Interview: BeNe GeSSeRiT

In the 80's Alain Neffe ran a tape label called Insane Music, a home for all the weird and wonderful musical experiments that were happening then, including his own. It's hard to imagine these days, where almost everyone is only a few clicks away, and tracks can be flung around the world in an instant. But Insane Music operated at a time when telephones were vital, and the post was a godsend. Alain recorded under a wide variety of names and aliases, sometimes solo or as a duo with Nadine Bal, or with groups, creating music under the guise of BeNe GeSSeRiT, Pseudo Code, Human Flesh, I Scream, Japanese Genius, Subject, Cortex, and many others. Alain and Nadine's music has graced many compilations in recent years, on labels such as Odd Size, Popwave, Red Neon Tapes, Minimal Wave, Gonzo Circus, and many others. We chatted with Alain and Nadine in Antwerp record store Wally's Groove World about modifying instruments, The Cave, censorship, and the therapeutic power of music. Read the interview with music journalist and Academy teammate Max Cole below.

Max: How does it feel when young listeners discover your music from decades ago?

Alain: Naturally, I enjoy it very much and I am rather proud of it. Contact with the youth always gives me energy. It also proves to me that I was working in the right direction. I love the feeling of being there, rather than being dead! It's more pleasant. But everybody knows that music fashion is like a wave coming back.

Max: Is it right that you had a bit of a break, and then started making music again?

Alain: No, no, I never stopped making music. I only slowed  it down in the 90s.

Max: Ah, maybe it was drum machines?

Alain: Yes, it was the drum machines. In the beginning I was in love with drum machines. My first one I bought in '74 or '75. It was Italian, it used to make tangos and so on, and I had pulled out all the wires, and transformed it. I was a little bit correcting the rhythm box. In the early '80s , I had six or seven different ones. But when everyone began to use it, I got fed up, really, an overdose…

Nadine: ...of rhythm box!

Alain: I couldn't stand the sound of it anymore. So I threw away all my compositions with the rhythm box, I said 'forget it', and began again without rhythm box. So that's why now I am able to give (for compilations) a lot of unreleased things featuring rhythm boxes, the ones that I didn't want to see released at the time.

Nadine: from the 80s...

Alain: …And now let's say it's finished, my overdose is finished. I'm not the  best fan of rhythm boxes, but I can stand them again. Strangely, when listening to those old tracks, I discovered that I was rather inventive with using those robots. Maybe in the end of my brain, I was already hating them! (laughs) So I transformed the sound and put several rhythm boxes together, and tried to add echo, filters, phasing, fuzz, and put their sounds through synthesizers or vocoder.

Max: Were you going through phases like that all the time?

Alain: Well, let’s say that that phase was very radical. For a while, well maybe three years, I was only playing acoustic music and formed a group with the drummer of Univers Zero.

Nadine: Daniel Denis.

Alain: Daniel Denis. He didn't play drums in that band, he played church organ.

Nadine: So they went to churches in our area.

Alain: Yes, and he played organ, and I played all different sorts of instruments, but acoustic. We had also a sitar player, but we didn't make ambient music or shit like that, it was really strange music. When someone was visiting like Anna Homler, we were asking her to put a voice… or Daniel Malempré would add a guitar. It was always very minimal, the same spirit as I always did, but only acoustic and only with two microphones. Not studio stuff, nothing. Only a small  portable DAT and two microphones, and trying to put the microphones in the right place.

Max: I suppose in those kind of environments, it's more about capturing the acoustic picture?

Alain: Yes, but not only that. When I put the microphones too far away from the source, it was really "ppffff" - it was really ugly. So I had to really put it very close, and so if you had for example the sitar and the church organ together with two microphones, the sitar had a tiny sound and the organ a gigantic sound, it was difficult to balance. No mix, nothing like that. It was really a challenge. It was very funny. I liked it. We had a project on CD, but nobody wanted it, I sent it to ten labels and didn't even get an answer. It was too radical I guess. But maybe in 20 years... (laughs).
 

