My interview is with Thierry Massard, an experimental sound creator/noisenik/netmusic activist/blogger from France, who shot his first albums at the outset of noise and industrial music history. Indeed, he do not appreciate anyhow he would be described as the musician, and I think I can actually understand him well as this realm of sonority is rather a matter of perception where usual understandings about music have no effect for. At the moment he has new stuff on preparation, such as the upcoming album: inconnu ("unknown" in French) for the suRRism phoenetics label which obviously will be released on the coming weeks; and had just released his very first "remix" for a tribute to the contemporary multimedia artist, Joël Hubaut for Dock(s) - an art revue.
When you started recording your first album?
Sübe Version was recorded during the summer 1979, in my parents garage (if you listen to it closely you can here some buses or trucks passing by in the street).
What kind of equipment did you exploit for the album to be recorded?
The equipment was more than rudimentary - a cheap electric guitar, a chamber of echo (an antiquity) some uncontrollable and strange pedals - some recordings of films sequences (mainly a film noir, but I do not remember the title … a b-movie) there was also an organ for children and a small radio (as amplifier for the guitar, voice, pedals).
Sübe Version was recorded directly on a monophonic cassette tape recorder I had paid 30 euros … and to do a kind of mix of all the sound sources - I just placed the tape recorder on the ground, in the middle of the garage and drawn some circles around, then I just placed the different sources to some relative distances to the microphone. Quite rough, isn't it?
The release as a 50 examples limited edition in the cassette format was done in autumn 1979 - these cassettes were not sold but just offered and sent to some people such as Cosey Fanny Tutti of Throbbing Gristle. This was also often used by the multimedia performer artist Joël Hubaut, in his performances. This first experience had partly some residual follows, a few tracks done between 1979 and 1982, then I stopped producing for over 25 years. This release may probably remained "secret" if I had talk about to my friends Fred Debief and Max Marlow who decided to release it, in 2008, on their netlabel Metropublik (now defunct) - following this reissue he also produced a Hands on Thierry Massard remixes version for Kreislauf, including 25 remixes by some of the major musicians of the netscene and I must say that I was really touched and fully honoured, imagine this forgotten thing - much than reworked by all these fabulous people (I really admire the work of many of the musicians present on it).
What groups were your most important influences at the time?
I must say that I'm not a "musician", before doing these first steps, I had just some experiences in early local punk bands, but at the time I was mainly fascinated by the early industrial scene, Throbbing Gristle of course, Chrome, the first singles of The Human League, Robert Rental, The Normal, or The Residents, Pere Ubu, Kraftwerk, early Devo things, Faust, Neu! and more generally the Krautrock and all the early punk scene.
Might it be possible looking for some philosophy behind your music?
This is difficult to talk about a philosophy behind my sounds, this was (is) more a kind of general attitude regarding our social environment, I always described myself as a "combative pessimistic".
In my personal case I can not talk of an evolution or "changes" for all over the years, because I stayed silentful during all this time listening to music as a regular music fan - my absolute passion for music became more "active" through my experience with the netaudio scene on coordinating two blogs from 2006 until 2009 - this deep interest for writing about music (as you) gave me a taste of "doing things" which grew and became some recent releases.
Let`s deliver us some description about your sophomore album?
Staircase & Corridors is precisely that kind of release which really comes and goes through some time strata - some of the primal stuff treated there come, yes, from analogic recordings of 1982 (and you can here me talking with my mother) some of these original recordings were filtred through an antic Wem chamber of echo, but always recorded with a low cost recorder easily & often satured - the sources come also from radio waves, and for the recent stuff (digital) from EvP (electronic voice phenomenas like for what what", and what² (a kind of remix) I'm also often working on very microscopic samples from here and there that I use to cook or mix like.
I really love the mild and lush timbre of your latest issues (jeudi 16 septembre...;...vendredi 4 juin 2010). Am I being right supposing for you are using computers and potent interfaces nowadays?
I'm only using audacity on my oldish PC as this is precisely the only program I understand and my computer is blowing out of breath as an ox - I'm also considering that I'm not concerned by the standards of music production - I like that rough way of my sounds - cut ups sometimes - noisy on several ways - as you can see I'm a sort of homing device person, looking after things and others, and mostly, I can not imagine and accept to be considered as a musician.
Thank you, Thierry.
