Interview with Year Of No Light

Infernal Masquerade: Thanks for taking the time to answer our questions, and let’s get started:

I.M: “Year Of No Light” is a very enigmatic and apocalyptic sounding name, why did you guys selected this banner for your music?

-Jerome: we took it from a Three mile pilot's song called “ the year of no light”.
We like the idea than a world buried in the darkness for a year could be the most amazing aesthetic playground.
-Pierre: Here are the lyrics:
“I stopped believing whats inside of me /I was set on taking everything and making waves destroying the day/ The world around went dark I saw it disappear as the colors turned gray/ Oh oh oh oh I'll play the devil /You can be the light/ You can save me from the sea/ Where I'll be the devil /You can play the light/ They took the best of us and sent it on/ No we search to fill that void/ The world around was dark I saw the light appear just as I turned my head / The waves The waves /Can you stand the waves/ Cause you know I'll be gone so long /I've been living with your devil too long and I've been living with these eyes closed / The world around was dark /I saw I was floating in the salt and sun for a year /Starting to fade I felt you pull me aboard /I opened my eyes to see the world I'd left behind /And it became so clear.”

I.M: We have heard plenty of different things about the French scene, and everybody seems to agree that is closed and not ‘band friendly’. How is Year Of No Light viewed by it’s French pears?

-Shiran: I like to think that we’re friends with lot of different bands and I can fell a real bond between lot of different French bands from different scenes. I personally feel pretty close to bands like Pneu, Gasmask Terrör, Overmars, Aeroflot, Aluk Todolo, Habsyll, Hello sunshine, Mönarch, Abject Object, Darvulia, Austrasian Goat, The Enterprise, Chambre froide...

-Mathieu : I don’t know… It really depends… Generally we’re nice and open-minded guys… We use to play in really different bands, from 8-Bit electronica to Drone, from vintage-electro-punk to über-doom and we have really cool relationships with very different people from really different scenes… But in the strict “Metal” or “Hardcore” scene, there can be a kind of dumb spirit of competition with a very strange sense of “deontology”, “ethics” and some bad situations can happen with stupid monkeys of some (generally) bad acts… But we don’t care a lot about that, back home, in Bordeaux, we chill with friends from garage, pop or crust-punk bands and everything’s perfect… I also think that the situation is far away better than, let’s say, 10 years ago when different scenes were much more hermetic to each others…

-Pierre: I don’t know… I think I don’t care: the vast majority of our followers don’t live in this shitty country. I don’t give a fuck concerning the so called “national scene”. Anyway, we’re not a bunch of misanthropic guys: we just dislike consanguinity.

I.M: Which such and intricate and rich sound and 3 guitar players, 2 drummers in the band, how do you manage to agree when it comes down to making music? How does the music writing process happen within YONL?

-Shiran: Seems like we all have the same expectations and desire with this band. We respect a lot each other so there is no big ego issues that could ruin the writing process. Most of the time Jerome and Pierre came to practice with idea of songs or riffs and then we work on it together, everyone giving his own idea or arrangement until we find the right form, until we find real heaviness.

-Mathieu: Generally, Pierre and Jérôme come with some killing riff or guitar lead and we all start to build the cathedral… For the drums, it’s a more complex composing step. We try a lot of different patterns. We even wrote some of them on some music software. For the guitars, Shiran ans Jérôme are kind of “Harmony neurotics” and it can take some long long time before they reach the “subliminal point”, the one who will create the “ghost choirs” that spread all over the tracks.

-Pierre: We close our eyes and play as loud as possible: when we emerge, we take a look at what we’ve done. We love paying with the contingency, with the accident.

I.M: After several split albums and a live album, “Ausserwelt” is the band’s second full length release. Can you tell us about the concept and ideas behind the album?

-Shiran: We wanted it to sound more heavy and abstract than “Nord”. That’s all that matter for me.

Mathieu : Briefly, it is related to the “beyond”. You can see it as theological or metaphysical. We wanted the tracks and the album to be introspective and tripping, like a journey into dark paths of the subconscious or into some long ago forgotten worlds and human feelings. It can also be the perfect soundtrack to your last car ride, in deep deep night, hypnotized by kinetic energy and with a wall right in front of you.

-Pierre: A celebration of the sensitive world through the medium of our amps. A down tuned detestation of modernity. The smell of the woods after a heavy rain, the coldness of a gun after a heavy night. More drugs, more volume, less life.

I.M: How is the cover of “Ausserwelt” related to the concept/lyrics behind the album?

-Shiran: When I play this music all I see is beautiful but dark landscapes. This cover is a perfect representation of what’s in my mind when I play with year of no light. This cover was inspire by “L’île de la mort” de Arnold Boklin and maybe the Dharma initiative.

