Hello Damien, Thank you for doing this interview, how are you?
I’m doing fine, thank you; except for a little accident I just had I couldn’t be better. I recently finished my semester on med school so I have plenty of time to focus on what’s important: music, vices and virtues. And very pleased of sharing this time with Cyber Angels.
Could you give a brief introduction to r:Noire?
r:Noire is a young ‘’Industrial’’ band from Colombia, we’ve been active since February 2009. Zk and I founded the band on December 2008 as rather weird experiment; we didn’t have a name or a purpose except for the fact that we love Noise, we love experimentation and we love music.
What does the name r:Noire stand for?
The name’s just a contraction of a few words and basically means something like ‘’black royalty or dark king’’ pretty much depends of the interpretation. We wanted something rather unique so after looking for options we ended up with: Royal and Black. I know the way each one of them it’s written on around 5 languages: royale, rex, real, Herrlichkeit and negre, noir, negro, niger, Schwarz and so on. I’ve always find languages very very interesting on its own way so that seemed the way to go. Eventually we just couldn’t make out our minds so we just took the best out of each word and were left with rex:noire, which is our name, we just like to write it down like r:noire for aesthetic purposes.
Who are the members of r:Noire? How did you all meet?
Currently are just Zk and I, we occasionally have Live members depending of the show and the city being most of the Females like Saix. To be honest we just don’t get along very good with other males. Right now we’re trying to build up a permanent live crew.
About us, we meet each other 5 years ago; it was a 20 of March of 2005 I had recently arrived to Colombia from Switzerland so I knew absolutely no one except of my family. We were on a party and we both went to the Dj both asking for some music, we ended up wanting to hear the same stuff. We began to talk about this and that there so at the end I gave him my number; a couple of days later he called me, we meet at my place and had a couple of beers and from there on everything just sort of went downhill, we got along so good that he ended up being my friend, my brother and my colleague, he is still to the day and I’m rather glad of it.
We honestly don’t know, when we began recording we worked on what seemed right at the moment, we will eventually grow up and change and so will our music, that’s for sure. Zk and I had been into the Goth/Industrial scene for some time as Dj’s, so it was just natural that when we presented our work would be that scene in particular the one who would listen to our music. Nevertheless we don’t feel like we belong to any specific place; we don’t like the fact of being framed under a name, a scene, a style, or anything like that. In the end this is just music, if people like our sound they would listen to us, you know what they say: ‘‘He who has ears to hear, let him hear’’.
What made you decide to create a band? How was the beginning of r:Noire?
Well, we both had been on more musical projects but for a number of reasons all of them ended or we just had to part ways with it. We always tried to work something out together but we didn’t have the equipment nor the knowledge enough to do so, so it took us a long time studying, and gathering money for our stuff. After Zk began studying sound production and we had enough equipment we felt it was the right time to start with it so at the eve of December 2008 we made a couple of songs, messed around a little and that’s it, this project was born. Honestly there’s not much to it :)
Besides r:Noire you have other music projects, what can you tell us about those?
Well, I don’t have any other projects per se. From time to time I do like to do some jazz jams with my family and some other friends, but I don’t think I will be working on anything else besides r:Noire, I rarely have free time so I like to focus on just one thing and do it right.
Which bands had an impact on you and are an influence for r:Noire?
Well, I can only speak for myself since I know Zk has a different taste in music than I do, what I do know is that he’s into the work of Kolja Trelle, Sebastian Kommor, and Thomas Rainer; About me, well: since I was very young latin musicians were my inspiration, Tito Puente, Celia Cruz, Eddie Palmieri, Hector Lavoe, the Fania All Stars in general, I admire the fashion and art of the Theatre, and also lots and lots of jazz. I guess those are the main reasons I began to do music and fell in love with the stage at a very young age.
Older well: Matt Bellamy and Muse, Benjamin Weinman and The Dillinger Escape Plan, Chris Corner and IAMX, Thomas Rainer and his projects, Psyclon Nine, Violent Diva, The Mars Volta, The number 12 looks like You and I could go on and on.
I always try to add a little bit of everything to the work We do, every time you do something you’ll resemble something else, so there’s no point on doing something if there’s no experimentation and improvisation.
Yes, there might be even more remixes on a near future it all depends of who asks us for one. Personally I like to work on anything no matter how famous or not the band is, that way you learn how others work and that gives you an insight on how to improve your own music.
Right now I’m into a remix for Mike and Angels on Acid, I’ve been working on it for some days now and I think it’s coming along great, I just had to put a hold on to it while my hand heals and I can do some guitar work on it. Afterwards we might be working for Kai (Wynardtage), Zublagrimal from Colombia, and our friend of God Destruction from Mexico. And pretty much any other band who want to work with us, who knows ;)
Who would you like to do a remix for r:Noire?
So far, We’ve asked to Angels on Acid, T3RR0R 3RR0R, Psyborg Corp, Zublagrimal, God Destruction and I’m still waiting answer from other bands. Ad Idferna for example did an incredible work revisiting one of our songs. Sadly, pretty much all of the remixes are being based on our album songs, reason why there’s still some work to do before looking for remixes. First we have to be sure the song is ready and is also good enough to have a remix done so on and on. All that process might take some time so hopefully for the time the album is done we can get some great people to work with us.
