.Dossier Londres Obscure.2 : Micron 63.

Micron 63, les donneurs de leçons

Écrire sur ce groupe relève presque du cauchemar bien que dans son compte-rendu notre nouvelle collaboratrice, Berthe Vroom, ait saisi de manière très juste notre opinion à propos de Micron 63 (notamment la malheureuse réédition du formidable titre Anatomy of no Escape). L’expression « aller plus vite que la musique » ne saurait mieux se prêter au trio passé duo, puis de nouveau trio et actuellement quatuor. De même, leur player sur Myspace a subi de nombreux changements malgré leur jeune existence : des chansons ont été remaniées, remixées, testées, désapprouvées… Un dynamisme d’autant plus énervant qu’il refuse de se fixer l’espace d’un instant, le temps d’obtenir enfin leur debut single prévu initialement le 22 septembre, puis repoussé au 20 octobre et maintenant, plus de nouvelles ! En effet les Micron 63 sont avares en information, si bien que nous n’avons pas pu obtenir un visuel ou la tracklist du futur 7″ nommé Death Is Colder Than Love (selon The New Thing).

C’est donc une chance d’avoir pu obtenir une interview avec un des groupes les plus excitants de la capitale anglaise afin de comprendre l’axe directeur qui les pousse tant à aller de l’avant. Pourtant, on peut être sûr que leur hâte ne se fait pas au détriment de leur son, véritable machine à danser pourvue d’un intellect développé.

Retrouvez la version française de ce portrait sur notre myspace.

Night-gossip with Russell whose slightly metallic voice betrays its singer position who he is also with the post-punk set New Black Light Machine and Matthew, whose influences are more industrial, who takes charge of the programming.

The relative freshness from the outside of the club Vision Videos being easily bearable after some cocktails, the conversation which must have been built at first only on some general questions becomes a real interview without none of us truly realizes it. These two young men in their mid-twenties had things to say, there were things to be known…

For example how a band hardly formed a little more than three months ago already meets itself to the poster of the Offset Festival ? It is because this last one offers downright a tent to Experimental Circle Club and thus in a sense to DiscError Recordings which, surprise-surprise is no other one than the label where they signed their single No Divide.

Le Bar Cult : On DiscError there are also Ulterior and Ipso Facto, is it a pride to be one of their bands or is it just business ?

Russell : We only have got a singles deal, it’s nothing major.

DiscError supporting them since the beginning, he explains then that it is a good thing to be able to depend on a label, especially in London, it allows them more easily to find dates and to bring out disks. Talking about that… It will be out in vinyl.

In sight, a 12″ EP assembling their songs and remixes, notably by Matt Walsh.

Matt : We’re looking at him for possible remixes as well. We’re trying to make sure that the first tape really makes sense.

Russell : We’ve got a lot of material, we’re just trying to work out what we’re gonna keep or throw away. The set we played tonight is brand new. We changed a lot of songs, we played three new songs.

An apparently insatiable need to evolve but not in order to find their own sound as we could expect of a new band. It’s found already.

Matt : We don’t want to hang around ! So many bands sit on things…

They confirm me then their interest is very limited regarding London scene, or rather is far from limiting itself to it.

Russell : There are no more giants. I’m not excited by the music scene in London at the moment, not at all really. There may be one or two bands I quite like but there‘s no one who blows me away…

In particular a certain east scene forming a click of whom they do not wish to take part. Matt develops that associations are not a good thing because in time they disappear, it is the quality of what you create which matters. Russell even considers them as dangerous by quoting for example the massive presence of The Horrors in the press.
Due to our experience, it is sensitive even for somebody who’s not living in the capital, the attention of the public and the media go in a significant way towards the bands ‘sponsorized’ by The Horrors. Frustrating fact.

Matt : Yeah, it’s crazy ! I know it’s how the things work out now but it’s not how it should be. This is music-do you like it-yes. That’s it ! That’s simple. We don’t want to make that sort of music, we don’t want to feel like we have to be associated with something to get out there.

