French musician, Grimlin and his unique celebration of Valentine’s Day.
French EDM arist, Grimlin, is back with a brand new dark synthwave album. Dark Desires is macarbe celebration of Valentines Day. Grimlin weighs in on the Yellow Vests, Resident Evil and what makes music DARK. #grimlin #synthwave
Slickster: It’s been a year since the last time we talked. You have created a new synthwave album entitled Dark Desires. Can you describe, in your own, words what the album is all about?
Grimlin: Dark Desires is about Death and Love, Machines and humans. The main idea was to do something offbeat for Valentine’s day. It’s like celebrating Halloween for Christmas.
But at the end, this is not completely offbeat, each one of us can celebrate Valentine’s day at his own manner.
Not to mention the aggressive side with the fat beats, the distortion etc… There is a very melancholic vibe behind it. In this huge theme which is love, I am interested in the darkest parts. You know, when Juliet wakes up, and stabs herself when she understands Romeo just died. This is the kind of love story you will remember, because there is a strong meaning behind this act, it will make you think a lot for sure.
The main theme revolves around the love / death comparison. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart has described this feeling of death with his last words, “The taste of death is upon my lips, I feel something that is not of this earth.”
Slickster: The opening of Dark Desires has a cool overdub (Track 1, Introjection) about speaking with the dead. It starts with a story about a man who tries to contact his deceased daughter from beyond the grave and suddenly experiences a paranormal event within his house. It really entices the listener and seems to appeal to people who enjoy horror movies and paranormal fiction.
However, then the narrator states that, “Anyone who practices demonation, or tells fortunes, or interprets elements, or a sorcerer, charmer, or a medium, a necromancer, or one who inquires of the dead… For whoever does these things, is an abomination of the Lord.”
This seems like an abrupt change in tone and contrast with the opening statement. Where do you fall within these statements – What are your beliefs on communicating with the dead?
Grimlin: With Introjection, I wanted the introduction to sound like a TV scoop with an unexpected fall. We hear a journalist tell us about a story about a paranormal challenge that is growing on social networks. A tragic accident that occurs, with a father who has lost his child and who begins to invent a device that would allow him to communicate with the dead.
We then think that the narrator is against these diabolical practices, which is obvious to most people, but just before the song starts, he concludes by saying “do it!” This voice-over evolves with the music. This is where the discrepancy operates – We believe that a person is virgin of all suspicion, but in reality the complexity of the human being (as well as the richness of a musical timbre) very often means that he hides hidden desires. Dark desires.
Concerning my beliefs on communicating with the dead. I don’t have any, it’s more a kind of way of life that is a source of inspiration for my music. Believe it or not, I put my weirdest thoughts into my sounds. It’s like therapy that would take away what’s wrong with me. The result is that I am a well-balanced person who is comfortable in his own skin. I have been curious about obscure things. I have spent some nights in some “haunted” places, and of course I have made paranormal experiments (spiritism, transcommunication, pendulum…). I have seen quite a few weird things that science would have hard time to explain. But doing all these things make me believe in ghosts for example ? No, I’m just curious, and my art is imbued with this dark universe.
I’m not a satanist either ! I’m just an atheist geek who plays a role.
Slickster: You are based out of Paris. The Yellow Vest Riots, good or bad, have garnered a lot of international media attention. Have you personally witnessed any of these, and if so, have they effected you in any way?
Grimlin: The movement of the yellow vests has made a lot of noise, it’s true. There is a legitimate request from the French people. As far as I’m concerned, I’ll always be on the side of the people who are suffering. I hate injustice, and I will do everything to help my fellow man.
On the other hand, the problem now is violence – The phenomenon has grown considerably and the situation has deteriorated. There is aggressiveness in words and actions. The responsible Yellow Vests are constantly calling for demonstrations, at the risk of summoning the breakers to break. Here in some neighborhoods, there are shops that are completely destroyed, it’s free crime. All this will end badly if the state does not respond to some legitimate requests. But I have the impression that we are blinded by hatred : we have to talk to each other, not insult each other.
Slickster: During our previous interview for Trapped on Tape, you said, “I’m also a gamer (even if I don’t have much time to play these days) I’m completely into sci-fi horror games such as “Dead Space” for example.”
Recently, one of the all time classic survival horror games, Resident Evil 2, has been remade. Have you played the 2018 Resident Evil 2, and if so, what are your thoughts on it?
