‘Click Interview’ with Axiome: ‘Humanity’s Future Is Unpredictable, So Is Axiome Too’
Belgian duo Cedrik Fermont (Ambre, Dead Hollywood Stars, Črno Klank, Kirdec ao) and Olivier Moreau (Imminent, Ambre ao) set up Axiome in 1991. Both artists and friends got involved in an impressive number of projects, but they regularly move back working on new Axiome stuff. The band explored multiple influences and music genres, but the last albums became more sophisticated, mixing elements of IDM, Acid and Minimal-Electro. The new album “Field Guide To Alien Planets And Other Disco Balls” released on Audiophob is an intelligent piece of modern underground Electro. This album deserves a bit more information which was given by both protagonists.
(Courtesy by Inferno Sound Diaries)
Q: Getting back to the early work of Axiome (more than 30 years ago now) and listening afterwards to your new album I honestly didn’t get the impression listening to the same project. What has made this radical evolution and what remains from the early Axiome anno 1991?
Axiome: It’s perhaps not a radical evolution, we had more than three decades to reach that point. Unlike some artists we never got stuck in one music genre, if one listens to all of our releases it is easy to see that we have always been evolving and changing: we played Industrial, Power-Noise, Glitch, Breakcore, Acid and Electro. We sometimes went with the flow, like when we played Breakcore, we wanted to bring something new in the Power-Noise and Industrial music scene that has sometimes a hard time to renew itself. We both lived in Belgium back then and the Breakcore scene was huge in there, the audience was also very different, more related to the club scene but also the Punk scene too and we loved that energy, we were booked to play for Breakcore Gives Me Wood or for the Maschinenfest scenes that brought very different listeners, which was interesting to see but we are also both fan of Electro and related genres, we partly grew up with Punk and Post-Punk, EBM, New-Beat and Acid and also with Noise, Experimental and Industrial music, I presume all this imprinted us.
What remains from the early times is probably that fact that we like to try new things and as a duo have our own personality.
You know, what shaped our first tape recordings around 1990/1991 was not only our music tastes but also our inexperience and lack of money to buy better gears.
Q: You guys have been involved with numerous projects so what makes Axiome different from the rest and what’s the main focus when working together as Axiome?
Axiome: Axiome is the oldest active ‘band’ we are involved with and maybe with one exception, we always meet to compose, we don’t exchange files for working remotely. Which is not always the case with some of our other projects.
The main focus is perhaps enjoying time composing together, having breaks to listen to music we like and eating good food.
Q: One thing is for sure, the title of the new album sounds totally weird. Is there a deeper- and maybe metaphoric significance behind or is it just your sense of humor?
Axiome: It’s just humor, you can see it in many of our other releases. Humor is often lacking in the Industrial, EBM or Electro circles and we both like humor. We both grew up in Belgium, a surreal place that is not afraid of making fun of itself, isn’t it ?
You’ve got all these Electro artists embracing sci-fi topics, often dystopian ones but the world can be hilarious too… No alien ever attacked us so far, the problems astronautics has to deal with are Moonwalkers crapping their pants and clogged toilets on the space station. Here are some of the real space quest’s dramas. Can you imagine how it’s going to be on Mars? Settlers walking with diapers, humanity reborn! Ah ah!
Q: Sound-wise I experience “Field Guide To Alien Planets And Other Disco Balls” as totally ‘free-style’. Multiple influences have been mixed together without compromises. How did the writing process happened and did you handle specific references and/or guideline?
Axiome: We never write down ideas and concepts or music notation, here again, we go with the flow. Trial and errors. We might have a vague idea in mind but the end result is often different from the original idea if we had one. There’s no fixed goal.
We sit behind the computer and try to compose a looped rhythm, once we think it sounds good, we add sounds and synthesizers and perhaps other beats and then nowadays voices too.
The only concept that we have are the provisory titles which are often connected to vegetable names, so when we compose an album, each track is connected to a vegetable or fruit belonging to the same family. Sorry if we ruined all our fans’ fantasies.
Q: One of the influences running through your latest works is Acid music which is not exactly often used and mixed with Industrial- and related music genres. What does Acid music evoke to you and the famous Acid scene from Chicago, Detroit ao?
Cedrik : I think Olivier is more acquainted with Acid music than me. I listen to some of it, mostly old stuff, not only the US scene, I like some of the productions a lot but never dove deeply into what has been done or is still being produced. I must tell you that I don’t consider AXIOME to be an Industrial band, we have been one but what we do now is pretty different and doesn’t correspond to how I see Industrial music. Acid is related to Dance music and clubs and what we do is some kind of perhaps mutant version of Dance and Club music.
We thought I’d be interesting to incorporate such influence into something else than Techno. In fact other artists have been incorporating 303 sounds with Ambient or Industrial music for a long time now, it’s nothing new.
Q: What makes the chemistry between both of you and how do you expect AXIOME evolving after more than 30 years?
Axiome: We met when we were two years old, going to the same kindergarten (no kidding !) and even if we now live 700 km apart from each other, we usually see each other several times per year to compose music and music-wise, we still have a lot in common.
We never exactly know how Axiome will evolve, we sometimes have a plan but without guarantee that it won’t change. We wanted to make some Detroit inspired Electro and now, check our latest two albums “Who Will Control Us?” and “Field Guide To Alien Planets And Other Disco Balls”, the result doesn’t exactly fit that box.
As many events that occurred in the past three years have proven it, humanity’s future is unpredictable, so is Axiome too. A next album could be Hip-Hop or Ambient or else, this is what makes us interesting, we hope, there’s no rule.
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