Tool, Incubus, Rage Against The Machine, Red Hot Chilli Peppers: heads bobbing in flawless four-four time, the quadruple drum pattern that serves as the heartbeat of rock and its many manic derivatives, a quartet of European 20-somethings stand draped over drums and guitars. From a wall of speakers comes a familiar rush: the sort of sonic crescendo designed to reduce Olympic stadiums to near-rubble. Two-thirds French, one part Italian, Sangvar Day – headlining a new hard rock festival at Slur on March 7 – are among the capital’s newest and most accomplished noise makers. The Advisor ambushed Mat (bass, made in Marseilles), Julien (drums, also French), Julian (guitar, from Paris) and Robin (vocals & guitar, made in Verona, Italy) between sound checks to talk fighting, avant-garde orchestras and how to make hard rock that really rocks.
Mat: The thing I like about this band is that we never agree on anything at all.
Makes for good creative energy. Fighting is the best foreplay, is it not?
Mat: Tension – exactly!
Are you all this pugnacious? Where did you spring from?
Julien: I played in bands in France as a teenager then moved to Seattle three years ago. It’s a great indie rock city.
Julian: I’ve been playing in bands in France and first recorded two years ago.
Mat: He also attended a conservatory in France, but he’s too modest to tell you that.
Robin: I come from a more acoustic background and was in the States for a couple of years, in San Francisco. I first started writing songs because I wanted to get laid! For the first couple of years it didn’t work because I sucked, then in a slightly sadistic fashion I thought maybe girls were sleeping with me only because I could play the guitar.
The guitar can bea powerful aphrodisiac. Now, who’s next?
Mat: I was in a very narrow niche, in the avant-garde scene in Marseilles.
You do look a little like one of the Nihilists from The Big Lebowski… How avant-garde are we talking, exactly?
Mat: I jumped into the scene as a listener then started master classes and workshops and ended up in an orchestra. There were a lot of spin-off bands from the orchestra built around the idea of free improvisation. The bottom line is that musicians are listeners, so you interact with the sound of others and what you hear on the spot. You don’t know what anyone will do and no one can predict what you will do by way of feedback. If you think about academic music, somebody plays something with a rhythm, a harmony, a tempo, a melody, a bass and you try to join them and do the same – just add on top of that. But that is only one answer. Then you have the opposite: I don’t follow your harmony, I don’t follow your riff, I don’t follow your rhythm, or your bass. There are lots of variables that you can play with: low volume, high volume, low pitch, high pitch. The key is to interact the way you want and don’t try to predict what might come out of that.
Were you using avant-garde instruments?
Mat: Sometimes we played with violins – typical classical music stuff. That was interesting, but any kind of instrument can join. It’s experimental. Before that I was a guitarist, but I grew up!
Robin: Oh, come on!
Gentlemen, play nice… Anyway, experimental music is a far cry from what you just played, which is all original.
Robin: There is a skill involved in interpreting other people’s music, but we’ve all already done that.
Julien: I love playing many kinds of music, but as a listener I definitely prefer bands who have their own music. When I was in Seattle, there were many, many original bands and only a few cover bands who didn’t have their own stuff, so I insisted we play original music because these guys are all awesome and more than good enough. Julian had 15 original songs when we first got together. Some of them are very old and I’m not a metal fan at all; basically I don’t like metal, but this stuff sounds good.
And Robin, you’re head of the Lyrics Department?
Robin: At the beginning, I was just singing random things. I learned very early on that because in Italy nobody really understands English I could just get away with it. I could say something random and people would think it was a really deep, meaningful song. Sure! [Laughs] I had a couple of words I always repeated and people out there – my friends especially – started to notice. ‘Aren’t you always saying the same nonsense?’
Rumbled!
Robin: Yeah! [Laughs] But from there you have some kind of mess and maybe if you record it you can catch some kind of sense in it, perhaps a single line. Then maybe, from just one line, perhaps you have the making of a really cool song; a really cool idea.
What inspires you? Do you have a process?
Robin: I can’t control what comes out; it’s really a subconscious process. Anybody can do it, really. Get drunk, record it… [Laughs] But they don’t have to be good; they’re just an idea! Queen is about a prostitute, which by the way nobody knows here. [Laughs]
My band’s a bit like that with lyrics. ‘Know the bit when I sing XXXX?’ ‘Err, no…’
Robin: It’s about a prostitute in Phnom Penh and the song talks about her problems in being here and being used by white men. The lyrics aren’t moralistic at all, but they do contain lots of anger and disgust and hurt. It’s almost like seeing yourself through this woman’s eyes. Most of our songs are about Cambodia, many of them still a work in progress. There’s one about the big hydropower dams they’re building on the Lower Mekong; I really wanted to write something about this. These guys [gestures to band mates], I always asked them to join in at the beginning, but they’d be, like, ‘Yeah, yeah. You’re good. Great lyrics…’ [Laughs] There’s another one inspired by the book First They Killed My Father; you see it for sale everywhere here. I just opened the book and thought: ‘I need to write a song.’ There’s this one page about two girls hiding in the forest, being chased by the Khmer Rouge. The song starts with them running and one gets killed, so the other vows to avenge her death. What’s really great about Julian’s compositions is that he doesn’t get jealous about them. A lot of songwriters, including myself, when they bring a song to the group their attitude is: ‘Don’t fuck with it!’ The rest of the band tends to fight over songs, but Julian’s just like: ‘Sure, whatever.’
And what are you listening to when you’re not playing your own compositions?
Julien: I like classical rock, I love punk, I love soul. I also listen to a lot of free jazz: John Coltrane. I like prog-rock and experimental contemporary music, like noise music. I love that! Classical music and opera, too. Modern music: think dub stepping…
So anything BUT hard rock. Again, why are you here?!
Julien: I’m a drummer! I like to play rock and punk.
Julian: I’m more into early punk and have a weakness for maths-rock.
I hate maths. This had better not involve long division or algebra. But back to your sound: there were some eye-twitchingly psychedelic moments in there, along with angry thrashing ARGGGGH mosh-pit guitar. It’s got all sorts of twisted energy in it. Julian, you’re the mad professor…
Julian: For me, music was born in the ’90s: metal, Deftones, Def Jam, a lot of hip hop. It was a very creative time: a mix of hip hop and rock. I’ve been composing since I was at high school. I was the screamer in my band.
How do you do it?!
Julian: [Laughs] You just have to find a way! You open your throat and ARRRRRGGGGGHHHH! [Guttural scream]
So, a question that’s been bugging me: where does the name Sangvar Day come from?
Julien: In Cambodia’s traditional boxing, called bokator, it’s the red silk sash that fighters tie around their upper arm. We wanted something related to Cambodia, something historic – and a band name no one else already had!
And you’re planning on recording?
Julien: We’re trying to find somewhere at the moment, but it isn’t easy. We went to one place and it was like a Khmer wedding store. The recording studio was a tiny room out the back that didn’t even have room for a drum kit. I think it was used for recording karaoke songs. The owner suggested we record in the local police station. I think he was trying to make them some extra money…
WHO: Sangvar Day
WHAT: All-original hard rock
WHERE: Slur, Street 172
WHEN: 9pm March 7
WHY: See ‘WHAT’