Neige [aka Stéphane Paut] has catapulted Alcest into the stratosphere. Powered by sentimental, empowering, isolating, and ephemeral songs, the France-based combo, featuring long-time drummer Winterhalter [aka Jean Deflandre], take the engaged and passersby on otherwordly journeys. From debut Souvenirs d’un Autre Monde to 2024’s dreamy Les Chants de L’Aurore, they’ve pulled and pushed, tugged at heartstrings and enraged souls. No surprise–actually Neige was taken aback–when metal’s leading lights and Decibel favorites Mastodon invited them on a massive U.S. tour. With no new album to promote and only vibes to go on, Neige, Winterhalter, live guitarist Zero and live bassist Indria, posited their delicate angst and spiritual intention as a foil to Mastodon’s mind-intensive mettle.
Decibel found Neige in Detroit–a sort of homecoming for yours truly–near the halfway mark of Alcest’s month-long jaunt across the U.S. and Canada. Read on as the frontman tentatively drops hints about future music, both Classical and metallic, and gets personal about his sojourn in this life (and before). In fact, as a stopgap between now and what’s to come, Alcest have slated the release of their new live album, Live at Hellfest 2022, for December 4th on Nuclear Blast.
It’s been several years since Les Chants de L’Aurore. Have you started to think about what follows?
Neige: We have this project on the side of the regular Alcest, which is like a collaboration album. It’s like a piano and three vocals. We are going to release an album next year. It’s going to be a pianist, Zero [Pierre Corson], the other guitar player, and Elise [Aranguren], she’s our tour manager, but she’s singing in this project. Long story short, Nicolas Horvath, a musician from the Classical music world, who also has like a foot into the metal scene, wrote me a mail a couple years ago to tell me if I would be interested in doing like reinterpretations of the Alcest songs in a Classical setting. I said, sure, I think that’d sound great. The guy is a big Alcest fan, so he knows a lot about the project. We worked on this thing for two years. We did a couple of shows, and now, we’ve made an album. Nicolas is one of the main interpreters of Philip Glass.
My mind immediately goes to the French band, Elend, who had some notable releases in the 1990s.
Neige: Oh, yeah, of course! Normally, I’m not into metal and Classical together. It’s a bit cheesy.
If you’re thinking about Rhapsody (or Rhapsody of Fire), then yes, I agree.
Neige: If it’s a 100-percent metal, it’s fine. If it’s 100-percent Classical, it’s fine. We’re not trying to do both too much with this new project. So, it’s two very different universes, the metal scene and the classical scene. I hope it’s not cheesy.
Are you writing new Alcest songs at the moment?
Neige: It’s been a while since I wrote anything. I’m just lacking time. We are on tour a lot. When I come back from the tour, it takes like a week to recover, like a week or more sometimes. Only then I can start being creative again.
Hard to feel creative when you’re not in the moment or have the right mindset for the moment.
Neige: When you’re on tour for three months, it’s not really possible to be creative like that. I need to be a little bit more grounded before I can start to work at home again.
Describe that process.
Neige: You have to feel in the mood. You have to feel like you’re moving towards something. So, in my case, I could never force myself to write something. For example, once I spent a whole year without making a single riff. So, this happens. I hope it doesn’t happen again because it’s very scary, but it can happen. Basically, there are no rules. If we knew how to make the best song in the world everyone would have done it. There are no rules. Everyone is different. We all have our ways to make a song. For me, it’s very, very basic. I just jam on my guitar and make riff memos in my phone. I don’t even work so much on a computer. I don’t really make demos. At this stage, I just record my riffs, assemble them to make like a song. I don’t really know how the riffs come to me. It’s a bit mysterious. I just know I’m channeling something. I don’t know what exactly. I can spend months writing nothing, but then I can suddenly write a song in a few hours.
The creative process is torture or bliss.
Neige: Something I noticed, I’m almost never creative when I’m too happy. It’s cliché, I know. I need to be in some kind of dark place in my life to feel inspired.
Does that happen naturally or do you force yourself?
Neige: Good question. No, I think it happens naturally, because I don’t think I’m a sad person, but I’m not a happy person. So, it’s easy to slip into that place. It’s a part of who I am. I’ve always been a little bit on the melancholic side of things. In my case, it’s not like a creepy melancholy. It’s more like a bittersweet, nostalgic melancholy.
You can hear that in Alcest.
Neige: The main feeling that’s in this music is this feeling to be… Not to be where I’m supposed to be. Maybe homesick. I talk about this otherworldly place [in Alcest]. I’m still trying to find a way to integrate my spirituality into this life. As much as I’m a spiritual person, I hate religion. It’s hard to integrate spirituality into music without it making it sound like religion.
Being religious and being spiritual are two different things.
Neige: I agree, but for most people they are not. Every time I say to someone, “I believe in God. I believe there is a higher being.” People, they always say to me, “Oh, so you are religious?” I say, “No, that’s not what I said.” I’m not following any established way to believe in something. I have my own way. It’s just I believe in something. I don’t want to follow any old books. Or, go to church on Sunday at 10 and leave at 1—like a regiment. Sometimes, it’s a very solitary path. I think it’s important to do it alone not to have too much influence from the outside. The connection that is between you and something higher is what’s important.
So where are you on that journey now?
Neige: The beginning? I think I kind of always had the answer. What I consider to be my answer. I believe that we are here to learn something. And life after life, we learn more and more. And we are going to come back again and again, our souls. So, I’m not afraid of dying. I know there is an after.
There are Buddhist tenets to what you’re talking about.
Neige: I know. But I hate labels. Reincarnation. It’s something that I feel I’ve lived personally. Not in a book. I remember where I was before being here. That’s the Alcest concept. I’m still trying to figure it out. So, maybe I’m at the beginning of that. Or, maybe I’m at the end?
