“We make music that ages well over time,” explains the group La Femme, which released its album “Paradigmes”

Like the first days of spring, La Femme warms us up. Five years after the release of Mystery, the group presents this Friday its new album entitled Paradigms. A project that has been unfolding little by little for several months already, through haunting songs like My neighbor’s blood, or completely strikethrough clips like Disconnection.

Through these fifteen new titles, La Femme plunges us into a world that is sometimes fantastic, sometimes psychedelic, on the arm of a vampiric and enchanting creature or in the heart of a Californian desert. Pop music blending brass, electro notes or lyrical soaring, and always those soaring rock tunes from the sixties and seventies. And it is this somewhat crazy universe, both lunar and sunny at the same time, which still seduces and warms hearts. Like the two founding members, Marlon Magnée and Sacha Got, whom 20 minutes met.

Five years have passed since your last album. What have you been doing since “Mystery”?

Marlon Magnée: We toured for two years and then everyone went their own way, Sacha in Spain, me more in the United States… After that we got back there to make the album. As usual we really take our time to finish one. And once the album was finished at the end of 2019 and mastered in early 2020, there was the pandemic so we postponed everything by a year. But the positive point is that we were able to take care of our clips a little more and have them ready for the release of the record.

Some of these songs were written several years ago, like “Paradigm” for example. When do we know that a song is ready to appear on an album?

Marlon Magnée: When you are proud of it, you have nothing to complain about. For my part, my method is to listen to it a lot to see what is wrong after a while, as if you were sanding jeans or a car to see if it is solid.

Sacha Got: It has to be successful, that there is an idea for a song and not just an instrument.

It’s a bit like good wine after all, do we let it ripen over time?

Marlon Magnée: Yes, we make music that ages well over time and that’s really important. It’s like quality leather or shoes, we make a quality product that lasts. It’s art, but there is also an element of craftsmanship in the way we make music. Maybe our biggest hits are still sleeping, but we don’t want to go out to go out. We really have to be sure it’s good.

After “Psycho Tropical Berlin”, then “Mystery”, you come back with “Paradigms”. Why this title?

Marlon Magnée: Basically it was an aesthetic choice because the word sounded good. It invites to mystery, to paradise, to enigma… It’s a mixture of that. Then you look at the definition and you realize that it is something else. If we wanted to synthesize, it is a truth that can be demolished at any time, which is not necessarily true. But basically it’s purely aesthetic. Art is also aesthetic sometimes and that doesn’t necessarily make sense, you can look for them afterwards. Like in art schools where teachers are going to be super suckers and say “why did you choose red”? Except that 3/4 of the artists chose it because it’s pretty! But no, you have to embroider a meaning, it’s really in fashion. Sometimes you want to say that art can be spontaneous and very light, you have to stop with this systematic depth that you ask for.

In the title “Disconnection”, you are making fun of the philosopher.

Marlon Magnée: From the TV philosopher! This is an important nuance.

Do you sometimes get too nervous?

Marlon Magnée: No, it’s important to be a philosopher. We were lucky to have guys like Plato, Nietzsche etc. On the other hand, philosophy on TV, specialists, politicians too, to whom you ask a question and who never answer you … It’s no longer giving a damn about that, about these people to whom we ask a question clear and never responds to it. But at the base the essence of this piece was this disco rhythm and this philosophical discourse of Sacha.

Sacha Got: At that time I was watching a lot of philosophy stuff on YouTube or on TV shows. But it was not especially to make fun of it, even if indeed there is sometimes something. But I am often impressed by these people. They have a huge culture that I will never have, they have read it all, they know the whole story and I find it fascinating. Even if you don’t agree, you can’t already discuss on an equal footing with them because they have so much knowledge and culture. They box in another category. In the clip there are a few references, Pascal, Descartes… It was fun playing intellectuals, it was schoolboy, a little overplayed. And there is a contrast with the serious side and this moment when it goes wrong with a huge trip …

We find this same cabaret universe in several clips.

