Jean Luc DeMeyer - Front 242
Los Angeles, July 25, 1998
*So is this current tour in support of the ReBoot album?-
-JLDM: Not exactly. We have been touring for about one year now. In Europe, we have played lots of festivals, and dates as headliners, and we recorded the show two or three times. We played the DAT for some of our friends, and they told us "Why don't you release that?". We didn't pay much attention to that, but then we recieved offers from record companies about [a live CD], and we said "why not?" after all.
These are new versions, totally updated versions for '97 and '98. Some of them are very, very different from the original. Some aren't, but most of them are really reworked alot : the structures, the sounds, the vocals, everything is quite different.
*Is there a particular reason why the band decided to work the material over?
-JLDM : Yeah, because we wanted to tour again, but we all now have our side projects, and we didn't really have time to make an entirely new album-that would take us two to three years, while working on updating some of the previous catalog has taken us two or three months. We just didn't have time to go into the studio for a full new album.
*Do you enjoying touring? I ask that because I know that alot of bands don't....
-JLDM: Definitely. I must say that touring in the past has always been a problem, but this year, this time we did it, from the beginning, in a very much more lightweight manner than before. We don't take our own full production and PA with us, so it's much lighter to organize, it's much easier to travel. We are just a minimal team, and it's way easier for us. So this time, for the first time in 17 years, I can say it's fun. I know the others share that opinion.
*This American leg is only a few days in, but would you say it's going well then?
-JLDM : Yeah, it's the same vibe as in Europe. It's the only part of the tour that's going to be a real tour, because in Europe, we play maybe two or three dates in a row,then we have a two week stop-we do other things, and then the next Saturday we play again together. But it's doing okay.
*When you talk about Europe, would you say that with the audiences, the fanbase, that there is a big difference between Europe and America?
-JLDM : I used to be very concerned about that, but I'm not anymore. I haven't asked myself the question, and I haven't analyzed the US audience so far.
*How does the musicwriting process work between the four members of the band? How do you go about coordinating together to write songs?
-JLDM : That's a professional secret!! No, all the musical structures have been worked by Daniel [Bresanutti] and Patrick [Codenys], and then Richard and I have worked on the vocal parts, and suggested some fine changes in the music to make, say, this a little longer, or this a little lighter, or this a little more busy. It was quite fast, two or three months work. For us that's really fast.
*Do you feel that your approach to writing music, or your structures, have changed between now and the 17 years that you've been around ?
-JLDM : I can only speak for myself- Since we've met and started doing music together in '81, the four members have really changed alot, of course, because so much time has passed. The way I do music today, and envision music today, has nothing to do anymore with the way we started doing it in '81, and that's absolutely normal for tons of reasons: The instruments have changed so radically, everything has become much more easy to use. There are many more sounds and techniques available today, and basically all these techniques have produced an immense freedom, compared to what we had in the beginning. And I think the common factor between the four of us, is that now we can really become much more extreme in anything we want to do. That is one of the reasons why we haven't worked together in four or five years, because we all wanted to experiment with new ways of making music
*So then would you say that your attitude towards music in general has changed?
-JLDM : Yes, definitely. The more you make music, the less you like to listen to music in general. When you spend half of your life in the studio, when you go back to your house, do you think you still want to listen to the radio, or to a record?
*Are there any particular artists that you have been listening to?
-JLDM : No, I've been listening to sounds of nature. I have a great CD with deers...[at this point, Jean Luc does a really great rendition of the deer sounds] whales... 55 minutes, that's great,I like that.
Now after fifteen years, sometimes I listen to the demos, and all the CD's that have been sent in... they want some advice, or whatever...For fifteen years, I didn't do that, now I started doing that.
*Well, you've been together for over fifteen years, and Front 242 is viewed as one of the forefathers of industrial/dance music...
-JLDM : Yeah, grand,grandfathers...
....and we were wondering what kind of music you were influenced by when you started out.
-JLDM: In the beginning? It was really the German scene of the seventies, bands like Kraftwerk and Can, things like that.
*The band does all of its album artwork, is that correct?
-JLDM: Not for this one, but all the ones before, yes. This one we asked a French guy who's really into our kind of music, who does music himself, and who is a friend of the band for quite a long time now.He showed us some work that he had done with some of the pictures of the tour, and we said "that's cool...can we use it, because we're going to make an album..." and he said "sure". It's the guy who did the video for the song "Happiness", he's extremely good.
*Would you say that there is a certain relationship between the artwork and the music which you aimed to express?
-JLDM : Not really. I think we are still tied by the themes and the atmosphere of the songs that we rework.
