Elita: The band living in a video game

(HAT Bluemarble, PANTS Mugler, BELTS FROM UP TO DOWN Commission, Racer Worldwide, Acne Studios, GLOVES Puma, BOOTS Ann Demeulemeester)

Tell us about yourself.

I grew up in Paris. Overall I think I had a hard experience of growing up. I felt a lot of anger and got into a lot of trouble. But I was also very outgoing and curious. I loved motorbikes and gangsters. I spent a lot of time playing in the streets, and during school vacation I stayed with my grandparents and played all day outside in the countryside with my sister and brother and our cousins. It was wild times, really free and messy. Through my parents and the context of Paris I was exposed to a lot of culture, architecture, art exhibits, things like that. I was not particularly interested in those things but I became educated to it. My parents are very critical thinkers, that definitely affected my a viewpoint on the world. Debate and argumentation is a big part of French culture in general. It’s ingrained in me to look for the flaws, to see what can be improved. There are positives and negatives that go along with that. It’s difficult to resume in a few sentences how I have been influenced by my family and environment. This is a big topic that can go in so many directions.

You mentioned previously in an interview that you see Berlin as a total universe, with a timeless and cohesive artistic language. Do you still feel this way? Any other cities, Paris for instance?

Yes, I think each city has a soul, something particular about it that makes it what it is. Some cities have such a strong identity, artistically it is difficult to not be pulled into their universe. Places evolve over time but a city with a history such as Berlin or Paris is heavy, it can’t be erased so easily. The glory days of Paris are long gone, but you can still find echoes of it. And who knows, maybe it can be brought back to life. Maybe it’s happening now.

You said before: “[Pop music] is popular. I hate elitism. A craft that everyone can connect to.” Do you think more experimental or alternative music is elitist? If so, why?

I think it can be. Oftentimes it is difficult to differentiate between what is subversive for the sake of subculture (emancipation, community, finding of self), and what is inaccessible for the sake of exclusivity (to create us/them, to exclude, to put oneself up and create a hierarchy). Experimental and alternative music may need a certain amount of education in order to understand it. There’s nothing wrong with that. I think that there is a simplicity with pop music that is very generous, I like that about it.

(RIGHT: TOP Vintage AW 1996 Raf Simons HAT as belt accessory Egon Lab JEANS Acne Studios BELT Racer Worldwide GLOVES Puma BOOTS Ann Demeulemeester)

What’s your take on mental illness and the way it’s perceived and treated in the Western world? Have you found a community of people, with whom you can exchange experiences and perspectives on this with?

I think that there is still a lot to be discovered about mental illness that we don’t understand yet. I had very extreme mental health problems for over a decade, which I was very lucky to survive. All the clinics and doctors and medications I was prescribed did nothing to help me out of that. It took very intense personal work, and a lot of love, and experimentation to find a way to heal. Today I am very steady, I healed a lot. I’m much stronger.

You threw your poetry book at Pete Doherty? What’s the story here?

It was during one of my longterm stays at a clinic. I had been listening to his solo album a lot, Grace/Wastelands, and I asked for permission to leave for the evening to be able to go to his show in Paris. I brought a notebook of poems and lyrics I had been writing, and during the show I threw it on stage, and it hit him in the face. He picked it up and started reading to the audience. I felt like I wanted more, it wasn’t enough. So I screamed at him, “give me your guitar!”. I thought it would be amazing to have his guitar to write songs on. But instead, he reached out his hand and pulled me on stage, and then I had his guitar and I was in front of an audience for the first time in my life. I played one of the first songs I had written, and Peter watched from the side of the stage. After that he asked me to wait to go backstage after the show, and there he started to learn the song I had performed, asked me to write the lyrics down for him. But it was getting late, and my permission from the clinic had run out, I had to go back. He was confused that I was leaving so quickly although he had invited me backstage, so I explained that I was in a clinic for anorexia. He looked at me, very touched, and wanted to see me again, asked for my telephone number. So that was the start of a close friendship that lasted quite a while, before he had to leave to rehab. It was very meaningful that he believed in me. He made me promise to never stop making music.

You also were working with Hedi Slimane in fashion. What was it like for you to move a bit out of music into another creative industry?

Hedi found me through music, he probably knew that I was around Peter (who he was close to in the early 2000s) and that I was making music. He hired me as an exclusive model for Saint Laurent. It was far from what I wanted to be doing, but it was an experience that allowed me to travel and learn about how things work in the fashion industry. It was difficult for me, I was pretty naive and I didn’t understand that friends in the industry are not real friends. I was in very bad mental health at the time, I don’t think I was ready to handle it well.