Max: Sounds like it still had some element of church music, though?

Alain: Not really, no.

Max: It was just strange music?

Alain: It's true that we were impressed with the space each time. Well, each time we stepped into the church, we'd have ten minutes silence. Not saying you must stay silent, but just, you know, like that.

Nadine: And then they improvised.

Alain: And then slowly, and with care, like there's something in the air. I mean, I don't believe in God, but these places are  emotionally charged, so…

Max: That sounds like quite a contrast from the [studio named] Cave. I'm curious what that was like, not just in terms of instruments, but also of the space.

Alain: Ah yes. There were two different caves in fact. Firstly...

Nadine: In the beginning of " Insanités".

Alain: Yes, it was in a bedroom.

Nadine: It was not a cave. Just on the first floor.

Alain: Yes! My aunt moved from that house and we could have the bedroom for a little bit more than one year. It was a small place. I can remember a painted wallpaper from the 60s with triangles and stuff like that. I still have some photographs of that - very kitsch. It was where Pseudo Code rehearsed. After that she moved, and we moved too, and there we could have an old cave, an old cellar, not so big and then after that there was a new cave, it was when we were living in Nivelles, it was for BeNe GeSSeRiT. It was just close to the kitchen. It was a strange house, the cave was underground, but the kitchen was half-underground.

Nadine: It was very tiny.

Alain: Yes, and I'm glad I'm small, because we could not transform it. When a friend from Holland came, he was always hurting his head each time.

Nadine: ..hitting his head!

Max: You couldn't jump around.

Alain: Oh no. Now the recording studio is in the bedroom again. But a bigger one.

Max: How do you guys write music together? Is there a method? How do the tracks start usually?

Alain: Well there're two different ways. For [the band] Subject, for example, the singer was not composing, so I had to compose with the bass player. We always rehearsed a little bit, and then when something was coming, we told the singer what she had to do. So it was a little bit composed. But for all the others it was, and it still is, improvisation. Even with BeNe GeSSeRiT…

Max: So everything's set up ready to record, and then you perform?

Alain: Yes, yes. It sometimes caused a few problems, because I had old second-hand equipment, and sometimes it was very hard because something wasn't working, and there were some noises and so on. So I had to be the technician, and the musician. Sometimes it took a lot of time and Nadine was running away because it was taking too long to fix the stuff! She never wants to rehearse at all, she never wants to redo something. So I prepare the music, and when it's done, she comes and does her thing, and she does anything she wants. I record everything, and after that I cut it and put it all together.

Max: I suppose you two have an understanding between each other.

Alain: True. With Pseudo Code it was also like that. We never talked about music in fact, they came from Brussels, and I lived in the French part of Belgium, in the south. Most of the time, when they arrived, we spent time eating tarts and pastries and drinking tea, and talking about films and books and so on, and after a while, someone said  "We go to play?" And we just went up in the rehearsal bedroom. I guess we had some problems we had to express.

Nadine: At that time.

Alain: And that's why we never had to define anything, because we just wanted to take some bad vibrations out of our brains.

Nadine: Like a process.

Alain: Like psychotherapy, to let the pressure go away... Emotions and stress and pressure. Concerning the music itself, I've always been inspired by 70s music, and the others were, and still are, younger, and they were influenced by what was happening at the time. For example they loved Throbbing Gristle, and I hated that band. But naturally there's some influences of Throbbing Gristle, when the guitar player began to show it and make noise. We accepted all the influences, but they had to be emotional and give something honest. We never played a long time, only one hour or so, and after that we got back into the kitchen, and continued to drink tea and talk and go away, hehe.

Max: And then listen back afterwards and…

Alain: Yes. What I was doing, I was the guy who was listening and saying "that is rather good, or this is very bad, and there is a mistake", and so on, and I kept the good parts. After that the three of us had to listen to the selected parts and decide where the song was beginning and where it ended, the title, and everything like that. And finally to decide what we would do with that new born song. The strategy was all after, but not before. 

