Interview for Elegy No.24
by Alyz Tale
6 pages, October 2002

So much things did without! There was enough a day of it by looking oneself in videos to be if not very different visually from all that exists.
There was only our beater automat which seemed to us to be an instrument adapted to the spirit of Rosa Crvx. The BAM, Acoustic Battery Midday, is one of our creation: a kind of limps at rate/rhythm which controls rods by systems of electromagnet and make them strike barrels of battery. A little like these mechanical instruments in the center the old Carrousels fair and which went with punch cards…
Thus was that a very severe self-criticism… why this ridiculous synthé if it is a piano which we need? With tail, the piano while one is there… Why these ridiculous toms with the BAM whereas they are drinking cups of orchestra which it would be necessary? Musicalement one never supported to make compos which resemble what exists, why would be it differently remainder… Why this clear case? A drum would be needed! Four drums! And these bells which impassion us so much, I would see well a chime there, me, hold!

Then one put "the leather trousers at the wall cupboard" and one was blouses white… There were ten thousand things has to regulate, inevitably, of the complex technical problems, one crowned break-in head to be solved of all the with dimensions ones. Financially, of large work of manufacture, (it is hard to imagine which point the prototypes cost…) A concert from time to time where we profited to test new systems…
The workshop was transformed into foundry of bells… one has to start by building an enormous cement ground vat, a turn able to make turn a bell of clay 200kg… then the enormous mouldings… there are reports on our Web site there above…
… And then in parallel, L ' enormous building site caused by the film "Omnes which Descendvnt" about which one speaks just after…

In Tenebris goes with the direction further first, in this direction or there is this time a concrete displacement: The preceding album, Noctes Insomnes, psalmodiait "Exvrge in will go killed! "which, translated, gives: "Raises in your anger ! "in other words" do it! "
In Tenebris, it is that, a forwarding a descent, "Vadam AD carried inferi". each title illustrates the successive state in which one is plunged by such a voyage.
The stages follow one another in the excitations and the anguishes the beginning of the album to gradually reach humility in the Procvmbere title…

… last this stage there will be successively Ovation with the title Svrsvm Corda, the Transformation in Omnes Qvi Descendvnt then Gratitude by the ex-voto with the title Salve Crvx.

3 - "In Tenebris" a multi-media beach, the splendid video "Omnes Qvi Descendvnt", can you contain tell us the history of this a little particular turning…?

The famous film has little close all the album, this descent in one moment out of time, out of reality. A troop of walkers and riders which leave for a great celebration…
It is the eclipse and the elements which break out, it is an impossible meeting, that of the day and night, life with death, of the man with the elements… it is an anthem. All is symbolized by these landscapes, these dancers, these costumes where the singers have speaking pipes screwed on the head:

Ca, it was the synopsis… the reality of the things is more impossible still! ! ! An independent group in France which wants to carry out its film it is in oneself a descent into Hell! The turning of this film was a true forwarding also…
There or somebody will say himself, good one needs a steadycam and a luma for this turning, it will be necessary to find a producer or a subsidy to rent… us, one will be obliged to have the following reflex: good one needs a steadycam and a luma for this turning, it is quickly necessary to find plans on Internet and to manufacture them…
Not the choice! but that changes all gives it: on with dimensions one depends on goodwill of a decision maker and other one knows that one will have what it is necessary, but the problem it is… when?
Then inevitably time ago which passes. One took time to manufacture a steadycam, a rail of dolly, a luma, to recover industrial lighting, to sew one by one 22 costumes, even the drum of film are manufactured of any part! (they are now on our battery of scene…) in short! that put one year and half instead of one month with traditional means of production…

This said, the difference, it is on next turning that it will feel: the material problems are now solved, for this film as for the following… It is in that that to be "independent" A its advantages… it arrives one moment or one can allow oneself to say to some: more need for you!

The first images of "Omnes Qvi Descendvnt" go back to 1999 at the time of the eclipse of August 11. Ca made months that this date returned nutcase to me. The eclipse for me it was an old dream of kid. I saw the date approaching and I did not find what to make some. A film? a performance? a concert? what?… the ideas did not come. Then I methodically filmed it by saying to me that I would find well afterwards. I brought out you this text which I wrote at this time there, it translates the state correctly in which this date put to me:

