Igorrr - Live BetiZFest 2018 - Part 1
Igorrr - Live BetiZFest 2018 - Part 2
Ben Serna-Grey: You incorporate a lot of different styles into your compositions but your personal sound stays cohesive and authentic. How do you approach your songwriting when it comes to combining all these stylistic elements?
Gautier Serre: Combining all those elements is natural for me as it is basically the way I want to hear the music. Some styles of music are awesome to combine with their opposite, like for example Baroque and Death Metal, those are very opposite styles and they work together a bit like the Yin and the Yang. One is light and easy and the other one is dark and brutal, they articulate each other very well and can be used together if you find the good balance. Combining genres is not the main goal, combining genres is the result of the main thing, which is to use contrast in music. The contrast in music is very helpful to underline the message, you can contrast a genre of music with its opposite and it will make it feel stronger, like with noise, the noise will never feel so noisy when you contrast it with silence, and on the other way around, the silence will never feel so silent when you contrast it with noise. You can check the track Parpaing on the album Spirituality and Distortion, Parpaing is a very heavy track with no concessions at all. Full brutality. George Fisher delivered extremely brutal and heavy vocals, Sylvain Bouvier did a impressive performance at the drums. It is indisputably loud and powerful. Martyn Clément as well brought a absolute killing guitar riffing on it. Here comes the contrasts to articulate the music.
With Parpaing, and its ridiculously heavy vibes, the perfect contrast that can be given to that is the lightest music possible, a 8-bits Chiptune music, that’s why I set up this track in 3 parts, it starts with simple and almost normal death metal, as heavy as it might be, then I contrast the music with its opposite, the 8-bits Chiptune, and then the death metal comes back, slapping and killing the 8-bits Chiptune music. It has been pretty clear in my mind of how this track should be from the beginning, but one day, I tried, just for fun, to let go another George Fisher verse, not on the death metal this time but on the Chiptune, I felt like this was it, this was the perfect music I was searching for, the perfect link, the absolute combination of sounds. Death metal has no wish to sound like 8-bits Chiptune music at all, and 8-bits Chiptune music has no intention to sound like death metal at all, that’s why each genre has plenty of space to fit with each other.
You also use a lot of micro-rhythmic and microtonal shifting within a line. Is this something you began doing deliberately or did it come more organically for you?
As you said, it’s something which comes like organically, I would even say instinctively. Music is a matter of emotion, when you create music, you express what you feel, or what you want to feel. The best example which comes into my mind now is on Downgrade Desert, at the end of the track, on the last part of it, there is a bend on one note of the guitar floating on the blast beat, a bend from down to up, which passes through all the micro possible tones from one note to another, this makes you feel like your heart is going up and down and your whole body is following it, it’s almost a physical sensation, it’s made in purpose, at some points, those musical effects brings you out of the usual musical rules where all the notes has a precise name and should sounds in tune with the A 440Hz. Microtonal helps to feel a bit out of this for a moment, while micro-rhythmic, specially with the breakcore parts helps to reach a very detailed work and vision on the sound, so for those who are interested in details in music, there is a insane amount of work on this over all the Igorrr albums. Some things I’m sure to be the only one to hear, but makes me smile.
What are some of your influences—musicians, books, art, etc?
I have many musical influences, coming from Bach, Cannibal Corpse, Chopin, Meshuggah, Beethoven, Agustín Barrios Mangoré, Mr.Bungle, Taraf de Haïdouks, Aphex Twin, Sepultura, Mayhem, Domenico Scarlatti or Gabi Lunca, again extremely various and different artists, all beyond amazing, but this is just a very small part of my influences, I’m listening tons of very different music since my childhood so I have a heavy and diverse musical background. Unfortunately, I cannot say the same about books, I got a kind of hyper activity disorder, so I’m not able to focus long enough to read a book or at least having enough patience to get into a book, this sucks, because books looks awesome and it’s frustrating not to be able to really read one.
