Who are Noblesse Oblige?

Sebastian and I met at a mask ball in London, in an old Victorian theatre. That night I was all dressed in red, emerging from the smoke, performing a never ending orgasm on stage to raise money for charity. Sebastian didn’t wear a mask, and was the most handsome young man there. We instantly clicked and decided to work together, quickly getting booked for live gigs and starting to write our first album. It felt easy and natural to work together because we shared a similar taste in eclectic music and a passion for cinema. We had a strong sense of aesthetic and drama in common too. Our skills were complimentary: We both write music & lyrics, Sebastian is a very good producer and a multi-talented musician while I am happy to take care of  our image and charm promoters . The perfect team!


How did you come up with the band name?

After a night of debauchery, involving Cointreau drinking, Sobranie smoking and an extended  conversation on Baroque interior design!


You both do your own projects when not working together as Noblesse Oblige, what can you tell us about this?

I work as a solo performance artist, writing, directing and performing in international festivals, mostly accompanied by live atmospherique soundscape from Sebastian

www.myspace.com/femmefacade

Sebastian works on his musical side project called Der Räuber und der Prinz with Ralf Beck (Unit4) in their studio in Düsseldorf full of vintage music equipment, the most fantastic synthesizers and analog gear that’s begging to be played with.

www.myspace.com/derraeuberundderprinz

We will be touring all around Europe to promote our new album, check our myspace profile for dates.

www.myspace.com/noblesseoblige

We will present a show with a strong performance aspects recreating the atmosphere that inspired our new album ‘Malady’. A concert with elements of ‘ritual’ for example. Drums, timbales and other percussions with acoustic guitar will be at the core of the new live set up it will be wild and trance like with the use of props, savage make up and costume transformations. There’ will be more space to explore extravagant performance quality and build dramatic tensions during the show.

Do your personal lives influence your music and likewise does your music influence your personal lives?

Our new album ‚Malady’ has a very intimate quality and reveals a lot about the people we have become, along the years, through creative practice. An open door into our psyche.


Is there any band you would love to collaberate with, either live or in the studio?

We have been very lucky to be offered for the release of our 2 new singles to be remixed by some of our favourite artists and friends including: Funker Vogt, Erick D.Clarck, Tolouse Low Trax, Randy Twigg, Spidersleg, Dunwich, Lucas Croon


What's next in store for Noblesse Oblige?

Our 3rd album ‘Malady’ is released at the end of May on RepoRecords.

It’s a concept album.

It is inspired by the visual mysticism of Kenneth Anger, Aleister Crowley’s storytelling, and the morbid melancholy of Christina Rossetti’s poetry.
This album is the conclusion of an exploration of the occult, initiated by our involvement in Robert Pacitti’s 2009 London Spill Festival Tarot Deck project, for which Noblesse Oblige (in collaboration with photographer Manuel Vason) were asked to visualize their own interpretation of The Lovers Major Arcana card.

The album’s title, partly inspired by Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s film Tropical Malady, a modern day ghost story set in the jungle of Thailand, symbolises the mental afflictions and dark temptations of the heart expressed in the album’s eerie tales of voodoo gods, soul electrification, and tropical fevers.

Further inspiration was the Voodoo literature by Haitian writer Rene Depestre and readings of field research work by anthropologist E.E. Evans-Pritchard and his studies of witchcraft and magic among African tribes. The aura of these texts and stories have been incorporated in many of the songs.

I myself lived on the French Caribbean island of Martinique – next to Haiti, the heartland of voodoo practice - during my teenage years and used my own memories of myths and stories told by locals, and the voodoo priestess who was my neighbour.

You can already pre-order the album in Germany CLICK HERE ,
UK CLICK HERE , and France CLICK HERE.

The album release will be preceded by a download-only EP including 8 remixes by some of our current favourite artists.
A new video for the first single The Great Electrifier (directed by Edwin Brienen) is up on Youtube now - watch it HERE YouTube Movie.