Solar Skeletons

VP: The Solar Skeletons are a duo combination of RIPIT and TZII yet sounds completely different from your individual solo works. How has working together compiled this genre defying sound?

SS: We both have, for sure a different background: TZII, after drumming in his teenage years in a rock band, was more into the Free Tekno scene, while RIPIT started as a Black Metal guitarist then experimenting with cheap drum machines and FX. But both of us were playing different genres, with each time our personal touch, of course. We both met in the underground Parisian scene, where we both found a mutual accomplishment. Before establishing SOLAR SKELETONS, we did some collaboration, where our own styles had their places and functions: RIPIT banging beats and TZII laying down huge maps. We did tours together and on our USA one, in January 2006, at DC9, Washington DC, we performed together and found out a new way to do it: we wanted to start a project where we could play any genre of music we liked and further beyond. That's the prime idea about SOLAR SKELETONS, any genre, and any technique... but of course, you can still hear both of our personal touch in any of our recordings. As we know each other since a long time now, personally and musically, we are very fast to write music, as somehow we use the same language.

VP: You are both multi instrumentalists as well, applying bass, guitar, and trumpet to the Solar Skeleton Sounds. Do you find it easier to write music out before hand, or do you jam and experiment to work out your songs?

SS: Basically, Eric is playing the bass, trumpet, drums, percussions, synthesizers, and vocals; Nyko is playing guitars, synths, vocals, and both of us having also our noisy tools of our own.

We don't really have a proper technique of writing our music; the common point is that all happens in studio. For example there's the improvisation way, where we plug the gears we want to use in purpose to give a certain atmosphere to a track (all acoustic, all electronic or both); or the pre writing one, where there's a composition step before execution, but this composition is mainly talking and drawing of a time line. We record our part and there is, depending of the track, quiet a lot of post editing and mixing. So the whole process of composition is really a studio thing. And we also often collaborate with other musicians, or guesting them on some songs. We both don't really know how to write music on paper in the classical way, we prefer recording straight, which is faster as we skip a step. For the composition, it often happens like one of us as an idea, like a guitar riff or a synth sound, and the other one will come on top of it.

Our ideas also often comes from random discussions, where a vision of a track appears, like we would say "let's do a dubby track with the stuffs we recorded last time to test this gear", then both of us will think about it on his own and we will confront our thoughts after few days and start recording. But some other times, we will jam on stage and will come back in the studio trying to reproduce this jam (our at least its prime ideas) in order to construct it as several tracks.

So as you see, there are no rules or technique, everything is permitted and that's what is exalting in this project.

VP: Do you have a concept behind your album: “Scavengers Ov Beliefs”?

SS: "Scavengers Ov Belief" is a collection of 4 tracks exploring 4 facets of musical heaviness: from fast stoner with martial crooning, to bluesy sludge, from gospel black metal power noise, to synthetic drone core.

For this record, each songs can be taken as a musical concept: dedication to the soul-passing bird, the vulture, with some Sun worshipping blasphemy thru a heathen gospel telling the story of a disabused Christian who will turn his belief into Lucifer and will finally realize that none but the Sun has the power on us all. You can also find the French Magick sound: “La Baguette!” and also a Jarmusch's Dead Man reference, with a sample of Nobody himself: "stupid fuckin' white men!”

This LP is some kind of an absurd kaleidoscopic vision of humanity, in this sense it reflects the Solar Skeletons philosophy: we feed with the non-sense of human's beliefs and regurgitate it in an even more idiotic way.

VP: Do you believe humanity needs to be destroyed in order to be reborn?

SS: Well, not so simply (even if you can build beautiful things from ashes), the main problem with humanity is that most of people's beliefs are dead-ends! All obey the sun, if the sun explodes everything is finished, it's as simple as that!! So people should understand that they have to follow the sun archangels, the solar skeletons, if they want to be reborned. Otherwise they will be doomed to roam forever into the purulent ashes of their gone civilization.

VP: Is Music, Drugs, Love and/or Violence the new religion of the world and how can we gain enlightenment from this?

SS: These elements are double-sided... they can help to enlighten, but also can enblind your soul. They are all strong propaganda weapons. The mission of the Solar Skeletons is to use them as far as possible to enlighten human race until blindness, therefore they use those artifacts to establish the asservissement to the Law of the Sun. Human race is already a servant of this Law, but is too wrongly focused to other non-sense beliefs since too long.

VP: What would you like on your tombstone?

SS: We are sons of the big bang so our death should coincide with the end of our solar system!!! But there is billions of suns in the universe to establish new colonies and accomplish our crusade. So in some sense we are eternal.

Dig some tracks from the band and save your soul:

http://www.archive.org/download/SolarSkeletons-Necroethyl/SolarSkeletons-Necroethyl.zip