Max: That's the best way, I guess, because with the creative side, you don't want to be thinking about anything else.

Nadine:  Yes, you just want to express yourself.

Alain: And not thinking like "we want to do something in this or that style" or anything like that, we were just doing it. With BeNe GeSSeRiT, it's the same, I have no censorship over style or over other matters. Concerning the lyrics, I never know what she will do. She puts her headphones on, I  press record, and I discover the new lyrics. Most of the time it's just words like that, expressing some sort of emotions. Sometimes it's not altogether, but it's OK like that - rather surrealistic. She rarely comes with a written text, usually she does it like that. Sometimes, she uses texts we improvised together, you know, the "exquisite corpses", we write them on vacation, or when we are waiting for the food in a restaurant. Rarely, she might read or sing an old text of mine.

Max: Were there people you were reading in particular, or that you were listening to?

Nadine: No, not really. I do not have a good musical memory. I cannot recall the words of a song, for instance. It's awful haha!

Alain: Yes, it's true. For example, we had to make one version of "Love Me Tender", and it took really weeks for her to learn the words and melody!

Nadine: Not really "weeks"!

Alain: She tried to assimilate the music and words of that song but she could only remember one third, or so. It's crazy.

Nadine: So I cannot say I have influences as such, but I want to express myself, and have a lot of unconventional ways of singing and thinking and speaking and so on.

Max: Is that about offering something original or personal, and not copying anything in particular?

Alain: Yes, I guess… there's some influence naturally. Even when it's absolutely unconscious. I remember one day I was listening to Yoko Ono, her second album 'Fly', it's a very good album. Nadine was in the kitchen, and she screamed "What is that song of ours? I don't know it? I don't remember it!" and I said, "It's not ours! It's Yoko Ono." She said, "Oh! That old lady?" Haha!

Nadine: So this is why we have made a song in homage to Yoko Ono. But at the time, I didn't know her.

Alain: Now she listens to her works and enjoy her vocals.

Nadine: Yes. Afterwards.

Max: It's nice to let the subconscious influences come through, right? Whatever you're listening to.

Alain: Sometimes it happens, but it's rare. For the first single in.. 1982? she came with an idea, she said "I've heard on the radio something special. It's easy to do, because it's a simple rhythm, and the guy is just talking on it, and it's called rap”. Well, at the time, I never heard a rap, so she described it, and we made "Kidnapping" in four hours. It was intended to be a rap, it's not really a rap - hopefully! I really hate rap.

Nadine: Kidnapping!

Alain: We also like to make some jokes. We made a slow one in Italian, for example, just for fun, we don't know any Italian, only some ugly words and the way they speak.

Nadine: Haha!

Alain: And we did it with those words.

Nadine: We have still some Italian fans, that's the most surprising thing. We also recorded songs in fake Japanese, Russian, Chinese and so on… and songs in real Dutch or Danish.

Alain: With BeNe GeSSeRiT, we re-discover our childish behaviour, we play a little bit like that.

Nadine: On stage, we played with lots of toys, noises of toys.

Alain: We collect wind-up toys for ages and ages, we have thousands of them, and strange machines, you know, plastic stuff, fluorescent stuff, so it fits with the spirit.

Max: The word "play" is pretty important there, you play music and you have to have fun. Is that how you find the nice moments?

Alain: Yes… we try to preserve the child in us. It's not easy sometimes because I am rather cynical and realistic. On stage, we used a lot of plastic stuff, and fluorescent stuff and black light and things like that. People were laughing and enjoying in a good way.

Max: How much was it a performance as well? Did you feel like it was important to put on a show?

Nadine: It was more a show, yes. In my mind, it's clear that it must be different between someone who is listening to the music on his best sofa in the best condition, and someone who is coming to see you on stage. There must be something in addition! Otherwise, I prefer to stay on my best sofa! This is why I tried to make it funny, and have good contacts with the audience.
 

Stay tuned for part two of this interview, as well as a Headphone Highlights radio show on RBMA Radio, coming soon.