6/1/2017 – Thank you to everyone who has offered their support of the synthwave coverage we’ve had on Slickster Magazine. For those of you who have been following our trail of synth wave artists, Gloom Influx is next among them. Gloom Influx is Luc Leclerc. He sent us an advance copy of his upcoming feature album release. Actions speak louder than words, so let me describe what happened next. I listened to single while sipping down a steaming hot cup of coffee. Then I immediately went back to the email, downloaded the entire album, and loaded it onto my iPod nano. Yeah, still rock a 2GB iPod nano. Zero fucks given. Then I listed to the entire album at full volume. Then I listened to the entire album again. Then my headphones broke so I got a pair of vintage 1980’s Walkman® foam covered headphones at the thrift store… and listened to the album again. This album is worth checking out, and here a short interview with Luc about Gloom Influx.
Luc, great effort on your first album. We have really enjoyed listening to this. It seems like you have spent some considerable time working on the guitar sounds on the album. They sound huge! How did you create these patches? Did you play the guitar live on some tracks?
Gloom Influx – Thanks, glad you liked it! Most of these sounds on the album are actually bass synthesizers, driven through a very distorted amp setup, and pushing the limits. As for guitars, I’ll just say that there some were sampled, and some were not. I plan to use more guitars in the future.
Obsidiane is one of my favorite tracks on the new album. Can you describe how you wrote and produced this track?
I really enjoy music from horror movies, especially Goblin. I remember having the theme for Phantasm stuck in my head for a long time, then I wrote this track – in a similar scale and tempo, it also has some common progressions. And like most songs I write, it only took me a few hours to finish composing, one idea morphing naturally into the next one.
Did you go to school to study music, or all self taught?
I actually did both, got some classical guitar lessons in school when I was young, and then I continued studying on my own, mainly about composition and arrangements. I produced quite a few albums over the years, under different names, but only by using the most basic mixing techniques. So I recently started to improve my production techniques with help from friends, tutorials, and online lessons.
What are a few of your favorite EDM bands?
I’m not really that much into EDM, but I really like Justice, Daft Punk, Boys Noize, and MSTRKRFT. Nowadays I like a lot of 80’s pop – some of which I disliked very much when I was growing up, like Hall & Oates, Depeche Mode, Eurythmics, Duran Duran. I was a young metalhead who started playing guitar at 11, and I was solely interested in thrash metal – Slayer, Megadeth, Metallica, Testament, Kreator, etc.
What are few of your favorite 80’s movies?
Everything by John Carpenter – especially The Thing, Escape From New York, Big Trouble In Little China – and David Cronenberg – Videodrome, Dead Ringers, Naked Lunch, Dead Zone. There’s just way too many good movies – Blade Runner, Mad Max, Tron, Re-Animator, Running Man, Brazil. And of course Ghostbusters.
Do you think the genre of synthwave is going to last a long time, or will come and go?
It’s hard to say… I’ve watched the synthwave / darksynth scene evolve quite a lot in the past few years. Not long ago, there were only a handful of live acts. Nowadays, there are literally hundreds of producers, with new releases every week. So there is a lot of generic stuff out there, because everybody is using the same keyboards / patches / chord progressions.
But there’s also some highly talented people out there – like Phaserland, Syntax, Volkor X, SurgeryHead, and more. And the genre works really well with movies & TV – like Stranger Things, and the upcoming Blood Machines movie with Carpenter Brut. So I’d like to think that the genre will stay, but it might re-invent itself as it gets more or less mainstream.
What are your social media pages and do you have any live shows coming up?
I’m on Soundcloud, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. At this point, there are no live shows planned, but it is a very real possibility for the end of the this year. I’m not sure what my live setup would be, but I want to play real instruments as much as possible – not just be pushing buttons on a launchpad while reading my emails.