Lescop interview – English

Ariel Kenig interviews Lescop
English translation by Maxime Mailhe

AK
What were you just talking about?
L
I am just coming from an interview. I was supposed to talk about an obsession… I chose a picture of Eugene Jacques Bullard, the first black air force pilot in the history of aviation. He fought during the First World War. History is one of my hobbies. I grew up in a rather secretive family. I am nostalgic by nature. I love to know that things no longer exist. It forces us to chance our perspective. History is a good reading key.

AK
What periods are you particularly interested in?
L
The Second World War, the Algerian war, Jeanne d’Arc… I come from a family of militaries. I saw plenty of uniforms. As a kid I was sort of fascinated by all this, even though I am not a warmonger. What I like about military attires is the aesthetic resulting from the functional. A strap can make the value of a bombers’ jacket. You can even find some rather poetic thoughts written on some jackets, for example on american military jackets: « I’ll go to heaven because I’ve spent my life in hell ». Or tigers embroidered by prostitutes, they are almost similar to tattoos. I also like the “leather and fight” atmosphere, the pictures of Yan Morvan, the “suffer and shut up” tattooing.

AK
Have you got a tattoo?
L
I have not found the right one yet. Good tattoos always tell something shameful. When you tattoo yourself with “unlucky” on your chest, you definitely don’t do that to show-off with your friends. I like when they carry a story, such as the tattoos of Captain Flint in Treasure Island of Stevenson, with all the mystery surrounding Billy Bones.

AK
What happened between the end of your band Asyl and the beginning of Lescop?
L
During three years I have read a lot, I have also watched a lot of movies and I wrote. It was intense. During these periods of research, you capture a maximum of things that appeal to your creativity. At the end of the band I was a bit lost, broken. I took some time to stand up again, to reconstruct myself. I had to recover speech. I had lost a teen language.

AK
Do you miss this state of inspiration, now that the album is out?
L
Let’s just say that i took some distance. You strove to produce something that you wanted to be genuine. It is just like sex. The ones who talk more about it are the ones getting less. I am cerebral, not intellectual. I have a physical relation to things. I am full-blooded. In my opinion, a good work draws on the brain and the nervous system. The Temptation of Saint-Anthony from Jérôme Bosch that I saw in Lisbon literally relates to you physically. It is frightening. You are afraid just like in a horror movie.

AK
Are you a real hard worker?
L
Technical work is not shameful. I am no Thom Yorke, I am not a real singer, I would have preferred being more gifted, but if you have a real sensibility, work gets you there. You sing better, you go further, you are more creative. Now I am capable of doing 40 to 50 takes. At first I was only doing talk-over…

France & Belgium tour until this summer