Emilie Simon

From Penguins to Vegetable Matter

Paris 

27/07/2006 - 

Emilie Simon has carved out her own niche on the French music scene with her unique brand of 'electro-chanson' mixing subtle compositions, real-life samples and aerial, child-like vocals. RFI Musique hooks up with the rising young star, who has spent the last few months on tour, to talk about her latest album release, Végétal.  

RFI Musique: The French film La Marche de l'Empereur (a documentary about Emperor penguins) proved to be a surprise box-office hit, both at home and abroad.  How did that affect you?
?milie Simon: Well, the film's success had fantastic repercussions for me internationally. For a start, it meant I got to travel a lot presenting the soundtrack abroad. The film music was a particularly big hit in Japan and got a great reception in other countries like China, South Korea and Scandinavia. Getting to compose a soundtrack – which was almost 70 minutes long - for the first time was an exciting challenge. And it was something I knew I wanted to do at least once in my career. Afterwards it really motivated me to get back to work on my latest album which I was actually in the process of writing material for when the film-makers contacted me. It felt really good going back to work in the comfort of my home studio. It gave me a whole new lease of life after the film experience.

Your soundtrack ended up being cut from the film and replaced with different music in the States. What was your initial reaction when you heard about that?
I thought someone was having me on. My initial reaction was, 'This is a joke – and not a particularly funny one'! My next reaction was to say to myself, 'No, its OK, the film-makers will never allow it!' I was really disappointed when I found out that, in fact, it wasn't a joke and that the film-makers were going to stand by and let it happen. They told me that was just the way things worked in the States. Having said that, however, I'm glad the film's been a hit in the States and I'd like it to go even further, with or without my music…

After La Marche de l'Empereur, you went back to work on your third album, Végétal. How did you go about composing and recording it?
Unlike my first album, I worked on Végétal completely on my own. And that's something that's very precious to me because I consider working on my own a sort of 'creativity barometer.' I like to think I don’t need anyone else around to have ideas and that if ideas don't come it's time to start questioning what I'm doing… I ended up with around twenty songs for the album which I eventually whittled down to thirteen.

You've always used samples of real-life sounds in your work and Végétal is no exception, although it does have a more acoustic feel than your other albums…
I wouldn't say Végétal is less electronic than my first two albums because all the raw material I use on it is actually very filtered, very organised. I really tried to keep the rawness of the material I used, keeping the authentic character, the 'personality' of the sounds as much as I could. I wanted it to feel as if you could almost reach out and touch them. And I think that explains why the album might sound more acoustic than the others. I reworked all the sounds on it, though, making them sharper, more heightened. I wanted them to behave like organic matter, living, breathing, crawling around with their pulse beating… On the last track on the album, En cendres (Dying Embers), the beat's based on actual recordings of a fire crackling and spitting. I extracted certain instants from the recording that felt really musical and they became the rhythmic basis of En cendres, the backbone of the whole piece. 

Do you ever feel that critics try and pigeon-hole you in a particular musical family'? And, if so, do you ever feel they get it wrong?
No, I never have the impression that I've been misunderstood. Actually, it doesn't particularly bother me when critics make comparisons with other artists to give people who don't know my work some idea of what it's about. They always say I have a very personal approach and point out that I work alone in the studio - and saying that tells you a lot about my take on music!
I've often been compared to artists like Björk and Kate Bush because I'm a girl creating a slightly different kind of sound on machines and I'm someone who takes great care over the production side of things. But I've never been compared to Cindy Lauper and I'm a big fan of hers as well! To be honest, I don't know what musical family I belong to.

What's it like making the transition from working solo in the studio to taking part in a collective experience on stage?
It's a very natural process for me. Végétal is a pretty coherent and compact album. It all takes place within one very rich, dense universe and all the tracks on it are related to one another in some way. Its very different from my debut album where each track skipped from one universe to another. The songs were all like little planets spinning in their own orbit.
As for the live shows, there are five of us up on stage. There's Cyrille Brissot who looks after all the sound treatment and the electronic side of things. Then there's percussionist Cyril Hernandez – he turns the most extraordinary things into instruments – Arnaud Crozatier, the violinist, and Stephen Charon on guitar and bass.

Ếmilie Simon Végétal (Barclay/Universal) 2006
In concert at the Olympia, Paris, 19 September 2006

Nicolas  Dambre