-Mathieu : Greg Vezon, the drawer, was fond of Arnold Böklin’s “Insel der Toten“... And this idea was totally okay with our vision of the album... So he gave us his great version of this incredible painting, with a kind of „Black-Metal“ spirit... What we wanted was this central point in the painting where there’s a light that you can follow, a light which attracts you, but in no way you can know what’s beyond... It’s like an invitation to the unknown... It’s bright but also creepy... It’s maybe a metaphor of the subconscious, for the psyche... So...you’ll be on your own in these woods, and even if the island looks pretty tiny, it reveals itself as very, very deep...

I.M: Playing an experimental combination of Sludge/Drone/Doom and even some Post-Metal influences, what do you think makes YONL standout from the rest of the similar bands in the world?

-Shiran: I don’t know maybe because we don’t mind being part of a musical genre. We just want to go as far as our inspiration leads us loud as our amps allow us to play.

-Mathieu : It’s up to you… Personally, I just don’t see us as part of any of these styles. We just make heavy and progressive music and we really don’t care about labeling. When you look at what our audience looks like, you can see that it comes from Black-metal to Concrete Music. That’s pretty cool.

-Pierre: I just hate profoundly the actual “core” vibes and the caps that generally go with this shit. I don’t care about the rest but I have a huge respect for the extreme metal underground. YONL is for me like an electrical worship, a kind of praxis embedded in the mediocrity of our pop-nihilistic times. This band is a network of acting singularities: no shitty “progressive” empty ethics, neither retarded nihilism. We just try to offer a twisted and dark introspective journey at a very high volume.

I.M: The influences behind YONL are countless; can you tell us what bands do you guys consider as your main influences when it comes to making music?

-Shiran: Iron Maiden, Black Sabbath, Weakling, Thergothon, Melvins, Ligeti, Angantyr, Darkthrone, Morton Feldman and Entombed above all.
-Jerome: my bloody valentine, merzbow, neil young, glenn branca, buried at sea, black flag, an hypothetical version of Pachelbel's canon in D major covered by Ligeti...
-Johan: Swans, Joy division, My bloody valentine, buried at sea, old neurosis, troum, fennesz, emeralds, unsane, botch and the orb !
-Mathieu : Joy Division, Neu!, Metallica, Neil Young, Burzum, Steve Reich, Ennio Morricone.
-Pierre: Bathory, Bolt Thrower, Debussy, Codeine, Joy Division, Pink Floyd, Born Against, His Hero is gone, the Swans, Low, Can, My Dying Bride, Eric Satie and World War III.

I.M: How does a live performance of YONL work? We can’t imagine how the bands music is fully brought to life for a live performance.

-Shiran: It only works at full volume. Our formation allows us to recreate most of the sounds we use on the record. Cyrille our sound engineer help us a lot to recreate and go sonically further than the record.
-Pierre: Yeah, it’s quite strange because we are playing very loud but most people seem just as meditative as if they were listening to the record at their home… And playing live with such a configuration is a very cathartic and quasi-religious experience. The later we play, the better it is. We need the support of obscurity and of psychedelics substances. But it remains always a fragile process. It’s a kind of sacrifice.

I.M: Any touring in support of “Ausserwelt”? Maybe some dates in the USA?

-Pierre: We ‘re just back from a European tour with our Irish mates of Altars of Plague. Hail to them! We should be back on stage at this fall.
-Jerome: we don' t have any plan for touring USA but the idea of crossing your amazing country haunt
each of our most wet dreams...

I.M: If you could tour with any band in the scene, which ones do you think will fit with YONL in a killer tour package?

-Shiran: Maybe Wolves in the throne rooms and Master musicians of Bukkake.
-Johan: We already did it with both for some shows but a killer package would be something like troum or fear falls burning or emeralds + Master musicians of Bukkake.
-Mathieu : Godspeed You ! Black Emperor or Sonic Youth would be ok !
-Pierre: Nachtmystium, Gnaw, Altar of Plagues ( but we already did it), Habsyll, Enslaved, Michael Jackson and Mayhem!

I.M: If you had unlimited budget for a live performance, what would you use to bring the full YONL experience to life?

-Shiran: I’d like to use at least two tumblers and a lot of Moogs.

-Johan: Wall of vintage amps, lots of old mono-synths in the ruins of a cathedral…

-Jerome: a show at chili's elqui valley, with a swarm of vintage amps, organic drugs, grizzly bears and pole dancers would be great.

-Mathieu : I want Eddie from the Powerslave era riding AC/DC’s Ballbreaker while Ozzy would rip a hundred of doves’ heads off. Or just the best drugs around for the audience and us.

-Pierre: Two divisions of Panzers fighting each other’s in a pit full of napalm. A tornado of weed. A storm of heroin. Hundreds of child soldiers praying for the end of the world, under the burst of 666 suns.

I.M: Anything else you want to add for the band’s followers in the USA and around the world?

-Jerome: thanks a lot for supporting us, you are our fuel!!!
-Mathieu : Thanks a lot and take care.
-Pierre: thanks for your support and interest! Take care.

Thanks for the interview and good luck with the album promotion.

More info: http://www.myspace.com/yearofnolight