Except music and video, I’m not really much going further into art, I’m more a nature man, I live in the countryside with my girlfriend and I’m fascinated by wild nature and the Mediterranean fauna and flora, this is what I do during the short moments when I’m out of music, learning the infinite complexity and speechless creativity of nature, which can be seen as the finest Art ever.
What kind of music did you grow up with?
I grew up with parents which are listening to a music which I dislike very very much : Chanson Française (French Chanson). I’m not interested in lyrics in music, and Chanson Française is like 90% of lyrics and a musical support just to help the lyrics, plus the music is usually made there in a manner that I find demagogic and fake. I’m not sure that helped me very much to develop Igorrr, but on my personal parcours, I grew up with Korn, Nirvana, Pantera, Metallica and Morbid Angel for the metal/rock part, also with Apex Twin, Squarepusher, Venetian Snares or Bogdan Raczynski for the electronic part, and Bach, Chopin and Mozart for the classical part, plus some really popular bands which I like pretty much after all like Dire Straits, Jean Michel Jarre or Muse. I didn’t grow up in one single kind of music, I have always been hungry of something else, curious of something else because I always had this feeling that something is missing, something which I’m creating in Igorrr now, like to finally hear the music I’ve always been searching for.
Is there anyone in particular you’d like to collaborate with that you haven’t yet?
My personal hero in the death metal world is George Fisher, so the collaboration with him on Spirituality and Distortion feels like a kind of accomplishment already, so I feel pretty much satisfied about collaborations at the moment. They are still many people I would be happy to collaborate with, but Igorrr is not about that, Igorrr is a musical project that I created to express the music which makes sense to me, whatever what people might think or whatever if the label will be able to sell it or not, it’s a honest music, made with no compromise at all, there is no aim to collaborate with this or that person, it’s working on the other way around, if the music needs it, then I’m happy to collaborate, in the case of George Fisher, the music definitely needed him, but I’m not thinking about doing any collaboration since I don’t have the music which really needs it. I would say I’m doing anything in order to serve the music, the rest is out of the process.
From: https://toiletovhell.com/review-and-interview-igorrr-spirituality-and-distortion/
Gautier Serre: Combining all those elements is natural for me as it is basically the way I want to hear the music. Some styles of music are awesome to combine with their opposite, like for example Baroque and Death Metal, those are very opposite styles and they work together a bit like the Yin and the Yang. One is light and easy and the other one is dark and brutal, they articulate each other very well and can be used together if you find the good balance. Combining genres is not the main goal, combining genres is the result of the main thing, which is to use contrast in music. The contrast in music is very helpful to underline the message, you can contrast a genre of music with its opposite and it will make it feel stronger, like with noise, the noise will never feel so noisy when you contrast it with silence, and on the other way around, the silence will never feel so silent when you contrast it with noise. You can check the track Parpaing on the album Spirituality and Distortion, Parpaing is a very heavy track with no concessions at all. Full brutality. George Fisher delivered extremely brutal and heavy vocals, Sylvain Bouvier did a impressive performance at the drums. It is indisputably loud and powerful. Martyn Clément as well brought a absolute killing guitar riffing on it. Here comes the contrasts to articulate the music.
With Parpaing, and its ridiculously heavy vibes, the perfect contrast that can be given to that is the lightest music possible, a 8-bits Chiptune music, that’s why I set up this track in 3 parts, it starts with simple and almost normal death metal, as heavy as it might be, then I contrast the music with its opposite, the 8-bits Chiptune, and then the death metal comes back, slapping and killing the 8-bits Chiptune music. It has been pretty clear in my mind of how this track should be from the beginning, but one day, I tried, just for fun, to let go another George Fisher verse, not on the death metal this time but on the Chiptune, I felt like this was it, this was the perfect music I was searching for, the perfect link, the absolute combination of sounds. Death metal has no wish to sound like 8-bits Chiptune music at all, and 8-bits Chiptune music has no intention to sound like death metal at all, that’s why each genre has plenty of space to fit with each other.