Your music is a mixture of hard beats and some great melody concepts, but how would you describe your music?
We honestly couldn’t find enough adjectives to do so, we’re still searching for that ‘’muse’’, that ‘’thing’’ that would make our music good enough for us; I mean, every single song has been made under different circumstances and different feelings, so each song has it’s unique sound and it’s unique flavor so to speak; that’s the main challenge we have when writing the album, trying to find that sneaky muse. But perhaps I could describe it as we describe it when we joke about it: ‘’This sounds so very 666, but kinda gay too, fuck yeah’’ We might end up doing pop music for all we know haha.
What is the secret behind creating hard beats and still use good melodies? Does it never bite each other or do they go hand in hand, how do you achieve that?
I’d have to say that Zk deserves a lot of credit for achieving that, he’s the one that always finds a way to put together (most of the times) all the nonsense and insanity I do when writing the songs and actually encourages me to do so. I have to say I like it fast and heavy, with ridiculous time signatures, strange notations, multiple synth lines and so on, so it takes some time to find the right ‘’path’’ to do a song; sometimes everything just ends up sounding incredibly weird, as if Emperor meets Robbie Williams or something like that, so that’s when Zk puts it all together. He’s a great musician and a great producer, so he’s up to the task of dealing with my crap hehe.
I’m in charge of recording and composing most of drums, percussions and guitars if needed. Zk always brings amazing lead ideas and keys arrangements, if you hear something extremely baroque that’s his doing. Nevertheless we don’t have a fixed role when writing or composing, we both do what’s needed and we both add ideas to the song, sometimes I do leads, keys and the crazy shit and he does the rest, and if it doesn’t works we just start from 0 over and over and over again until we get it right. It’s actually a lot of fun working on a song; the hardest part is getting a great idea to begin with, from there on everything’s downhill. We work together most of the times with some exceptions of course; Zk has his songs, and so do I.
The new album is entitled ‘The Burning Empires’ how and why did you choose that name?
I myself thought about the name and consulted it with Zk and he seemed to agree with that.
‘’The Burning Empires’’ makes reference to the bloody violent mornings, to the shattered windows, to the all those hearts that become ashes every single day. There are thousands; millions of persons dying every day, every person reach its end on so many ways: on the street, on a city, on a fire, on a war. Being so We want to show how every single life is one single empire, and how every empire falls, from Rome to the Reich, from birth to dead. I wanted to show, that there’s no need to be dirty and appear as ‘’dark’’ to be harsh, we wanna prove that you can be elegant, classy and still be a rebel, and try to revolt one soul at a time. We’re the Burning Empires, our world, our nations, our lifes.
What can you tell us about the new album?
Well, we’re trying to achieve something we’d like to call ‘’darkstyle’’ a little pretentious, I know. What we want is to get a good mix between hard style, techno, hard techno, and so on and all that black, death, pop, rock and metal I listen adding a lot of other stuff. As I said, we don’t like to keep our minds closed, we wanna do something danceable and catchy but heavy enough to be fun and harsh too, that means that if we find something that seems useful, and nice, we might probably end up using it for some wicked purpose. All I can say is that is we’re trying to make it different, Fashionable, fun, fast and harsh.
Well, I’m still on medicine school for those majors, but as far as it comes to the lyrics and the music: Well, sometimes I do. It happens that when you use very emotional words on very emotional rhythms there’s a bigger chance that people would listen to you and remember you; most of the times you have to play with their ability to associate music, feelings and their personal situation so you can catch their attention and give them a feeling of empathy through the music; if you can get something that touches the strings of a person, you’re more likely to get someone that listens to your music instead of waiting for the next song they wanna hear.
You wrote: “this world is not about art or subjectivity but about money and politics.” Can you explain this and what it means to you?
It’s a very personal position. I do not believe you can achieve anything by prophesying or complain about human values, human decadence, human goodness or human evilness. I believe art, feelings, emotions, everything we had has already become just another tool, another pretense, another product, another way to explode our fears, our joys, and our situation. So if we want to fight against this so called ‘’new world order’’ if we really want to make a change we have to play with their toys, use their weapons against them and start taking things serious, not by prophesying love as the only thing and feelings and submission as a way, there’s more than that, there are other ways to make the fat cats above us listen to our voices, and that’s it through their own game. I mean, You can always fight a war, but there’s no need to look bad while you do.
What can people expect in the near future from r:Noire?
Well… our album of course! Depending of it a promotional video clip. Some more remixes perhaps, appearances on some compilations later this year on Spain and Uk, and who knows, maybe we can get that sneaky label contract and have our label properly printed and start a promotional tour for it, it all depends of how things develop sometime this year.|
I’d like thank Cyber Angels for their time and the interview. As for the readers: Thank you so very much for reading and standing my endless discourse ;) Thank you so very much! And take a listen to us, I assure you, you won’t be disappointed.
http://www.myspace.com/rnoire