Marlon Magnée: When it came time to make music videos, the visions we had was that there had to be a nightclub and a TV set. “Paradigms” sounded like the beginning of a TV show credits, and as we went along we wanted to make a film of a special mock TV show La Femme, inspired by the talk shows of the 1970s, by Polac, Pivot… Dummies, Unknowns, because it is our generation.

Are the songs all related?

Sacha Got: All of this will be included in a film with continuity and a plot that will be released around October. It’s a kind of cabaret TV show. For the moment it still seems blurry but in some time all that will be cleared up.

Another way for you to approach the world is by developing a fantastic universe, populated by monsters, vampires, nymphs and succubi. What do you think of these creatures?

Marlon Magnée: It’s this mythology around women, her personification as a goddess or an evil being too… Our music is really spooky, a bit like a Tim Burton. Whether it is bad or good, we represent both sides of the light. There is the vampire woman or the one in Sphynx[dans l’album Mystère], a kind of woman from an extraterrestrial people a little goddess possessed by the Moon, a mixture of Egypt and Japan… What are we in there! (laughs) So we might as well have a go and voila! And it’s aesthetically beautiful, like this female robot Metropolis on the cover of Paradigms or the one with white eyes, depersonalized, of Sphynx, That’s sublime ! When I was young, I loved to draw skeletons and vampires and after around 12 years old I started to draw the same woman’s head all the time, like on my jeans (he stands up and shows his jeans). And after a while it crosses.

Do you find female characters more fascinating than male characters?

Marlon Magnée: I always thought that, except when I was little where I was really into Dragon Ball Z and GI Joe, more than in Barbie. But I’m starting to take more and more interest in the beauty of the male character. When you see the universe of Pierre and Gilles, and this slightly Greek man, from behind with round buttocks and his musculature… You see? It is beautiful and through the masculine being you have a kind of power and a somewhat raw beauty. I would also like to work on the male being.

Can you explain to me again why you chose the name La Femme?

Marlon Magnée: It’s a mystery!

Sacha Got: It depends on the moments …

Marlon Magnée: It depends on where you are and the context, you could have different reasons. Maybe one day you will have the answers to your questions …

Sacha Got: Maybe if one day you meet us at 5 am completely drunk and we want to reveal ourselves, we will say more.

Different singers sing on your albums, why none of them has never been in the group?

Marlon Magnée: There are several reasons, the most Cartesian is that when the group started live with everyone, it had already been formed for a year with Sasha, we had already written Psycho Tropical Berlin together. The cogs were done and when the people came the system was already like that. We started by blackmailing girlfriends, Pandora Decoster, Marilu Chollet before meeting Clémence Quélennec or Clara Luciani later. We realized that through a lot of voices it sounded good. These were songs that had been written to be sung by women. It was the aesthetic that we wanted to develop. Then we just continued. Finally, there is not a woman who is The Woman, it is a whole.

Different universes mingle in this album, are you asking yourself the question of consistency in your albums, or not at all?

Sacha Got: At the beginning we looked for it a lot and now maybe less. It’s so eclectic and diffuse that I say there is consistency in the inconsistency. Each piece is in a different style, but after that we find consistency in arrangements, chord suites or voices. Rather than in styles.

Marlon Magnée: In any song, despite the different styles, you recognize that it is a song from La Femme. It’s our sound, our style.

One of your titles is called “Foutre le bordel”. Is it a call for revolt?

Marlon Magnée: Not really, it’s more a call to let go, to let go. We claim to party, to jump, to dance …

Are you missing the party right now?

Sacha Got: The good thing is that confinement saves me a lot of unnecessary outings, and I did a lot. Finally, it may also be good for my health.

This song has a bit of a punk side to it, do you think this musical genre can come back?

Sacha Got: It’s a punk state of mind. In terms of music there are always niche punk bands out there. I think it’s mostly a state of mind, a little dissenting …

Marlon Magnée: I think it’s not impossible. There have been several waves of punk, maybe it can come back, in another form …

But was punk really dead after all?

Marlon Magnée: Yes, the day there were Ramones teeshirts at H & M.

The Woman knew how to let herself be desired