How do you feel about that?
Neige: I’m not sure. I believe that we all are on this journey—to elevate our souls in a way. In order to do that, we have to experience everything: the pain, the joys, the sickness, the happiness. Absolutely everything. This is a part of our training. To your previous question, I think I have a hint because I notice that I’m still very attached to some things. I’m still very haunted by things. I’m not at peace at all. This band is my own like spiritual quest. The reason I wanted to feel less alone. When I was a kid, I remembered this place—this otherworldly place. I thought it was normal. Everyone had it, but now, I realize that not everyone could remember where they were before being here. When I became a teenager, I discovered metal music, and I thought, “OK, why not use music to talk about this experience?” I wanted to see also if other people would recognize their own story in my story.
Les Chants… was more textural. Talk about that approach.
Neige: I resonate a lot with melodies. The first instrument I learned was piano with my grandmother. She was a piano teacher. I’m a more of a melody-type of guy than rhythm. I didn’t grow up with punk music, for example. A lot of people, they listen to punk and then they went into metal. For me, it was Classical. Then, I discovered dance music in the ‘90s. Wait, I think I listened to Nirvana for a few months.
Then, it was black metal. A friend of mine bought a magazine [Metallian]. He gave me the magazine. Dani from Cradle of Filth was on the cover. I was like, “What’s this?!” It had a CD on the cover [cover mounted CD], and he said, “You have to listen to this!” Cradle was on it. Bunch of other black and death metal bands. I was into it in a fucking instant. I was maybe 12 or 13.
When did you get into shoegaze?
Neige: At the time of my first album [Souvenirs d’un Autre Monde], is when I really started to discover the shoegaze scene. I was a black metal heavy hitter for about two years—nothing but black metal. Then, I went straight into techno and indie.
It wasn’t very common to listen to black metal and shoegaze, especially in the 1990s. Katatonia did, though.
Neige: I know. Now, it’s very normal.
[Points to my Cocteau Twins shirt and my wife’s Type O Negative battle jacket]
Neige: Peter Steele was a huge Cocteau Twins fan. He was also a big Lycia fan.
Getting back to Alcest, where do you think you’ll take the next album?
Neige: I function strangely. I need one bright album and one dark album. My albums are bright, dark, bright, dark. The last album [Les Chants…] was a very uplifting album. I guess the next one will darker. I want to explore the chorus-y type of cold wave.
Like Asylum Party?
Neige: I think so. With more clean guitars. I think it’s still a little bit too early for me to know where I’m gonna go next, but I have a few ideas. That could be next year or maybe in eight years. It’s not really up to me. I don’t force inspiration. It comes when it comes. That makes sense for art, but not for being in a band that’s active, touring and all that.
You’re obviously aware that Alcest is a vehicle for your spiritual quest, but also a commercial venture.
Neige: I am. We like to commoditize art, make it commercial. It’s a product. I guess we should be a little bit more money driven. Most bands are. That’s not really the case with us. We have people who work for us. It’s a big team, actually. I just write songs.
None of that would be possible if you weren’t writing songs, though.
Neige: I realize that. I still am doing the artistic direction of everything, so I make sure that every visual that we are gonna sell is compatible with Alcest. We have lore now. At least, that’s what people call it nowadays. So, I’m doing the music, the concept, and visuals. But I have no idea how to promote it or sell it. I would be horrible at selling my work.
So, you’re on tour with Deafheaven, who you toured with before, and Mastodon.
Neige: We are. They’re such great people. We’ve known Deafheaven for a long time. We hadn’t met Mastodon before. So, they’re the ones who approached us. It’s interesting. They’re a very different type of band. They could’ve taken another band from the states, but no, they took a weird-ass band from France. Maybe they’re weird-ass, too. I’m very happy and of course, grateful. It’s a great tour.
Alcest on tour with Deafheaven and Mastodon
Sep 16 – Orlando, FL @ Hard Rock
Sep 18 – Asheville, NC @ Asheville Yards
Sep 19 – Pittsburgh, PA @ Stage AE
Sep 22 – Philadelphia, PA @ Franklin Music Hall
Sep 23 – Boston, MA @ House of Blues
Sep 24 – Brooklyn, NY @ Brooklyn Paramount
Sep 25 – Washington, DC @ The Anthem
Sep 27 – Montreal, QC @ MTELUS
Sep 28 – Toronto, ON @ Rebel
Sep 29 – Buffalo, NY @ Buffalo Riverworks
Oct 1 – Detroit, MI @ Fillmore Auditorium
Oct 2 – Chicago, IL @ The Riviera Theatre
Oct 3 – Minneapolis, MN @ Palace Theatre
Oct 4 – Omaha, NE @ FILL
Oct 6 – Salt Lake City, UT @ The Complex
Oct 7 – Garden City, ID @ Revolution Concert House
Oct 9 – Oakland, CA @ Fox Theater
Oct 10 – Los Angeles, CA @ Hollywood Palladium
Oct 11 – Del Mar, CA @ The Sound
Oct 12 – Las Vegas, NV @ FILL
Oct 14 – Denver, CO @ The Fillmore
Oct 16 – Des Moines, IA @ Val Air Ballroom
Oct 17 – St. Louis, MO @ The Pageant
Oct 18 – Memphis, TN @ Satellite Music Hall
Oct 20 – Cleveland, OH @ The Agora
Oct 21 – Greensboro, NC @ Piedmont Hall
Oct 22 – Atlanta, GA @ The Eastern
The post Q&A: Neige (Alcest) Reflects On Spirituality & Dani Filth appeared first on Decibel Magazine.
