Interview with Naked, emotional post-rock from France

Naked are coming from France, and since 2000. create emotional but intense music. We talked with one of their two guitarists Nico about their new album and music in general.

Hi, Nico! Thanks for this interview! You just recently released your new album. How long did it take for you to record it?

It took us only five days to record it, we did it live at Le Camji in Niort (France) in the summer of 2008 but it took us almost a year trying to mix it, doing the mastering, doing the artwork . At one point we tried to add a bass but it didn’t work out because either we didn’t really know how to play it or we didn’t have a bass to write bass parts.

You self released this album. Wasn’t there a single label interested, or did you do it yourselves on purpose?

Actually we didn’t really looked for a label. The process of the post-production of the album had been so painful and long that we didn’t want to wait indefinitely for a label to be interested in releasing it. Also we are a bit lazy and we like to do things ourselves, we can sell it online and also we have chosen to sell it in digital format ( http://naked.bandcamp.com/ ). But if a label shows any interest in re-releasing it we would be glad with that (maybe in another format?)

This album is entirely instrumental. Why did you decide not to add vocals?

After our previous release “on a wire”, we had a kind of hiatus where we weren’t sure of the way the band should evolve. Yann our bass player then told us he wasn’t interested in playing bass anymore and that he wanted to play guitar. So we started writing new material with two guitars, and with the idea that we didn’t want any rules in our music (no more verse/chorus/verse songs, no more songwriter). The songs we then wrote started taking shape with no vocals, with a more “progressive” structure and we felt the voice had not its place anymore. It’s almost as if we started a new band. Anyway as we decided to have no rules, we don’t exclude the possibility of adding vocals to our new compositions, who knows ?

You don’t have a bass player. Did you have misfortune with bass players in the past and decided to play without one, or you never thought of getting one in the band?

We had 3 bass player before Yann who came in the band to play bass. Now that he has switched to guitar we don’t have have a bass player. We could certainly look for one but haven’t . Maybe if we find the right person we will had a bass player

Regarding the first question, will you tour to promote your new album? If I’m not wrong, I read somewhere that you didn’t play much in other European countries. Did something change meanwhile?

We never played outside of France, and we never really toured in France as well. Will we tour in the future to promote the album ? Maybe.

What are your major influences musically? Are all into one style of music or do you all have some “special” preferences in music?

We all listen to rock music in general, anything from the sixties to nowadays. For the band, we are mostly influenced by genres such as pop, noise, post-rock, emocore, punk-hardcore, metal, stoner, post-hardcore… We could say that a band like Envy is our main influence in the last ten years.

Who is responsible for writing music? Do you all bring your ideas and then try to see what will come up, or do you have someone who is in a way “responsible” for the writing process (or should I say has a main vision on how the song should sound like)?

At the beginning of the band I was the only songwriter , I would then bring completed songs with vocals to the band. Since yann has switched to the second guitar the writing process is completely different. Many of the songs are based on his riffs and chord progression and we build the songs then with the two guitarists doing acoustic songwriting sessions or in rehearsal with the drummer. We also like to “trip” on the songs to find new parts as much as we can, we like the idea of pushing the song in all the possible directions until we find there’s nothing more to add to it.

I really like the way you interweave soft melodies with distorted riffs. What motivates you to create such music?

I think this type of progression has always existed in rock music, since band like Led Zeppelin, etc. We would be bored to make only clean passages as much as we would be bored to do only distortion… we are now more interested in the progressive side of our music, in playing with dynamics, we also like the idea to take the listeners in a kind of journey where he doesn’t know what’s coming next and what to expect, to surprise them.

Thanks for this interview and I wish you all the best in your future work! Any last thoughts you’d like to share?

Thanks for your interest in our music, we greatly appreciate that. I would like to tell people to be open minded in music and life in general, to always look for new sounds and to always challenge your preconceived ideas, look towards the future without forgetting the past. Thanks again.