(RIGHT: TOP & SHORTS, Loewe LONG SLEEVE, ROA SCARF & SHOES, Ann Demeulemeester GLOVES, Puma JEANS, Egon Lab) (LEFT: TOP, PANTS, SCARF & BOOTS, Kiko Kostadinov COAT, Ariuna GLOVES, Sf 1 OG)

What was it like when you first arrived in Los Angeles?

It was surreal. It felt like everything was a movie set. The context was so luxurious, it was very strange. I was in West Hollywood, Fairfax. That’s where Hedi had his Saint Laurent studio. I was deep in my problems, really struggling. I was trying to make music. I was smoking a lot of weed, driving around, eating tacos… living in a kind of glamorous, nightmarish loop. I was feeling really terrible. But I still had some kind of fantasy about LA.

What was it like to return to Paris after living in these different cities and things changing in your life along the way?

Not comforting. It was time for me to return and to come to terms with where I come from. It was a challenge, I had to find my place there, a city that had never felt very supportive. It took a few years but now I feel like I have my role here, this is where I’m supposed to be right now.

What is the music scene like in Paris? I'm fairly involved in fashion, art, design, but music lesser so.

I don’t think there is much of a music scene in Paris like there used to be. 10 years ago there was a big scene of live bands, an indie rock revival. Today artists are more isolated. But recently there have been a lot of artists moving to Paris. I do feel like there is something developing here right now.

Live music seems to have fallen off in New York for sure in the last maybe 10–15 years. Would you agree? Do you see that in other cities as well?

Yeah, I think that’s because of social media and also the cost and complexity of producing live shows. People are entertained on the phone so there is less need to go out, so there is less support for live artists, but long term I think that will change. It’s depressing to be too connected to the internet for too many years. I think people need real life experiences, real connection. And music is one of the most powerful ways to bring people together. It’s a ritual.

How do you want to be perceived visually? Your persona, how would you describe it?

I don’t want to be perceived in any particular way. I just want to live my lifestyle in a way that feels inspiring. My aesthetic is one thing, I think a lot of people assume things about me that aren’t true because of it. But I’m not gonna change to make it easier for people to understand me. I’m not one dimensional, I got a complex story, my life hasn’t been simple. So that shows in how I present myself, and that’s real. Evil for good. I let people figure out what that means.

Your upcoming album REV carries themes of revolution, revenge, and revelation. How do these relate to your personal life?

Revolution has always been relevant in my life. I never fit in to what society expected me to be, I’ve always gone against the rules because I had no other choice, I wasn’t meant to follow them. Sometimes I wish I could have, it would have been easier. But it just didn’t work like that for me, it’s like I was put on this earth to disrupt. I can’t avoid being who I am. Revenge is an energy, a powerful source of drive. I do want revenge, I want revenge for all the years I spent suffering, for the time I lost caught into endless cycles of mental and physical pain. I can’t accept that. I want revenge on the people that let me down. I want them to see that I made it, that their lack of belief or animosity didn’t stop me. I know revenge is dangerous, it can turn against me. That is one of the main narratives of REV. Revelation, because there is something bigger, something spiritual, that I can’t deny. It comes through sometimes to remind me, to give the keys, to make it all make sense. Those moments are rare and precious. Sometimes they come to me in dreams, sometimes it’s more conscious.

There’s a strong sense of mythology and world-building in REV. How did you craft this world, and what does it represent to you?

It represents my life. It’s an allegory for everything, from the city I live in to the industry I am part of, the relationships I have experienced. It’s a way to tell my story. I found that using fiction and allegory allowed me to be more truthful in a way. The world of REV is something that imposed itself, it was impossible to make it anything else. I think artists often have the experience that what they create is coming through them, channeled from somewhere. The world of this album was created like that.

The album’s sonic palette is more aggressive than previous works, blending post-punk, electronic, rap, and even witch house influences. What drew you toward this more intense, cinematic sound?

REV is an energy, a mindset. You can be rev, and that means that you don’t let anything stop you. The sound of the album needed to reflect that energy, needed to create an immersive world where the listener can enter into the story, become their own protagonist. The sound is intense and cinematic, but it has a range of opposite extremes that create a lot of depth and allow for the softer, soulful moments to shine through even brighter. I think that the aggression in the sound is something that takes getting used to, but once you get accustomed to it, you have learned the language of this world, you will understand what it means to be rev.