I know that it is music that has been labeled very heavily as the music of the eighties, and I think that what we are doing here with the ReBoot tour is to prove that we can work in the nineties also, because I think that there isn't such a huge difference between the electronica wave that is so successful today, and what we did. People seem to think that it is totally different type of music, that it has nothing to do with it, but I don't agree at all. I think they have 95% in common The way that it is mixed now with the technology, and the rhythms are different, but the kind of energy that I sense in the Prodigy, for example, is very, very close to being the type of energy that we had, and what we're standing for.
*That does bring us to another thought- We were wondering what you think of how "big" electronic music has become in the past few years.
-JLDM : That's fine! We feel sort of proud, because we feel that somehow, on this road we have contributed to make this happen, and I like this type of music much more than the 76 copies of the Beatles.. you know, bands like Oasis. I think they're not bad, but it's just the same. It's always the same big mouth, the same type of sound, and for me it's just boring.
*Do you feel comfortable with the term "industrial" ?
-JLDM : These terms just don't make any sense at all, if they ever did...I'm not even sure they ever did. The music we did, and the music we're doing today, the only qualification we could give to it is electronic, that's all. There is such a huge difference between what is labeled as "industrial" in Europe and in the States... I think that if you asked a German and an American to list bands that are "industrial", you would probably come up with, out of 20 bands, maybe 2 or 3 would be in both lists, so it doesn't mean much... In Europe, Stabbing Westward would never be labeled as an industrial band, nor even Nine Inch Nails.
*With all the new bands arising, in particular bands which try to emulate the Front 242 style, and with the rise of all the new techno bands, do you feel that it is getting more difficult to stay innovative?
-JLDM : No. I think on the contrary, it has never been so easy. The problem is now that the picture of the musical world is so different than in the eighties. The record companies really want bands that can sell alot from the beginning, so there is not much room, really well supported exposure, for bands who are really different from what the general trend is.
That's really a shame. There are less and less bands signed by record companies, the sales of CD's in general is really going down, and that's not a good sign at all for the future, unfortunately. There is still room in the technology to innovate, and to experiment, but there is less and less room among the business industry to let people go in the direction they want.
* With the increasing crossover between what is considered "electro/industrial" bands, and some of the more "techno"bands, there seems to be more and more bands which are crossing the two together, fusing the sound and the audiences.How do you feel about that?
-JLDM : I don't really care...It's taking several types of music that are successful and putting them together. There is French saying which means to "mow" as much as possible, [like mowing the grass], to have as many people as possible buying your records. Whatever music they like, they're going to find sometihing of what they like in your music. I'm quite convinced that most of the bands doing that don't do it because it is their own artistical freedom, but because it's a financial choice.
*We've seen that Front 242 has withstood the test of time. Is there anything that you would still like to accomplish with the band?
-JLDM: Yeah, there is one thing so far that we haven't done, and what we're experimenting with now, is really having fun being together. The last years, the last two albums that we've done, were done under so much pressure from the record company, and from all the people who were expecting us to do the same, and the same thing again, that we really lost touch with the main reason why we started doing music, which was: really being comfortable with what we were doing, not listening to anybody, and really having fun with that. I think that what we have here, and what we have reached with our separate projects now is something like that. Of course, we are not expecting our side projects to do as well as Front 242, but at least on an artistical point of view, and on a fun point of view, it's really something that's interesting , and something where we can experiment with things that we haven't been able to experiment with in Front 242 since a very, very long time.
*Are you getting alot more support from the record companies, more freedom to do what you want to do?
-JLDM : Yes, definitely, especially with those who we signed with now. They know that we are not a baby band anymore, and they know that we have never been as good as when we were totally free: when we were on our independent record company in Belgium, and on Wax Trax in the states. We became quite less independent when we were on Sony.
*And who are you currently signed with now?
-JLDM: We are signed on Metropolis in the States, and on Music Research, which is an independent German label, for Europe.
*How are your current side-projects going?
-JLDM : Cobalt 60, what I consider now my main band, just released our second album in Europe, and it's going to be released in the States in October. Wax Trax wants a second album from C-Tec. We even played 40 dates earlier this year, and we will come back for more, probably in the middle of next year. All these projects are rolling, and there are many more from the other members of the band, but I can't quote them all, because that would take an hour.
*Are you going to be doing any more vocal work with Birmingham 6?
-JLDM: No, it was a one-off project...
*I know that you've been asked this a million times, but is Front 242 looking at working on new material?
-JLDM: We still don't know, and there are no plans. All our side projects, without doing absolutely fantastic, are doing okay. Well, doing more than okay, and we already have alot of commitments with 242 until the end of this year, because we have alot of shows. I have a tour with Cobalt 60 this year in October. In the beginning of next year Richard [23] releases his own album, and so it's going to be difficult to find windows in our schedule. But we'll see....
view the live 242 pix from the show