and honour. We develop a negative point of view on humanity and put forward our attachment to Nature. Actually I’m agnostic because I consider it’s equally ridiculous to assert the existence of God than to deny it. I don’t think man has the capacity to know what’s above him and every sort of solution are just fantasizing.

Could you recommend us a great French band? What’s your opinion about your scene?

Without any kind of chauvinism (I always put music before side issue like country, musicians, concept,…) I think the French Black Metal scene is really rich. You must surely know Deathspell Omega, Blut Aus Nord, Peste Noire, Arkhon Infaustus… I think the quality of our scene is purely coincidental and not the expression of a more general fact because with the development of the Internet this notion of nationality has no signification anymore (in music) but I have to admit we have the chance to have great bands here. However, this doesn’t change anything all the more so as (to get going again on the language issue) most of these bands sing in English for example. Music is the only factor of decision-making.

What is the most hated thing in this world, what do you think? What’s the essence of life in your way?

As I said before, “Vacuum” refers to the futility of humans’ activities but to take up Tchekhov’s thought “we have to live anyway”. Pensées Nocturnes is a way for me to put everything on the table and then accept life as it is. A sort of positive nihilism and music, as a creative process, contributes to this kind of reconstruction after this calling into question.
This existentialism makes it possible to see life from a totally different point of view and to try to create something from this absurdity, something that you have chosen, something that don’t have to be conventional or “normal”. I think it’s what we can call “life”.
As to the most hated thing in the world I’ve honestly no idea.

What would you take with you to a desert island, haha?

Well you know I’m a scientist so I would take food and a knife in order to survive. I would also take a paper clip with me because Mac giver taught me we can do a lot of things with it. To keep me busy through the day I would take my guitar to play the Blues alone but if there’s enought space left in my luggage with all this I would take a beautiful women too because we may have to start a new civilisation.

What’s your future plans with Pensées Nocturnes?

Pensées Nocturnes is a long-term project and I’m continually working on it. I can’t say a lot of things except that the next album will be something less kind, more unhealthy and dissonant. Nothing is really planed, I prefer to avoid as far as I can every constraint, even time constraint: I’ll take all the time I need to produce something that totally fits to what I want.

Vaerohn, thank you for the interview! Please end the interview with your own discretion!

Vaerohn: Well thank you for your time and showing interest in Pensées Nocturnes. I wish you all the best for the future, Metal needs people like you to last. Just keep in mind that nothing exists, everything is to be invented.