Hardest, once the material and the tests at the point, was to find the places and the observers.
I knew caves or turning would have been simpler, but the authorizations to be obtained were unimaginable! ! ! The federation of speleology of which depended the agreement imposed into sine qua non the port of the helmet of building site on the head!! ! caméraman or actor, they saw only the payment! ! ! in short! impossible to turn another thing that an advertizing for Manpower… Fortunately, one ended up finding a career private! a simple discharge of responsibility for the owner and here!
There is a small well welded team has Rouen on which one always could count… Philippe Coquin, David & Stéphane Viola, Laurent Horbacio, and also one crowned band of breakage-neck loans to all in a club of diving: the Subaqueous Club of Rouen (CSR)…
Side observers, there was also on the turning of people whom we do not know. A Gothic association of Rouen, Phantasmagoria had the idea to make a kind of play-announces on the Net and found us many people. The instruction was: especially do not only come…
There were well also some pleasant surprised come from outside, as will be able to testify the thanks to them to the credits of film, but that did not represent unfortunately essential assistances. The assistance of a regional organization delegated to the cinema or the culture would have been much more effective. But R+C the magpie! ! Too much dark! ! !
The album on the other hand was done to two. With Claude one had decided to advance the compos at the same time as film to stick the best possible one to the images. There was not as for the other albums of outside contributors. Before one often used an external support chorus-singers for the voices, one called sometimes also a percussionnist to make him play the partitions of drums. But the recording equipment evolved/moved much and I now prefer to record the percus all alone. Claude works on the basic melodies and all that is keyboards. I deal readily with the songs at the last moment, when the title "sounds" sufficiently well all alone, then one records, one modifies, one recomposes parts for arrangements… since the first disc of R+C one always composed the titles exclusively with two, and one can work only like that…

The dance always returns in our concerts. One adores to do it and even people who saw it several times do not weary any. The dancers, Eleonore Joyet and Nicolas Lelandais, works it with much patience because it is made up only of technical difficulties! on scene the public forgets it and so much better! but to be synchro in the least gestures it takes working hours, a video control image by image during the repetitions to correct for example a higher elbow at one than at the other…
This dance had not been the subject of a clip and being one of the characteristics of Rosa Crvx, one had a duty to cure it.

And there was a too perfect analogy with the eclipse! The dance (a couple) represents the confrontation of the conscious life (thus the man) with death. the matter is the old proverb: "dust you are and will become again…"
In film the words say "Not mortvi, sed dated somni" "Not, dead, but not deadened" and the motionless dancers, covered with clay are put moving synchronized at the time of the total eclipse, in a circle of fire representing at the same time the solar crown of the eclipse and the magic circle of the ritual kabbalistic.
This dance did not move since its creation if it is not that at the origin I had asked a model to coat mud without him to give the least indication. I filmed in video and I watched for the moments of naturalness.
My idea was to awake an old instinct or something like that. I envied too the elephants which are rolled in the puddle pools and the skins red which overlapped the skin with it. It seemed to to me that it was a gesture definitively lost. Even the dogs adore to roll themselves in a good hurdy-gurdy quite dirty pond…
My obsessions remain today the same ones as at the time of the creation of the Dance of the Earth: is the Cry of the Man known as one knows that of the wolf? Not? And how can one go on the moon if one does not even know that?? I often seek this cry in my songs.

One suspects it, the strange places are rare pearls jealously kept by those which know them. I think I may say I made the turn of those of my area… but I do not know unfortunately as well places as that! it is always by mouth with ear that one falls it above, and it is necessary to live on the spot to finish by knowing.
Afterwards, it is necessary still that the place can be used for a performance what is seldom the case! If a place makes me dream for a long time, they are the Careers of Meudon.
I was taken along to it low a night by entries hidden along rails of trains… I know that there are less dangerous entries but the weather was necessary to be discrete. The dream it is a concert of R+C there inside. Surely the most beautiful place which one can dream… I remember vaults cut in chalk as high as those of a cathedral… There does it appear would be an association in Meudon which protects these careers? (opinion of research)
Another place which does not have anything strange but which is to me quite as inaccessible they are the Markets of the Villette. It is I believe the ideal place to present the "Sets of Irons" in Paris (see the Web site for "Sets of Irons") I would like also a day to visit catacombs of Paris… (not the paying ones…)

The problems are not new! the only difference it is that today information circulates more quickly thanks to the Net. Then one knows what occurs in all the corners…
In 1986 I had risked large for this performance. I had the formal prohibition of the director of beautiful arts who threatened me opposite expulsion if I started to my installation… a naked man in a church! !
… and in a steel cage suspended and projected has 9 meters of the ground… even without the problems of censure, there would have been the problems of safety…
It was simpler to steal the key and to return one night with a clandestinely informed public. It learned it in the newspaper from two days later, the director! ! and me I had left the day before for 6 months to England (a school exchange). Did Ca fall well? not, it was calculated. I could not have allowed me to organize that differently.

