Hanging Gardens ist eine Band aus Frankreich, die sich 2013 gegründet hat. Der Sound ist im Post Punk und Dark Wave verankert. Nach dem Debüt Corpus 2.0 (VÖ. 2015) hat das Duo mit Materia Prima 3.0 im letzten Jahr eine weitere großartige EP veröffentlicht. Mit ihrer Musik erschaffen Nadia & Loïc ein wunderbar dunkles und kaltes Ambiente. Die Songs haben starke Melodien und werden von Nadias rezitierenden, französischsprachigen Vocals begleitet. Neues Material ist bereits in Planung – wir sind gespannt!
Who is behind Hanging Gardens ?
Nadia: Mystical energies and a lot of work.
Loïc: The hidden children of Jekyll and Hyde.
Can you tell us few things about the connection between you two and your journey into the music?
Loïc: It is a long story that we will not be able to tell you all the episodes … It would take a good dozen programs to see them, since we have been living together for 20 years now … But the music connection happened about six years ago almost by chance. I began to be interested in computer composition after several failed group projects, secretly in our basement studio, and I was fiddling around in my corner, singing my lyrics. It was frankly conclusive but enough to arouse the curiosity of Nadia and that she proposed to me to put her voice and her texts and there, the magic to operate, Hanging Gardens was born.
If you had to describe your music in terms of not music…what would you say?
Loïc: Turning the ugly into beautiful, black poetry and dark life stories, between soaring clouds and cavernous corridors, tension between emotion and melancholy.
Nadia: Pictorial poetry.
Forget about genres for a second – Hanging Gardens’ music sounds like …?
Loïc: A permanent journey between war and peace, hell and heaven.
Nadia: Emotional vibration.
What are your first musical memories?
Nadia: Afric Simone – Hafana, hahaha!! My dad loved this song. He was telling me, we’re going to listen to the „chair eater“. I was very small. As soon as he put on the intro, I was running away in my mother’s skirts. I hated and still hate this song. In any case, I thank my father for having made me discover a panel of music. From blues to rock, from rock to Afric Simone!
Loïc: When I go back in time, the first real musical emotion, my Proust madeleine, took place at a party organized by a college buddy’s brother. They had offered to play the music and use his records, his vinyl collection, an untouchable grail normally. We took our role very seriously by preparing before, listening to all the records, classifying them … but when we passed the maxi-vinyl of Grauzone – Eisbaer and we saw everyone get up and … wahouu I don’t know if it’s the 3 colored spots and the sangria but it stayed with me, it was a moment of strong emotion, founder certainly for the following. I could have talked about „Boys don’t cry“ from The Cure, but it’s a different story …
Which person, artist or incident inspired you when you first started making music ?
Nadia: I’ve been writing since I had a pencil in my hand. I had a lot of notebooks and loose sheets. Loic was playing music and was desperate not to find a singer. One evening, I put my voice on a demo! „Corpus“ was born.
Loïc: Robert Smith (and the music of The Cure of course) have always accompanied me. First of all, he influenced me a lot by his playing and the sound of his guitar, his air, his melody and his music always touched me (and still touches me …) physically and emotionally, with a song like „The kiss“ for example or the lesser known „Lost brief the ultimate influence“. He also wrote the world’s saddest love songs. I could have quoted Neil Young for the grunge and wild side of guitar playing, big musical influence too.
Last year your EP „Materia Prima 3.0“ came out. Would you like to tell us few things about the process of the creation of it?
Loïc: It is a process that always takes us time, I always have ideas in the basket and we proceed by trial but always seeking a coherence, a red thread that will cross the pieces, the link between text and music. We also try to give ourselves a musical direction by using new sounds, new textures, different rhythms to give a unit listening to the songs. On this EP, we explored more binary but more dynamic electro drums. For the rest we remain attached to the voice/guitar pairing, and that the voice and the guitar respond, complete themselves, intuitively we feel when this alchemy arrives and there we hold the piece.
Where does your inspiration for music come from? Which sort of mood produces the best song?
Loïc: Music, for my part, is the best remedy for the ailments of the soul, to fight against melancholy or daily setbacks. The composition requires a return on oneself, a mental retreat to seek out the emotions, transform them positively and translate them into music. It is this process that gives me the most emotion, the moment when we feel that a harmony is born, that a bass line and the guitar begin to accelerate the heartbeats. I can look long before I get to this emotion, do, undo, redo before I propose it to Nadia, it’s a slow process that takes me time. There are only two of us, a duo and this format forces us to assume even more a creation, we cannot hide behind a band. It forced me to work hard and work on trust, but I have a personal coach, a perfect celestial companion in this role.
For us the primary meaning, the music is not detached from the meaning, we constantly ask the question of the meaning, what you mean, and that the music and the words provoke emotion, first for us and then, we hope, to share these feelings with the audience.
Nadia: From love, passion of creation!
Which instrument will surely NEVER be heard on a Hanging Gardens-track?
Loïc: it’s a question I’ve never asked myself before … anything that produces a sound can become interesting but maybe a trumpet, the instrument of military brass bands … although. The vocoder also occupies a good place in banned instruments.
Nadia: We collaborated with a violinist Sextus Empiricus and it was very interesting to see how he could agree with our universe and it was … beautiful. On the contrary, I am open to any instrument; it all depends on the artist behind it and his openness. Why not an accordionist? Why not? We are also „one“ in a group – whatever the musician and his instrument! No discrimination in ART!
No alcohol is no solution either. What booze combination will definitely dissolve all your troubles and issues?
Nadia: The forest, the mountains, the oceans.
Loïc: My studio in a wooden house lost in the forest, what else? Maybe a large fire place .
What is the most surprising record on your CD /Vinyl-shelf ?
Loïc: It’s a dance music compilation of French boy bands from the 90s. I don’t even know how this album is found here .
Nadia: Afric Simone – Hafana … no!! I’m joking!!
What are your plans for the near future and what do you wish for?
Nadia: Lives!! And a constant evolution in our creations.
Loïc: In this very special context, to be able to go back on stage, to find the energy of the public … We have a concert to program in November, we cross our fingers.
We are currently working on the new tracks of our new EP, we hope to be able to share it by the end of the year, for that too we cross our fingers!
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