TONN INTERVIEWS: MADMOIZEL
Richard Anderson (This is The Bridge) talks to MADMOIZEL about her new video ‘Resurrection’ and her influences as an artist.
Richard: Congratulations on the new album. I think it’s wonderfully layered and it seems especially reflective and emotional. Could you tell us about the concept for the track ‘Resurrection’?
MADMOIZEL: Thank you very much Richard for the feedback. Yes, BLUE is a kind of self-therapy that took a year of work, sorting, readjusting, to keep the essential.
After a violent burn out in March 2019, I had only death on my mind. The help and love of my mother and my relatives allowed me to hold on. So I looked up rather than down, and turned my gaze to the Sacred and Sublime by entering Churches to light candles and visiting Museums to see Works of Art, as a quest for elevation and transcendence.
This is the idea of Resurrection. The organ has always been for me a vertiginous instrument - as much by its beauty, by its high location, as by the power of the sound that carries you away, crosses you and fills you - and it was the perfect sound that embodied both tumult and elevation. That's how Resurrection came about, which was the very first song I wrote for BLUE.
Vertigo came right after that.
Richard: The vocals sound almost as if they are being performed in a large space, such as a cathedral. Was this mode of production also part of the overall concept?
MADMOIZEL: I often use reverb on my vocals but on this album, everything is much more measured, precise, less excessive, so this effect takes on a sacred dimension and places the main actress at the heart of the emotion.
It is indeed part of the overall aesthetic.
Richard: The video has glimpses of what appear to be stained glass windows coming in, whilst the lighting and use of shadow brought to my mind the expressionist cinema of a century ago. How does the concept for the video relate to the song, and what was the process you went through in creating the visual for the piece?
“I started recording at the beginning of April 2019 and a few days later the Cathedral of Notre Dame caught fire. ”
There are the stained glass windows of Notre Dame de Paris - "La Rose du Sud" - representing, among other things, the descent into hell, but also the Resurrection of Christ. For the shadow and the circle of light there is indeed a gothic and therefore expressionist reference, but it is also a candlelight effect (flickering shadow) as if to create an intimacy with the main character.
As an anecdote, I started recording at the beginning of April 2019 and a few days later the Cathedral of Notre Dame caught fire. I couldn't believe my eyes. It was like an omen and I stopped working on it for several weeks.
Richard: I got the impression of a ghost, contained in a large, empty space, chanting, perhaps seeking a rebirth.
MADMOIZEL: In this video I play several characters: the artist we know, in pain (black tie and jacket), the priest who embodies authority, judgement, forgiveness, confession (black chasuble and white collar) and this new character, more luminous, like a modern version of holiness or angel (white ruffled shirt and black jacket).
It is by superimposing the three sequences that I created a very unconscious staging at the beginning, and that I tried to understand myself, like when one waits for a photograph to appear on paper when it is plunged into the developer.
The technical process was very long, as I did everything with iMovie, which is a very rudimentary software where you can only superimpose 2 video tracks. So each time I had to bounce the project, start a new one etc. And of course, the accidents brought magic to the film.
Richard: Many people who are familiar with your work, and the new album ‘Blue’, may be aware that it has a special significance for you, with concept of the mother being integral to it, which adds a great deal of poignancy for so many of us.
MADMOIZEL: Yes, this album is a tribute to maternal love. Many of my friends have lost their mothers, which is fortunately not the case for me. I always think of them with emotion.
Richard: Do you feel the process of creating this new LP has been a part of the healing process?
“Every morning I sat on a rock, looking at the sea, the sky and the horizon, I swam in these panels of blue that filled me with well-being. ”
MADMOIZEL: When I saw the fear on my mother's face when I told her I wanted to die, I understood that I had to stand up for her, for all those who no longer have their mother and therefore for myself.
She was at my side, like a light that illuminated my darkness. From then on, a long gestation period followed: silence and introspection, then writing until recovery. There is also this blue colour, which was very powerful and is part of the process.
I spent the whole month of June 2019 in the middle of a heat wave by the Mediterranean sea surrounded by my family. Every morning I sat on a rock, looking at the sea, the sky and the horizon. I swam in these panels of blue that filled me with well-being. I looked for the light: "From Profundity to Lightness".
Richard: Your use of the visual, be it still or moving, always seems very carefully considered and an integrated part of your work, image making supporting the music making. Beyond the world of music, are there any other forms of visual art, cinema or performance that especially inspire you?