It is always the same fight which is carried out.
There will be always a person in charge for Town hall, of district, a journalist sometimes, to kill in egg the projects which are a little too original. What is different fact very fear! The movement underground in France drowned in its pond. When I think so that it was at one time! ! !
Day at the following day the press left the reducing title "Gothic" and with due respect to much at this time, it is there that all fell.
They finally succeeded in putting a label, reducing, ridiculous, with what was a true affront with the system as a whole. An independent movement which had its own network of information, its own and concert hall distribution networks. A movement which grouillait, and that one did not even know how to call! The height of the counter-current!

In Rouen, to speak to you about what I see tous.les.jours there is nothing any more but one small handle of people who get dressed in black whereas this city was a true hot point… Paris was more or less well protected seems you it… And yet not further than here I know two organizations which draw a little too much in the legs whereas while acting in concert and by linking their efforts they would have the capacity to link and of ressusciter much of things it is the first time that such a capacity of press and we exist would need a great Festival in France like that of Leipzig, and who of other would have the capacity to start it? It would be necessary a regular tele emission for us on a large chain, Arte would be useful to open the bonds with the Germans, via Orkus…
We do not mislead in enemies, it is against outside that it is necessary to act. To return to my concrete experiments and to speak again for example of our film, I ended up understanding that the means of production are always reserved to the good Dobe old woman… it is voluntary! there are only the horrors diffused on M6 which will have colossal budgets for a video clip… Then imagine! ! an independent group! ! !, car produced! ! ! even the local institutions did not condescend to raise the small finger. Reality is the same one everywhere: if it is not In the Mould one sabotages. I am persuaded that there is a "censure of kind". And how this Kind there, a little too black, is the first on the list, black it also, precisely! …

I think that the group will turn more and more to Germany… Noctes Insomnes was sold more over there than in France and In Tenebris is already distributed there.
A wish? To finally find a distributor serious for France. Since the Sémantic distributor ran we became phantoms in the vats. One finds R+C in Germany, in Belgium in Switzerland, Italy but not in France! ! ! ! (in Paris, yes, but not in France)
Another wish? If I could, I would change that: all the system of distribution and sale of discs in France which was écrabouillé by Fnacs which is allowed today (after having assassinated the small record dealers) of saying Oui or not to the musicians who live of their music. Fnacs should invent a conscience, to include/understand the evil which they made with the music, it although they made with the Dobe Gross and to oblige to create permanent rays AND for the local groups AND the independent ones (I speak about Independent, not of "independent which depend on a house of disc", IN-DE-PEN-DANTS)

It should be said that CD In Tenebris was hardly completed that the preparations for the concert of Loco were connected. There are dates which are negotiated in Nantes, Rennes, Rouen, Bordeaux, but I can nothing announce yet officially. The organizer in the concert of Cognac, Clement Marchal, wanted to make us turn a little and it works there in this moment.
There is also a small team which prepares us a concert on Paris in a small room. Loco is a perfect place for Great Concert, but one wants also to play in more intimate rooms, over several evenings, 250 people maximum… it is a very different environment.

A round, not rather of the dates distributed over the year.
I can give the date of Saturday 1st Mars 2003 to Gent, Belgium with the Wave-Gothic-Magnet-Meeting, and announce a promise received by email for the next festival of Leipzig.
One asks us in Florence but there are problems of budgets has to solve with the Italians…
Rosa-Crvx never really had of turner. When I says to you that one is a "Independent Group", that one is a "Group Alone", they should almost be translated are people who say themselves one day "and why I would not try to make them play at home?" It is the case of Cognac for example… Ca it always passed like Ca. Of our with dimensions one does not seek any more the concert at all costs, but a date will never be refused. The boards are adored.
It should be said that one has, to one time sent so much press kits for nothing, that since the opening of the Web site, one is satisfied to answer the requests. In any event, no concert of Rosa Crvx was done following a file sent! Ca was always the blow of heart of an organizer. And it is really better like that! One plays little, but the rooms are full and the public knows what it comes to see. Ca remains concert for initiates.

A new film is in location. Less complicated than the precedent fortunately! scenes of drawings of fire… If not I wonder more and more if the next production will not be a DVD, with a videos clip part and a Live part. The group has sufficient images to fill it. And then… this format is really well adapted has our work.
Concerts also, one worked all this time to show oneself under a new dress and one would like that it is seen.

Questionnaire of Pivot
Your preferred word… Let' S go!
The word which you hate… plastic bag
Your favorite drug… Lipton Yellow
The sound, the noise which you like… An engine has vapor
The sound, the noise which you hate… Rap
Your swearword, coarse word or favorite blasphemy… pfff! ! !
Man or woman to illustrate a new banknote… Igor Stravinsky
The trade which you would not have liked to make… Paid
The plant, the tree or the animal in which you would like to be réincarné… Ptérodactyle
If god exists, that you would like, after your death, to intend it to say you… Vade a porta inferi!

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2002