rockyourlyricsHow do you usually write the lyrics of your songs?
For CEYLON, there were two of us, so there were multiple approaches to the songwriting: our individual processes and the processes that resulted from us as a team.
Louise: I grew up hanging around places where live music was being played. I like to write in spaces that resonate with music – in kitchens, in living rooms, at the opera house or in the back room of a bar. I write using what the music of the moment offers me. I don’t think I’ve ever sat in a quiet room to write.
Tristan: I write anywhere, and always on a piece of paper. The parameters – like sound, rhythm, language and musicality – vary in order depending on what triggers them.
In your opinion, what is the most important thing in songwriting?
What we think is most important in songwriting is to be able to capture the moment that compels us to write and to play with the intermingling of the stories we want to tell and the sounds that the words make.
Are you ever scared of revealing aspects of your personal life/experience to strangers through your music?
Not at all. We think that once we have made the decision to write songs, and therefore to sing out our agonies and joys, then deep down we instinctively consent to them being shared. You can imagine it like a kind of ceremony with words coming out of someone’s head and landing on a huge painting that people are looking at.
What is the best lyric that you ever wrote (the most meaningful for you)?
Louise: I don’t have a best lyric but I can tell you that my favorite lyrics are in “Où le mal”. It’s a song where I can really interpret different characters as time goes by. The song talks about love, which creates but also relentlessly destroys, using panicked and hysterical voices that can’t find the words to express themselves.
Tristan: Before you can have a best song, you need to write the first one. I remember my first because it is tied to my first encounter with writing. I had never done it before and I had to keep things simple in order to succeed. That’s something I still pay attention to today.
What inspired “We Cry”, part of your latest EP “Ceylon”?
Tristan: “We Cry” popped into my head while I was walking down the street. At that moment, a connection formed between the different inspirations in my life. I has been spending entire days painting and I was playing my instrument a lot, and that helped me realize that I was expressing the same thing through all of that. And that thing was my having found love.
And “Ceylon”?
Louise: I have to admit that the song “Ceybon” always makes us laugh when we are about to play it. I’m not comfortable with a guitar but one day during a break I started playing the melody of Ceybon and singing a repetitive chant about our love of dance, like a strange trance. In CEYLON, dance has an important place with us on stage.
Do you remember the day you wrote “Hamlet Hollywood”?
Louise: Coming home one evening, I felt just as melancholic as Hamlet. I really like the character and feel very close to him – so close that he has become a sort of expression of mine. An expression that describes the physical and mental state that overcomes me sometimes. That evening, I tried to translate what I was feeling, and Hamlet became a woman.
Is there a link/a common theme among the songs of the new album?
Yes, and I also think that the theme will weave through all our future albums : we want to preserve the living side.
What is the best suggestion your producer gave you?
Not to be afraid of making mistakes in front of other people as long as you are being honest with yourself.
What are your plans for 2019?
We are recording our first album in February at the Midi Live Studio Paris and will be hitting the road for music festivals this spring. We wrote the music for ” L’Origine ” of the cie Antennae Vox that will be played for the first time this summer and hope that the new year will bring opportunities for us to write music for films, because we are really into that.
To conclude the interview a short Q/A session, please answer the first thing that comes to your mind:
- Define in one word your self-titled EP: A seed.
- The best show you ever played: ATOM FESTIVAL in the south of France.
- The soundtrack of your childhood: Batman Theme – Danny Elfman.
- Your favorite song lyrically speaking, but not written by you: L’emploi du temps – Jacques Higelin.
- Last question is “unusual”, we want to know your best relationship advice: Honesty.
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