Interview Oulmerie : Album "Burnout"
Today we meet at 39 rue d'Alésia in Paris, to meet Louis and Valentin who form the duo Oulmerie. On Monday December 3rd their new album "Burnout" was released, and we jumped at the opportunity to discuss music, influence, psychedelia and society with them!
When you enter the “Oulmeresque” sanctuary, it's to another dimension that you enter. Time is suddenly slowed down, because here nobody is in a hurry. The atmosphere is warm and dreamlike, between a vintage sofa and a painting by Kandinsky decorating the living room. The cats, Marcel and Ozy, are basking in the sun to help the visitor understand how to proceed. Cannabis is inexorably consumed, transformed little by little into a poetic cloud that rises until it reaches the big "OULM", hanging on the wall like a mantra. No doubt, we landed at the right place, and we're happy to be here!
Hello Louis and Valentin, can you tell us more about the origin of the duo?
Louis: We've known each other for more than 8 years, we met lying on the tile floor at a friend's party we had in common, we were the only firecracker smokers, and we talked about nihilism and music mainly.
Valentin: We understood each other at that party, and that's where our friendship was born. We made contact that night!
From where does the enigmatic name “Oulmerie” come from?
Valentin: Basically it's a joke between friends. We like to create words, to make neologisms, we came across "Oulm" and then "Oulmerie", so it doesn't really make sense!
Louis : It came by itself, and then when we started the band we said "ok we call it Oulmerie".
Where does the fusional, monstrous aspect present in your visuals and the uncomplexed aspect of your music come from?
V : I think the origin of it is the psychedelic colour, because life is dreamlike. To create, you have to be in the dreamlike everyday life. As we're a little bit dark with sometimes depressive tendencies, we make a thwarted music. What defines our identity is always a certain monstrosity.
L : It is always a little bit the universe of the monsters, it is David Lynch... Psychedelism, psychedelic rock, works of psychedelic arts. We are rocked a lot by that Valentin and me. And in all fields, from cinema to pictorial art, with for example Kandinsky.
How could you present "BURNOUT" in one sentence?
L : Burnout, it's quite explicit, it's the saturation of the mind! So this album is the saturation of my mind and Valentin's mind.
V : 39 rue d'Alésia is noisy... when you're exposed to light, sound and even general pollution, it maintains a kind of depression compared to something that never lets you go. It's more or less like living in a washing machine! You sleep and you hear noise in your head.
What are the evolutions between your first album and this one?
V : The catalysis! It's more catalyzed, there it's more a mood that was fully exploited, whereas the old album was composed of a lot of moods.
L: It's more concise, precise. It's a bit like the result of all the experimentation on the first album. It took us a year to make the first one, but it matured over the years. We had a lot of things to say for a long time. When we started this one it was new, we made a clean slate and started composing from scratch, but with the experience of what we had been able to do before.
What are your musical influences?
V : Pink floyd is what we shared the most... However they are influences which are very far away from what we do but that's what's funny ! After if we have to talk about direct influences, in current American rap we could mention Big Sean or Drake, or in the timbre we're inspired by Tommy Genesis. It's very varied, from Rock to Metal to Rap. What's interesting with the Pink Floyd is that they make music according to the era, whereas you have bands that have a box, for example a band that I love, Tame Impala, they claim "we're psychedelic rock the old-fashioned way today". We're making music of our time, if we're still making music in 20 years, it'll be music of 2038, and we'll have to take it to that point, that's our role too!
What are your influences outside of music?
V : We were very sensitive to a film called Pieles by the Spanish director Eduardo Casanova. It's a cinema with a very strange scenario, in the sensuality, very monstrous and psychedelic.
L: Otherwise we have Jodorowsky, in any case we are influenced by everything that is a little bit out of the ordinary, the absurd, the freaks, in the cinema, in the pictorial art, that's what touches us!
What about outside the art world?
L: The bus stop downstairs... really it's a sincere answer! We were talking earlier about living in a washing machine, every morning when I wake up I'm naked in front of 18 people who have a goal, who go to work, who make their life... It's the morning, it's rush hour, everybody does things. And I wake up, my work is at home so I watch it like it's TV. It's like a fish tank, it's fascinating, there's so much going on. So it's bound to influence our minds. When I'm in the subway, I have too much to watch, there are too many things around me. I can say I make music in Paris thanks to the metro and my window where I'm in the middle of the broth and the noise with a big N in it.
From that point on, what is your definition of Parisian Spirit?
V: Paris is a big paradox, there is a lot of mutual help and a lot of individuality too! It's the city of the social but it's also the city of unbridled capitalism. It's a duality also a little bit Paris, maybe the Parisian Spirit is also a duality. I start from the principle that in a world where everything is fine, it's sad to say, but there will always be people who will try to unbalance the whole to their advantage, it's impossible that 7 billion people would agree. Paris is a compendium of that, it's extremely multicultural, there are lots of emerging ideas and positive initiatives... and at the same time there's enormous human misery.
L: On some street corners you can meet great people and on others it becomes very oppressive... Paris is always the hyperbole of the idea. There are too many people, so sometimes it's great because you're not alone, you realize that there are a lot of people like you who share your ideas, and there are a lot of people who will help you, Paris is the city of encounters, of love... but next door we're walking on each other. So there's a kind of concentrated energy, both good and bad, it's the ying and yang that's bubbling. You have to get out of it at some point or your brain gets saturated...
All is said, now (re)listen to Burnout on all platforms, and see you next January 19th at the Alimentari for the first special "Burnout" concert in Oulmerie, with the Wookiz as the opening act! Thanks to Valentin and Louis for this little interview :)
See you there !
Find Oulmerie on :
FACEBOOK : https://www.facebook.com/OULMERIE/
INSTAGRAM : https://www.instagram.com/oulmerie/
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Article and photos by Adam Bidar, co-founder of PARISIAN SPIRIT.