MADMOIZEL: I was lucky enough to grow up in a family with a passion for art: photography, painting, cinema, literature, architecture, dance, sport... a great education.
But I still have an attraction for silent movies, pictorial art and dance in their classical and contemporary aspects and also athletics. But I am generally touched and therefore inspired by all types of creations. When it's good, it's good!
Richard: You are well known for your live performances and having seen you perform; you undoubtedly own the stage. What is your emotional relationship to performance? Is it something you feel compelled and driven to do, a vital part of your language of expression? Are you happiest on stage?
MADMOIZEL: When I was 7 years old I played the piano for the first time with an audience in a church for the end of the school year. I was impressed by the place, the audience and the sound that filled the room.
This strong emotion is probably what crystallised my relation with live performance. Since then I can say that performance galvanises me. It carries me and makes me blossom. It is a living and sincere expression. You can't cheat on stage, no matter how you express yourself. Not to mention all the wonderful encounters you can have around a concert.
Richard: I was very struck by the way you appear rather like a conductor on stage, with your instruments and sequencers almost like your orchestra, hanging on your movements. Rather than a set of songs, the way they evolve, and link together feels more like you are performing a symphony. Does your classical training play a role in your approach to performance?
MADMOIZEL: Yes I think so, especially the arrangement of the live set.
As a child I listened to a lot of classical and neo-classical music. So I became a critical listener at a very young age, with a facility to understand the structures of a piece, but also a work as a whole piece, from the detail to the whole. After years of performing and researching, I put all this knowledge into my electronic work, so that I can play live electronic music on stage without interruption and still create the movements of classical music.
This is very visible in TONN LIVEWORKS. This type of performance requires a lot of work. My perfectionism and demands are comparable to those of top athletes who have rehearsed for hundreds of hours until they have mastered the gesture. This gives me a stage posture similar to that of a fencer or an athlete. The paradox is that this mastery gives me a great freedom and amplitude in my performance, as well as a singular aesthetic touch.
Richard: Could you tell us a little more about your classical training? What skills you focussed on, and how this may have influenced the way you approach electronic music?
I am a pianist by training. But as I hate music theory and have an excellent ear for music, I only play what I like and compose. I have a very percussive and rhythmic approach to the piano. I like repetitive music a lot, which led me from piano to electronics. Besides, my set up and my way of playing are that of a piano and a pianist.
Richard: Who are your favourite composers?
MADMOIZEL: I have two favourite masters: Maurice Ravel for his impressionist piano works, and Prokofiev for his neo-classical Russian madness. But I also listened a lot to the baroque of Bach, the romanticism of Schubert, the avant-garde of Debussy, the modernism of Gustav Mahler.
Richard: Could you tell us a little more about your life before MADMOIZEL, and what drove you into making music? Was it there in childhood?
“As a child I liked to put my ear to her womb to hear her voice resonate from inside. ”
MADMOIZEL: I always say that my first musical shock was Prokofiev and Bowie: I was 6 years old. And I really understood at that age that it would be the story of my life. The educational work of Peter and the Wolf made me understand that music had an illustrative and narrative power.
As for Bowie, his modern & New Wave incarnation of Pierrot de la Lune (a character who fascinated me throughout my childhood) was an aesthetic shock even before it was musical. But I think my relationship to music started in the womb of my mother, who listened to a lot of Russian composers, because as a child I liked to put my ear to her womb to hear her voice resonate from inside.
I think I could already hear the music.
Richard: What is the relationship of the persona of MADMOIZEL to you as a person? Is MADMOIZEL a reflection of the real you, or more a construction for means of artistic expression? Or perhaps neither of these things?
MADMOIZEL: I would say that MADMOIZEL is the dramatisation of my own person - Steph. Like a desire to transform a classical life into a strong imagination through creation. A desire for freedom.
But it is also Steph who drives the idea of MADMOIZEL, so the two are intrinsically linked.
If I wasn't passionate about music I would probably be schizophrenic.
Richard: Finally, what’s next for MADMOIZEL and might we expect in 2022?
MADMOIZEL: I don't really know. Maybe a very New-Wave album, maybe a solo Piano album... collaborations...
But the fact is that I learned a lot from BLUE and I don't feel pressured at all if I don't have a project, or if I go on to something completely different.
I'll go with the flow of life and take things calmly and confidently.
MADMOIZEL brings us her most captivating work, ‘Blue’, an album brimming over with narrative intensity and stunning multi-faceted synth.
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