You also use a lot of micro-rhythmic and microtonal shifting within a line. Is this something you began doing deliberately or did it come more organically for you?
As you said, it’s something which comes like organically, I would even say instinctively. Music is a matter of emotion, when you create music, you express what you feel, or what you want to feel. The best example which comes into my mind now is on Downgrade Desert, at the end of the track, on the last part of it, there is a bend on one note of the guitar floating on the blast beat, a bend from down to up, which passes through all the micro possible tones from one note to another, this makes you feel like your heart is going up and down and your whole body is following it, it’s almost a physical sensation, it’s made in purpose, at some points, those musical effects brings you out of the usual musical rules where all the notes has a precise name and should sounds in tune with the A 440Hz. Microtonal helps to feel a bit out of this for a moment, while micro-rhythmic, specially with the breakcore parts helps to reach a very detailed work and vision on the sound, so for those who are interested in details in music, there is a insane amount of work on this over all the Igorrr albums. Some things I’m sure to be the only one to hear, but makes me smile.
What are some of your influences—musicians, books, art, etc?
I have many musical influences, coming from Bach, Cannibal Corpse, Chopin, Meshuggah, Beethoven, Agustín Barrios Mangoré, Mr.Bungle, Taraf de Haïdouks, Aphex Twin, Sepultura, Mayhem, Domenico Scarlatti or Gabi Lunca, again extremely various and different artists, all beyond amazing, but this is just a very small part of my influences, I’m listening tons of very different music since my childhood so I have a heavy and diverse musical background. Unfortunately, I cannot say the same about books, I got a kind of hyper activity disorder, so I’m not able to focus long enough to read a book or at least having enough patience to get into a book, this sucks, because books looks awesome and it’s frustrating not to be able to really read one.
Except music and video, I’m not really much going further into art, I’m more a nature man, I live in the countryside with my girlfriend and I’m fascinated by wild nature and the Mediterranean fauna and flora, this is what I do during the short moments when I’m out of music, learning the infinite complexity and speechless creativity of nature, which can be seen as the finest Art ever.
What kind of music did you grow up with?
I grew up with parents which are listening to a music which I dislike very very much : Chanson Française (French Chanson). I’m not interested in lyrics in music, and Chanson Française is like 90% of lyrics and a musical support just to help the lyrics, plus the music is usually made there in a manner that I find demagogic and fake. I’m not sure that helped me very much to develop Igorrr, but on my personal parcours, I grew up with Korn, Nirvana, Pantera, Metallica and Morbid Angel for the metal/rock part, also with Apex Twin, Squarepusher, Venetian Snares or Bogdan Raczynski for the electronic part, and Bach, Chopin and Mozart for the classical part, plus some really popular bands which I like pretty much after all like Dire Straits, Jean Michel Jarre or Muse. I didn’t grow up in one single kind of music, I have always been hungry of something else, curious of something else because I always had this feeling that something is missing, something which I’m creating in Igorrr now, like to finally hear the music I’ve always been searching for.
Is there anyone in particular you’d like to collaborate with that you haven’t yet?
My personal hero in the death metal world is George Fisher, so the collaboration with him on Spirituality and Distortion feels like a kind of accomplishment already, so I feel pretty much satisfied about collaborations at the moment. They are still many people I would be happy to collaborate with, but Igorrr is not about that, Igorrr is a musical project that I created to express the music which makes sense to me, whatever what people might think or whatever if the label will be able to sell it or not, it’s a honest music, made with no compromise at all, there is no aim to collaborate with this or that person, it’s working on the other way around, if the music needs it, then I’m happy to collaborate, in the case of George Fisher, the music definitely needed him, but I’m not thinking about doing any collaboration since I don’t have the music which really needs it. I would say I’m doing anything in order to serve the music, the rest is out of the process.
From: https://toiletovhell.com/review-and-interview-igorrr-spirituality-and-distortion/
