RadioFr: Before talking about this new double album, we are going to stop for a moment on this latest tour “Central Tour”, which brought together more than 400,000 people over 6 dates in 2022 to celebrate your 40 years of career. It is also the first concert in the world to be filmed live, in IMAX, which offers a unique feeling of immersion. Its distribution exceeded all records. After 40 years of career, how do we still be the pioneering group, the group that is one step ahead in the music industry?
Nicola Sirkis: How we do it, I don’t know. We do everything we shouldn’t do, in fact. This new album is totally unreasonable, it is not in line with the dictates imposed by record companies and show business today. That is to say that today, we start with very short albums or even no albums at all, one song and then goodbye. So how do we go about being innovative? You have to find ideas by taking risks. You have to find ideas, yes, that’s the biggest thing to do. Sometimes it’s annoying but you have to find the trick.
I want to come back to the fact that you always have this desire or this need to surprise and please your fans. Proof of this is with this album “Babel Babel”. You released it on a Saturday at midnight, after your appearance on “Quotidien”, and especially after the broadcast of “Babel Show”. A concert that you recorded in a secret location with 300 people. There were media, the record company, some fans too. Was it out of the question to favor professionals as is always done?
Nicola Sirkis: That’s right, the idea was not to favor anyone. And above all, the biggest risk was to introduce this new album live and at the same time to everyone, that is to say before the record came out on Saturday. It was interesting for us to do that. It was a challenge.
Oli De Sat: Indochina is a huge responsibility from every point of view and it’s a lot of weight on the shoulders. But we’re not complaining. That’s how it is. So it was a real challenge to do that. And to put all these people on the same level, I find that powerful.
7 years after the album “13”, and after 2 and a half years of creation, there is this 14th album “Babel Babel”. An ultra committed album which evokes the chaos in the world, a world where no one listens to each other, no one understands each other. You hated it until it was released Nicola, and called it the most unreasonable album. And you Oli, if you had to define this album in one word, it would be “alive”, what does that mean?
Oli De Sat: Alive in the sense that it is a kind of long exposure photography of 2 and a half years of compositions. That is to say that it ultimately reflects the life of these 2 and a half years, of all the news that is imposed on us today. It becomes very complicated to isolate ourselves and the news does not impose itself on us. And she is mostly not very cheerful. And “alive” because there is this impulse of the future and to say yes, let’s look at the future, we can change things. It’s not at all a pessimistic and dark album saying “Oh dear, the world is going bad, let’s cut our veins”, on the contrary. And if our music can provide a little spark to give a little key to a little more understanding and a little more openness to the world, that’s our little extra (smile).
Despite this 43-year career and all this success, you started from scratch for this 14th album, as if it were the first. Do we say to ourselves that nothing is ever acquired in the end?
Nicola Sirkis: Ultimately, no, because it’s a world where everything moves so fast. Fads, things change, and we are the exception that doesn’t prove the rule. And it’s true that it’s better to say to yourself that you’re making an album as if it were the first, it feels like doing it like that. It’s like during the tour, a concert for us, it’s like it’s the last, so we go all out, we give all our strength, all our soul.
Listen to the full Indochine interview:
Radio Fr. – Virginia Pellet
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