Grimlin: I still love Dead Space, I wish there was a remake on PS4 by the way. Just like you, right now I can’t find a moment of my own to play the console. But there are exceptions. I’m a big fan of Resident Evil. So you think when the remake of Resident Evil 2 was announced I was thrilled. So to be honest, I smashed the demo that was available on the Playstation store, I haven’t bought the game yet because I’m afraid to lock myself in my house for several days without giving a sign of life haha. But I’ll buy it soon, that’s for sure.
About my first impressions with this demo:
The atmosphere is just incredible. It’s gory and there are jump scares all over the place. When you loved the first Resident Evil, you can only love this one. The remake is very faithful to the original I find and everything that made the charm of the first opuses is present. Exploration, riddles, typewriters, plants, defense weapons, everything is there. The music is discreet but top-notch and well balanced with ambient sound effects. In just 30 minutes, Capcom shows us what a good video game is. It will certainly be a best-of of the saga, and I look forward to testing it further in the near future.
Slickster: Do you have a favorite track on Dark Desires?
Grimlin: It’s hard to choose because I gave a lot of myself on each of my songs. But some have given me more trouble than others. If I had to choose only one, it would probably be “The Ritual“. With this song I really wanted to explore a new genre by mixing funk with very dark sounds. I don’t know what to call it again, dark funk or heavy funk. I like to take risks, especially in music. I don’t like to lock myself in a genre (even if I love the 70s or 80s).
Slickster: You collaborated with Microchip Terror (Read MT’s interview with Slickster here) on track 6, Silent Scream. MT is based out of Singapore, so how did you guys team up? Were you ever in the same room during production or was all of the music created by sharing DAW files over the internet?
Grimlin: We teamed up together naturally by exchanging files of our daws by email. We also discuss on instagram quite often. Even if we live very far away from each other, we get along very well.
Microchip Terror is a cool guy. I like his music and I think if we lived in the same city, we’d become great friends, that’s for sure! Even though we’re already friends on the Internet.
It’s the same with Terragenesis, he’s a very good friend, far away but, we exchange very often via Instagram or Facebook, and we know each other well before the release of my first album. He’s a great guy, and a very talented composer. You must check his work! About Jordyn Oran, she is located in the US (California) and I only recently met her on the Internet too, she’s cool and has a great voice !
Slickster: Speaking of dark French synth music, Justice played my home town on New Year’s Eve a few months ago, but it was over $300 to go to the concert. I would have loved to have experienced that in person. You often use the adjective “dark” to describe your music. Can you explain, in musical terms, what makes music ‘dark’ as opposed to something lighter like ‘outrun’ or ‘vaporwave’?
Grimlin: I use the word dark to describe my music because it has a mysterious side with sounds that are usually found in horror movies. Bell sounds, distorted basses, bewitching drones. I don’t really know what to call what I do. We often talk about the Darksynth current. I’m a kind of outsider in this style of music. I think I just do electro. Electro with anguishing sounds inspired by the horror films of the 70s and 80s. After that, in the general trend of Synthwave, we find artists who only do Outrun (music that sounds very good in your car, generally inspired by the pursuit races of the 80s movies). There are artists who only do vaporwave, work with softer sounds. And there are artists who do both. There are a lot of currents that come from the Synthwave. Because I am partly inspired by Giallos films (70s italian splatter-cinema), should i call my style Giallowave ?
Slickster: Will you be doing any live shows in support of Dark Desires?
Grimlin: Until now i only did Dj sets. The live shows are very new to me, i still have much to learn ! But this is a very exciting experience. The last Dj set i did was in Paris, in a concert hall called “L’International”, I have played with Shredder 1984, Introspect and Johnny Parigo. Very cool people!
I had prepared this set beforehand, remixing the songs from my first album. I added sounds from the new album Dark Desires to it in order to test them in public before its release. It required a lot of work in advance but also a lot of concentration when the time came. I learned new things, like not jumping too high when you don’t know the ceiling height of a room (the little anecdote: I blew my hand off that night. A broken phalanx in the middle of the set – but I pretended that everything was fine because the show had to continue and the audience was super hot!)
Slickster: What is the most important thing you want to share with people for the of 2019?
Grimlin: What I want to share is maybe not the most important thing for everyone, but I just want to share this anecdote – Serge Gainsbourg (a famous french singer) had said this sentence, “I will compose until decomposition.” Like him, I will never stop composing music. I will go to the end of this destructive logic and do what my passion tells me to do.
2019 will be full of artistic projects with an EP followed by another album I hope. But not only music, I have another project in photography called Haunted Visions. My work is visible on Instagram, the nickname is @haunted_visions. Here I display my black and white photos of haunted or unusual places. So if you like this kind of photos, don’t hesitate to take a look. Thank you for your interview, it’s always a pleasure!