I’ve been trying to get a hold of her for a few hours now, and just when we finally sit down for the interview in the backstage circus tent, all hell breaks loose. The rain is so loud, it’s hard to understand each other. Are we still doing this?
Sitting down for a chat at a festival can be quite a challenge, especially when you’re as involved as Julienne Dessange is in her music. Just an hour after the interview, she will play a live set as Fantastic Twins on the festival’s main stage Membrana. But once we have sat down, the artist is concentrated and involved, and we are quickly deep-diving into the mind of Fantastic Twins.
I think I have a physical and emotional connection with contemporary and classical music - more than an intellectual connection.
Julienne grew up in France, with classical and contemporary music around her. She started contemporary dance at a very young age and was doing that at a pretty intense level in a company for a while. Her life involved semi-professional touring and even getting paid for her gigs. "There was a lot of Philip Glass and Steve Reich and that's what I grew up with. It's a bit weird because when you are at a young age, you don't care who made this, who is who." As a child dancer, you wouldn’t have conversations about the music you were dancing to. "I think I have a physical and emotional connection with contemporary and classical music - more than an intellectual connection."
"It's only later that I started listening to electronic music. I think I was 14... and then it never left me." Not being able to scratch the surface, deep-diving into one thing with focus and passion, that’s what Julienne is all about as an artist. She created a whole world surrounding her music. "I have these imaginary twins in my head. I try to create a dialogue between them. And I think it's interesting to have a track with different vocal parts which are going to be treated differently so that you have a feeling there's a dialogue going on. And with the rest of the music, with the instrumental. So yeah, that's my main horse. Twins."
The Voice As An Instrument
I ask Julienne, how she would describe her music, knowing very well that this is a tricky question to ask any artist. But it’s one every artist has to ask themselves. In times of endless possibilities, the goal is to distillate your themes and find your artistic focus. Fantastic Twins has found her theme in the twins and her focus in her voice. "Vocals are a material I like to work with. Because it's unique, you can transform it in many ways. And I feel like you never end the quest."
Fantastic Twins’ live sets are full of energy, a highly emotional journey with a lot of words floating around. But her writing cannot be compared to that of a singer/songwriter. "If I do a spoken word song, then I will pay attention to the lyrical content. But I'm kind of drifting away from this at the moment and it doesn't matter the words. It's about the sound and how much I can transform and process the voice and play with it as if it would be any other instrument."
The musician's universe is full of lyrics but they serve as something similar to notes or harmonies. Together with the music, they create a space, where feelings can be heard, where the sound of the voice says something, where the voice becomes a part of the composition and the lyrics become an integral part of the entire instrumentation. "I tend to reduce lyrics to very few words and kind of aim for the subliminal, something that can resonate with people in many different ways and leave space for interpretation. I stay away from lyrics that impose a narrative on the listener. I realised that in music, you don’t need many words to tell a story. What I’m interested in when working with vocals is to create a dialogue in the music and I find I can achieve that much better through multiple sound processing techniques rather than words."
Even when she creates emotion, with all the focus on the dialogue and the whole Fantastic Twins universe, Julienne is a geek first and foremost.
I tend to change the setup because otherwise, I get bored. I'm a geek. I like machines. I like buying new equipment.
"Right now I have a small modular duo rack, mainly made of modular effects and I have a sampler. I have a few effect units as well. And then some MIDI controllers and the live vocals."
Although she likes to adjust and experiment with her setup a lot, Julienne has to consider the practicality. Most producers who do a live act, don’t have the same logistical support that a band would get. They often travel alone. Most of the time, they also play in festivals or clubs, every other weekend. I have talked to many electronic music artists over the years, and it’s a lifestyle that you have to love to be able to do on a constant level. Julienne does. "I try to reduce the setup to what I can humanly carry with me. It's a lot. I carry 25 kilos every weekend. So you have to make compromises with this."
"It’s Very Brave To Have A Lineup Like This"
When I ask Julienne what she associates with our festival’s name Detect, she says: "The first thing that occurred to me was: searching for frequencies. Because “detecting” is not the obvious. You have to search for it, you have to pay attention to detect something. Find the right frequencies to tune in to. It makes sense with the name of the festival. Finding the right sound and not the obvious, not necessarily the first thing everyone can hear. And I think that's what the festival is doing."
"There are lots of artists that I don’t know. And that's what I like about the festival. It's adventurous. It's not what you're going to see everywhere else. I appreciate that and I think it's very brave to have a lineup like this. And also going across different genres of music that shows how the music is connected. And that's why this question about genres doesn't matter in the end. Because you can navigate through so much. And music is always connected." In a way, the festival and Julienne as an artist are trying to do the same thing: connect the dots and create something new from it. But of course, for Fantastic Twins, there is a big difference between her work on and off stage.
A Robot With A Heart
"Making a live performance and making a record are two different things. And as much as you can combine both, I think each has its own specific needs and requirements. When I work for the live set, I work in a very different way. Also, you don't always have control of the environment you're going to perform in. You might be in a very small club with an excellent sound system. You might be in a big open air. Everything just changes and I feel you have to... Without completely falling for the functionality, you still have to bear in mind that you have to be able to adjust to any kind of stage. And you might have to make compromises that you don't have to make when you make music for records."
"[When I’m] making an album, music to listen to at home or in a more intimate context, I want the entire freedom. No set BPM, beats or no beats, whatever, it’s a playground for all sorts of experimentations. But these don’t always translate easily in the context of a live set. It doesn’t mean that you can’t explore and be adventurous on stage, but it is a different way of creating a vibe, an energy, an emotion."
And that’s exactly what Fantastic Twins does less than two hours after the interview. The rain has finally stopped, it’s Saturday night, and everyone’s kind of blown through by the weather. The hungry dancers will not go to sleep for hours. Julienne has to directly leave after her gig. When she’s not in the studio or composing music for films, she’s a travelling electronic musician.
At least she’s not alone. She has a twin.