Defender of the Breton Celtic Culture For 15 years Loïc has been serving a high class Pagan Black dish under the banner of BELENOS. On the occasion of his fifth album "Yen Sonn Gardis" the French talks about his musical producing as well as his homeland which is a huge source of inspiration for him. Like with its predecessor "Chemins De Souffrance" one can't help to think 'How can this be done by one person alone' when listening to "Yen Sonn Gardis" but exclusive of the time from 1998 to 2004 BELENOS has always been a one man project. And Loïc is visibly satisfied with his new creation. "I'm satisfied with it especially for the performance of the drums, and all these new titles seem to me rather good. Maybe the guitar sound could've been better, though. The experiments I wished to make were very satisfactory: the Breton language and a little violin. To make this album I needed three months of preparation in particular for the drums. The following six months I recorded the whole album, wrote the lyrics and realised everything from the layout up to the mastering." Regarding the previous album Loïc comments the differences that "Yen Sonn Gardis" is a good mixture of everything BELENOS can offer after 15 years in 2010. "The sound of the drums is more natural I think. I'm rather proud of this. "Chemins De Souffrance" is the coldest and darkest BELENOS album, and I don't think I can do it any better in this way. "Yen Sonn Gardis" delivers a different atmosphere and sound with several titles much more 'pagan' but we also find titles very inspired by 'old school nordic black metal' here or other tracks even more quiet and depressive..." Already on "Chemins De Souffrance" Loïc uses some words in the Breton language. With "Yen Sonn Gardis" he takes the final step to release an album entirely in Breton. "Since 2002 I regularly used Breton words in certain titles, and since this date I said to myself that I was going to write a full album in this language one day. Today that's done! Breton is an old celtic language that only 200000 persons all over the world are able to speak, that's less than Icelandic! And it sounds extremely good for black metal. I really don't regret this choice." |
Once again the entire creational process of an album is executed by Loïc alone, from the composing of the music to the recording, mix and mastering. A procedure which only holds advantages for him. "And you can add the creation of the layout, too. I'd say for me there are only advantages: no waste of time in neverending rehearsals, I record things when I want and above all when I'm isnpired to it. That's why my recordings spread out over several months, that's no problem for me and gets me the backing which I need. The most difficult moment for me is always the mix. Otherwise it's just happiness!" In doing so the music is more important than the lyrics because "would be the interest of some extremely well written lyrics on a poor music? Almost nothing." But there is one aspect on "Yen Sonn Gardis" where he gladly accepts some help. In songs like ´Hollved Hirisus´ or ´Mestr Ar C'Hoad´ strings can be heard which are definitely not created synthetically. "On ´Hollved Hirisus´ it's a violin solo performed by a friend but also on ´Gorsedd´ on wich we can find typical celtic violin tunes. The introduction of ´Mestr Ar C'Hoad´ is a medieval instrument called hurdy gurdy." With every album BELENOS releases Loïc cements his reputation as a perfectionist which can be heard in the diversified song structures as well as the vocal entries and instrumentation. The further this is pushed the more difficult it gets to imagine how this would sound live. Early 2010 BELENOS is a ´real´ band for some time so as to perform at some festivals but then there's radio silence on the live front again and no further plans are made. Would Loïc even consider a BELENOS tour? "It's obvious that most of the BELENOS songs are extremely hard to play on stage. We have chosen to play four times this year after more than five years of live inactivity. The result was good but not exceptional, and it's due to the fact that it's extremely hard to find competent and available musicians in Bretagne, in France in general. Honestly I don't think a tour could happen, and if someone proposed us such thing there would be only few chances for us to be available and ready for it." |