Interview with TEMPS PERDU? for Audioview Magazine [Belgium] Issue 2-1994 Questioning by Tom Kloeck

 

How would you introduce/describe TEMPS PERDU?

TEMPS PERDU? was formed in 1987 as a french-german duo focused on the creation of experimental and atmospherical music with strong ethnical influences. During the years TEMPS PERDU? became our vehicle to travel into the land of our imagination. It's a kind of catalysator for our emotions and feelings. We like to achieve musical atmospheres, which makes us dream and chill away from the sometimes very serious reality. Members: Catherine Ledit-Grützmann had classical piano training and plays keyboards, zither, flutes, gadgets, voice. Dirk Grützmann worked many years on his experimental solo project LE PETIT MORT. He plays keyboards, sampler, percussion, gadgets and is also responsible for all programming and mixing.

"Athanor", your 1st CD-Album, is very diverse in styles and emotions. I suppose it is not a concept-album?

"Athanor" was not planned as a concept album. The songs featured here where the first tracks that we recorded after building up our own home-studio and were achieved in a periode of two years. Before that, we had only a little four-tracks recorder which we didn't use that much because of its limitations in sound quality. Yes, there are many different styles on "Athanor". Due to our modern life with all these great worldwide communicationfacilities as fax, mail service, magazines, CD's and TV we're certainly influenced in many ways which is reflected in our music. But we think that all tracks have these strange and atmospheric atmospheres in common. In most of them you find flutes, rhythms, voices and electronics which provoke a final note of mystery, so maybe it is a concept-album??.

How do you work for composing TEMPS PERDU?-music?

Our subconcious heavily influences our way of composing. Sometimes only after mixing a track we realise what we've done........ What we're looking for while recording are these moments of magic. This is often provoked by a rhythm, a sample or a sponteneous played melody which expresses exactly the mood we're looking for in that special moment. Technicaly we're working with electronic equipment, an 8-track tape recorder and with many acoustic instruments such as flutes, shakers, bells and a lot of things we find in our kitchen.

What are your influences?

We realised that music moved us so much that we had the strong wish to try it out by ourselves. In the very beginning we listened to records by Jon Hassel, SPK, Brian Eno, Cabaret Voltaire, Chris & Cosey, Residents, Vox PoPuli!, Kraftwerk, :Zoviet*France: a.s.o. Today we also anticipate the work by Mo Boma, Robert Rich, Art Zoyd, Muslimgauze, Dead Can Dance, Deep Listening Band, Suspended Memories, Anna Homler. Of course we love the music of the participants of the "Twilight Earth" - compilation CD: Vidna Obmana, Hybryds, Human Flesh, O Yuki Conjugate, Paul Schütze, TUU, Steve Roach, Jeff Greinke, Voice of Eye, Jorge Reyes, Alio Die, Dino Oon & Konrad Kraft which we just released on our label. There are some very interesting ambient-techno projects like The Future Sound of London, Biosphere, Deep Space Network, Pete Namlook a.s .o. Peter Gabriel's soundtrack "Passion-the last temptation of Christ" is one of our all-time favourites.Sure that you can find hints of our favorite music in our tracks. But also a lot of movies and TV series influenced our specific way of composing music. surrealism, archeological documentation series about forgotten archetypes and cultures also turn around inside our brain while composing. We try to adapt these images into our music.

How important are rhythms? On "Athanor", 3/4 of the tracks are based on rhythms.

Rhythms always attracted us. We think that the combination of rhythms and melodies is a good harmony between body & soul. We are personaly very fascinated by Oriental, African and Asian rhythms, as they are very subtle and hallucinating unlike most of the European rhythms. Our lifes are based on rhythms. The rotation of the planets, or the birth/death cycle of all liveforms we know, is based on periodic cycles.....rhythms. The whole world throbbs in a kind of rhythm, and we feel like a part of the general rhythm of life. Back to the music......we think, that even none- rhythmic compositions have their own rhythms...well, as everybody is influenced by his daily cycles like sleeping, working, eating, and your very own internal heartbeat-rhythm, you can't really do something without being ryhthmic in someway. Listen to "non-rhythmic tracks" and you always find rhythmical aspects. You will maybe find a repetition of a melody or a fragment. The composition in itself could already be periodic/rhythmic. That a piece has a start and an end is already a rhythm.

What is your opinion about "sampling"?

Not that easy to answer...... One aspect of sampling is to incorporate fragments of records or movies/TV. We think that sampling melodies or whole parts of a track is a bit delicate. Of course it is difficult to have a general opinion on that, it all depends on how you handle it. It can also be very creative, listen for example to John Wall's "Fear of Gravity" (CD 1993, SDV) who's music is completely constructed of samples.On our first CD "Athanor" you also find some "obvious" samples. They were taken because of their origins. On 'Fishing Circles' for example you find samples from american TV series such as Twin Peaks and Star Treck. We incorporate such samples, because we feel that it gives a nice surrounding for the tracks and naturally it also reflects our special likings. Basically, every musician use sounds or instruments which are not created by himself. All new music is based on something which already exist. You can't really invent something completely new. The basics of music like noises, rhythms, melodies or human and animal articulation are as old as mother earth and all its lifeforms. Everybody "sample" something out of this big pool of artifacts. The other side of sampling with modern, digital equipment, is to create new sounds with the stuff you enter in those machines. There are many possibilities to change the original sound data. For example you can loop, cut, transpose, mix, or play the samples backwards a.s.o.. We used these technics a lot on "Athanor".

Would you like to make music for a movie? How do you see the interaction between music & images?

Our music is often reffered to soundtrack-music because of it's atmospherical impact. In 1991 we edited a 19 minutes background video for a concert we performed in Düsseldorf, our hometown. It was amazing to discover that it can amplify the moods and feelings, even if it's sometimes very difficult or even impossible to find adequate images for what you wanted to express in you music. There are plans to work again with video. It would also be great to compose something for a movie though it might be difficult to accept critics or wishes by the director. Of course, the film should also correspond to our music and taste.

Are you involved in other (musical-) projects?

Dirk: Together with my friend Siegfried Fischer we are runing an industrial-ambient research project called PSYGRAM. In 1991, we released on Flabbergast (Germany) a Split CD called "MENGRAD & PSYGRAM in Dreamshow". The forthcoming CD "Vision of Shadows" will be released in 1995 on PLAYLOUD. PSYGRAM has a completely different approach in composing. PSYGRAM'S music is very focused on spiritual and atmospherical soundscapes. A combination of Asian and European mantras. It's harsher than TEMPS PERDU? and sometimes you feel like listening to a radioplay.

Do you like to perform live? Past-Future?

After two performances in 1989 and 1991, we really understand that you'll have to create a special atmosphere during a performance. It's a lot of work and with only two persons on a stage it's not that much obvious to keep the attention of the audience. We prefer to put our energy in our studio. But performing live is still a very good experienceand the feed-back is still encouraging! So we'll see what's next!!!