Interview: Melt

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What got you into music, and if you had not gotten into music what would you be doing today? I discovered Iron Maiden as a teenager and well, it made me buy a guitar and then it was done: i had a way to create, life would no longer be the same. I don’t know what i’d do today without music, but you know, as said Robert Smith: there is no if. I’d be damn lost without music, but i would have understood that i should learn how to calm myself, or the drugs would have killed me, which is unacceptable

What do you like to do when you're not playing music and how does that influence your creativity? Walking into nature is the most fulfilling thing for me, i don’t know if that influences my creativity but it sure calms me, so it helps being more creative.

How long has your band been around? Melt exists since 5 years.

Where are you based out of and how did that influence your music? We all live in the south of france, it doesn’t influence the music, we live in the country and it’s very cool, we need it cos we don’t like cities, but i’ve been able to write music in the worst conditions.

How did you come up with the name of your band and what does it mean to you. Ha, Melt is about… melting. It’s referencing to Blade Runner, the tears in the rain scene. It’s about disappearing, melting in something bigger.

Tell me about the best and worst shows you have played. The worst i think was in a bar, a very strange atmosphere cos it was a bar for extreme right people and my guitar wouldn’t stay tuned. Maybe the guitar expressed its disapproval for being forced to play in such a place…That was not a nice moment. The best show… The best show is when people are receptive, screams and dance, and fortunately there’s been a couple of them.

Tell me about your favorite venue to play at, and do you have any places you want to play that you haven't already? I really enjoyed our venue at a small festival in a village, we played outside, at night, under the stars, that was cool. As long as it’s outside it’s great.

If you could play any show with any lineup who would be on the ticket? As long as i play with Charlotte, guitarist-singer in Melt, it doesn’t matter.

What is some advice that you would give to someone who is just getting into playing in a band? Consider your music as a work, as a real piece of art, not something you do to get fame or money.

If you could go back in time and give yourselves advice, what would it be? Honestly, i’m not an « if » guy. Things are perfect the way they are cos they couldn’t be different.

Of your songs which one means the most to you and why? Stigmata has a very beautiful and tragic feeling in the harmony of the solo at the end of the song, which makes an important one to me.

Which songs are your favorite to play and which get requested the most? Ho we’ve never been popular enough so people know our songs, but my favorites… Opikanoba, Stigmata… in fact the whole 1st album, it’s very in your face.

What is the creative process for the band, and what inspires you to write your music? Just sitting and play guitar. It’s strange actually, you can have the impression that you’re playing crap and it discourages you, and the next morning you listen to it and, hey wait a minute, that’s interesting. You just have to persist and not getting discouraged, because in reality, you don’t know what you’re looking for. It requires some sort of faith, blind faith.

What kinds of messages do you like to get across in your music? Let’s burn this fake world.

Do you ever have disagreements in your band, and how do you get past them? Disagrements? Yes of course! We dive into the crisis and the calm comes back just after, cos you realize that you have more to lose with this kind of behavior, that it doesn’t solve anything. It’s the cathartic way to handle troubles.

What are your plans for the future, and do you have anything that you want to spotlight that's coming up? Melt has became a studio project, so now we are just working on our third album. More precisely we are taking vacations and then after we will work on the demo of the future songs.