Interview sent by Alexander Julien on ???
Answered on ???
Edited on ???
Published on August 30, 2013
Hello Alex. Thank you for taking the time to answer these few questions. First of all what has been happening with Vision Éternel since you released “The Last Great Torch Song” last year?
Thanks for having me over! I’m always happy to do interviews. The current status of Vision Éternel is delicate. When I released the 4th EP in March 2012, “The Last Great Torch Song”, I speculated that it may be the last Vision Éternel album. But I still really fell like there’s a void if I was to not release anything else, partly because there is a lot of unheard material and partly because I still have one more story to tell. In February 2013 I started recording pieces of a new song, which may end up on a 5th EP or just on a compilation.
What is the current mood and genre for Vision Éternel? Do you still stick to “melogaze”?
“Melogaze” was created a few years ago when I wasn’t sure what to categorize Vision Éternel’s music as. Six and a half years later, I’m still not sure what to categorize Vision Éternel as and I abide to the term melogaze. The “melodramatic” aspect to it certainly still applies, and the “shoegaze” aspect seems to continue to be relevant, even though its probably closer to minimalist ambient. I don’t think Vision Éternel can fit in a specific category but at the same time, its not all that different.
Your last album, “The Last Great Torch Song” is raved about in reviews. How do you feel about it and how do you feel it differs from the 3rd EP, “Abondance de perils”?
I’m really happy about the reviews of the 4th EP. It’s a really amazing release and I know it sounds cliche but I feel it is my best. It is a weird composite though. It took so long to put together. Two of the songs are re-recorded, one from each of the first two EPs. The other three songs were more odds and sods that I polished up and really worked on and had others help me on, to turn out better than I could have imagined. Initially I wanted more collaborators on the album, but some of them dropped out or just never finished their homework. The people that did help me out however, Garry Brents, Alex Fawcett, Howie Change and Eiman Nejad, really made it something special. I think that’s the biggest difference between “Abondance de perils” and “The Last Great Torch Song”. Because most of the material was recorded within the same time-frame but the help of genius musicians made it something more developed, more profound, more mature.
I’m really interested to find out the concept of the albums and how they relate to the artwork, which seem to be concepts themselves.
I’m a little bit OCD when it comes to concepts. Every single album I have ever released always had a concept. Thankfully, for the sake of explanation, Vision Éternel’s concepts are more understandable than those of Soufferance, my other musical project. Each album is based on a different girl. The song titles are directly related to them. Each EP is a concept of heartbreak, as original as that sounds… The artwork not only reflects the album themes but also attempt to connect the releases together. The first EP “Seul dans l’obsession” and the second EP “Un automne en solitude” have similar artwork and the same font, created by myself. I was never an amazing graphic artist, but it helps to show the early beginnings of the band.
The third and fourth EPs both have artwork created by Marina Polak. That is, the picture was “taken” (or rather found) by her. That is an interesting story of its own actually. Marina Polak was my roomate in 2009 and she was a photograph, in photography school. She was a great photographer and I asked her to help me with the artwork of “Abondance de perils”. We went through pictures she had taken when we landed on this breathless image of a couple standing by on a dock overtaken by a storm. I knew right away I wanted it. She then told me that she didn’t actually take the picture but only found the negatives of it in a garbage can while visiting Poland. Legally she held the rights to it…
Almost the entire Vision Éternel catalog has continuously been released by your own record labels, either under Mortification Records or more recently under Abridged Pause Recordings. Is there a reason for this?
It is true that each of the 4 EPs have been released on my record labels. The main reason is because all Vision Éternel songs are copyrighted under Abridged Pause Publishing and I ask to keep the publishing rights to my music. By releasing my music myself, it just makes everything easier. I;m very picky about who I trust to have original material for Vision Éternel. I’ve allowed some other labels to release it in the past but it always becomes a problem of distribution.
And within those releases, I noticed that only a small portion has had a CD release, while most are only digital. Do you have a preference for formats?
The very first EP “Seul dans l’obsession” was released on home burnt CDrs first, before it came out digitally. I only made maybe 10 copies at the most. I’m still trying to remember who I gave them to! Then 2 years after that a Japanese label, Frozen Veins Records, released a compilation of the first two EPs as “An Anthology of Past Misfortunes”. At that time it was sort of a discography because I hadn’t released anything else. “An Anthology of Past Misfortunes” will be re-issued, likely by Abridged Pause Recordings, when Vision Éternel is fully done. I have quite a few demos and alternate recordings of songs that will be great on there. Right now my ideal plan would be to have it in a boxset; each EP on 7″ vinyl, with a CD for the demos, alternates and b-sides and a DVD for the music videos and interviews. There have also been some other non-official compilation CDs that I’ve burnt and hand-designed for serious fans that ask me. It’s always possible to get a CD of any of my music, even if a CD hasn’t been officially released. People just need to ask!
Can you talk to us about your influences for Vision Éternel. A lot of bands in ambient record covers to gain attention. I’ve never heard any cover from Vision Éternel, has their been any?
That’s something I’ve always had a bit of trouble pin-pointing. When I used to live in New Jersey, there were a lot of local bands that were influencing me, or that later influenced me. Black Sand and Starless Nights was probably the first band that I really heard use of reverb from. They were post-rock. Eliminator (the New Jersey thrash metal band) has always been incredibly helpful. In their first album they have this ambient segue at the end of the last song “Prescription for Extinction”, I always joked around with Eiman Nejad that it was influenced by Vision Éternel. But the truth is that Eiman actually had some solo experimentation in the mid-2000s that sounded just like it. And that was a major influence. The EBow parts are probably influenced by Faith No More (Midlife Crisis and Stripsearch), Limp Bizkit (Boiler) and The Smashing Pumpkins (too many to name), as far away from my music as this sounds. In Montreal it was extremely difficult to find an EBow. As for covers, its hard to find something that would sound decent with just guitars. Early on I seriously considered doing a cover of Ozzy Osbourne’s “Killer of Giants”.
Well thank you so much for all this information Alexandre Julien! Closing words?
Thanks to you to! I can never get enough of interviews. Thanks for being a fan of my music and if you haven’t listened to the latest Vision Éternel album, check it out “The Last Great Torch Song“.