LBC : No links at all with other bands ?

Matt : It depends on how it works, if it is an association that makes sense. Maybe there is a remix, maybe there is a cover, maybe there is some collaboration but not if it is some social matter.

You can only notice in their strong tone that they mean it, to the point almost to be discouraged to have to play with these bands. Plainly their priority remains the music and their independence.

Russell : A lot of London bands from the scene at the moment are quite happy just to play in Shoreditch but ultimately we want to be beyond that.

They aim definitively higher than to content with playing in the same clubs, farther than with playing in a bounded territory by whom already knows them.

LBC : So you are ambitious.

Both : Yes.

Matt : I’ve seen a billion of high-school bands with their little fans and groupies or whatever… I don’t want a global fuckin domination, just different people in different places ! You have to stand on your own sometimes. This is something, if you want it, take it, if not…

LBC : Throw it !

Matt : No one forces you. It’s not like a fashion statement.

There is what to bounce about the fashion, are they foreign to it? Indeed during their scenic performances, they are not lit if by a television set which is spending in buckle the image of a fist which opens and they are regularly masked by a strong smoke which lasers cut in synchrony with the music. Actually, we perceive them more than we see them.
That the fashion and the music walk hand in hand, why not but it is out of question that the fashion prevails and anyway, it is just not their style to pose.

Matt : I don’t want to make it like The Horrors.

Russell : They’ve been in more fashion magazines than in music magazines.

Matt : What the fuck is that ?!

*general laughter*

Russell : You’re in a band ! How does it make sense ? I don’t want to be in that situation, really.

They are not completely wrong however we admit willingly to like The Horrors all the same. How Micron 63 defines a group which produces sense ? The time : it is a question of making (good) music in a lasting way, something inspiring and ahead of its time, not of being part of a hype which will last six months, one year, two? As well as the space, they wish, no, they are also going to make it elsewhere than in the comfortable English capital.

LBC : We’re wondering why so many bands are influenced by the eighties, by the dark sounds. Is there something happening in England at the moment we’re not aware of ? The war is in the past….

Matt : Post-punk kind of have the sounds that make sense.

Russel : Yeah we like this ! But a lot of bands say they’re industrial or they say they’re post-punk and they sound like all the bands who’ve influenced them. It’s a horrible thing. They are many bands, we play with them next week like Komakino. They sound exactly like Joy Division. So what’s the point?

Matt : That’s a comfort ! It doesn’t shock, it doesn’t amaze you.

Project:KOMAKINO for the whole appellation. We cannot reproach them much musically if not indeed to be too much « Komakino » (a song by Joy Division) and not enough « Project »… Russell reports visible incompatibility between musical creation or musical creativity and the simulation of what was played twenty years ago or more. He allocates the relative success of bands as The Horrors partly in the fact that most of their fans, undoubtedly too young, do not know the obscure garage bands from which the quintet draws inspiration strongly. Matt declares then that what has just made the beauty of the mishmash in the eighties was their originality (that Russell stops radically in year 1984). However they think that it is possible to push forward, by looking on the side of science and structures. The future is definitely the time in which Micron 63 registers.
When we ask them what is the new they can bring , they answer us « a sense of conviction in what we do », sure of having good reasons and good ways. They search some substance, preferring the type of song which shows itself differently with a new listening.

Russell : We don’t want to be a scene band, we don’t want to be a pop band. It’s something in between. If you do that, then you’ll be a great band, that’s what we’re trying to do.

LBC : You really think the public has the power to see when a band is playing the comedy or not ?

Matt : Yes ! It’s about time they take this power !

Entretien réalisé par Maéva T. la nuit du 13 juin 2008

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  1. [...] Londres Obscure volume II Tags: acoustique, an experiment on a bird in the air pump, dossier, goth, ipso facto, Londres, post-punk, psychédélique, rock, theoritical girl [...]

  2. [...] interview de Micron 63 : vf/vo Tags: discerror, industrial, ipso facto, Londres, micron 63, post-punk, scum, the horrors, [...]

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