The Empress is music with an exalted and swaying groove, a face with many musical facets and tinged with a suave sensuality. The reign of the Empress has only just begun. (Interview conducted in December 2018) The Empress – © Louis Rayssac
Passing through the Bikini of Toulouse, The Empress returned to a conquered ground. Almost a year after the release of their first album Matahari, the six companions of His Majesty are about to finish their tour. It is therefore time for JustFocus to take stock with the founder, Charles, and his voluptuous voice, Flore. The opportunity for this indie group to explain its vision of music and the excesses of its industry, its relationship with the media, its influences, its meetings, etc. Between rants and favorites, the subjects of The Empress continue to reign over their music.
Are you almost used to the Toulouse scenes?
Charles: For the group, this is the third time we have come to Toulouse. We did the warm-up of Bon Entendeur a year or two ago with Tom, the drummer. It was in Toulouse that L'Impératrice made its very first scenography. It was at the Garonne theater, for a festival of a super cool artistic association: Bakélite (in June 2013 Editor's note). Émile Sacré, the one who made all the visuals of Laurent Garnier in his clips, had cut out of wood a giant amp with Marshall typography where he had written L'Impératrice. Bakélite also does the Electronic Siestas in Toulouse. https://vimeo.com/69888692
Have you scoured the stages of France a lot this year?
C: No more than the others. Today, it's intense to make music because at the time, doing concerts was a bonus. You sold records, you bought a house and if you wanted to, you did concerts.
You also have two Olympias coming at the end of January…
Flora: Yes! These are two big dates. It's THE thing to do in France and it's a crazy thing.
It is you, Charles, who is at the origin of the project of The Empress. How did you meet the other members of the group?
C: I started the project in 2012 by composing a first piece by myself. Then I started looking for musicians for the live. I met Hagni who introduced me to the drummer, who introduced us to the bass player. It turns out they all had in common a friend who is the current guitarist. In the meantime, I met Flore after the creation of the band, at the end of a concert. We talked, she came to my house to listen to models. She sent me back tests, it was for the Odyssey EP. From there, we started working together, so there were two speeds and several faces. 
You all have different backgrounds: jazz, rock, classical, etc.
F: There is even baroque for our guitarist. It's very varied, that's what makes the mix of influences that you find in our music.
Six to work together, isn't it too much of a mess? What role does each of you have in the creative process?
C: Quite simply, one or the other starts with an idea that he proposes to the others. This often starts from a small instrumental model. Then, we agree quite spontaneously to work on it and everyone brings his thing, each his specialty: Hagni will do his bass arrangement, Achilles will find his guitar part, Tom will find everything that is rhythmic and percussion, Flora a melody, etc. We move forward like that. Sometimes the models are already ready-made. On the album, it is only with the song Vacances that we went on the melody of voice where I really had something in mind and where, suddenly, I built the instrument on it. And then there are pieces where we have refined to highlight Flora's voice.
You didn't want a voice at the beginning of The Empress, what made you change your mind?
C: I needed a puppet, five guys wasn't sexy enough! (laughs) In truth, it was super spontaneous. At the time I met Flore, I still didn't want a singer, but I really liked what she had done on other tracks. I thought there was a great vibe, that his voice landed great, that it did not take up space. I didn't want a singer with a huge chest or someone of a variety type. It's super difficult to find a balance between the two. 
You often say that you consider his voice as an instrument, what does that mean to you?
C: She has a voice that does not take up space and that expresses itself in harmony and agreement with everything that is happening around. That's what a voice used as an instrument is. It's not a voice that makes you say it's a good song, it's more of a very beautiful voice, a very beautiful melody. F: On half of the songs, my voice is not in lead, it is more there in terms of choruses to make kind of atmospheres.
Something that had become rare in France, many of your songs are sung in French, is it a fad? Isn't that a bit of a mouthful?
F: Oddly, I feel like it's reversing right now. Now, everyone is doing it whereas when we started, it was still a bit risky. I come from jazz where we sing mainly in English, I had sung very little in French. We had talked about it with Charles when I had made melodies for the songs of Odyssée and he told me to try in French. I got into it and now I find that my voice sounds better in French. C: I don't think so, it's so different. We must not reject English which is super cool. It's just much simpler. It is not at all the same emotion between French and English. F: It's very hard to make French sound. English, you tell anything, it works, it's only rhythmic because it's a very rhythmic language. French is much more demanding. On the album, we struggled, we stumbled on the lyrics, it was very long. Because it's so laughable when someone miswrites in French. I think it's awful. It can ruin a piece. But we are not closed to English. Our album is not yet released in the world, it will be released next year with bonus material in English. Anyway we are French, our music is French, our melodies are French, our instrumentals are French.
What is a French melody for you?
C : Without going into music theory, it's the same difference that there is between two culinary specialties: it depends on the ingredients you put in it. F: It's not something describable, but you have intonations, ways of grooving that will be French. For example, when I make my melodies, I make them in yogurt. If I invent the melody in French yogurt or English yogurt, it will absolutely not be the same. I would not drop words in the same way. That's why there are some of our songs that we can never do in English. 
You don't like labels, why?
F: Who likes it deep down? C: Especially since today, we are in a kind of multi-revivol where all the music mixes. This is the principle of music today: no one wants to make rock or pure funk anymore. Everyone likes to make mixtures. Our music is based on this mixture. To say that we make pop is great, but rap is also pop now. In a pop rack you will have Bagarre, L'Impératrice, Thérapie Taxi, Lomepal: four artists who have four different horizons. That's why we don't really like labels.
Charles, are you a former journalist? What made you want to become a musician?
C: I was a music critic even if I touched a little bit of everything. What made me want to change was the fact of writing about the music of others, which is very complicated, without really understanding the workings. I think it was really curiosity and I had a few friends who were starting to make music. I put a foot in it and we talked about it differently. They had notions that I absolutely did not have and that were just the culmination of the composition. Maybe I also made music to legitimize my point. The trigger was when I was shocked once by an article by Patrice Bardot (Editorial Director of Tsugi magazine) about a group called Exotica. He had reviewed their album in "Bouse of the month" when it was great. I thought it was disgusting. I liked the record and I thought it was free. This guy, apart from hanging out with rock stars or musicians he knows, does he really have the legitimacy to say that it is the "dung of the month". Imagine, you're an artist, you release an album, you spent €150,000 to do it and you end up in a magazine where you are "the of the month". F: Then it's so subjective. C: This is the principle of criticism, but I think it must be fair, unifying and prescriptive. If it does not meet one of these criteria, it is not necessary. F: And this can bury some albums or artists that deserve to be known. For example, we took the title Histoire d'un soir (Bye bye les galères) by Bibi Flash released in the 80s. It's a title that has made a huge mistake and has been destroyed by critics because we do not really know if it is first or second degree. I had talked about it with my mother who told me that it was too shameful to listen to this song when it is great, there is something quite enjoyable in this song. https://www.facebook.com/Je.Am.Empress/videos/limp%C3%A9ratrice-story-dun-evening/10157148188171562/
Isn't it related to the context of the 80s?
C: It's really these light pop songs, which tried to make people forget the Cold War and all these New Wave, Cold Wave bands. Musically, it was mega creepy what was happening in the 80s. There was a counter-generation of musicians like Bibi Flash, Heartache, etc. This whole new disco scene from the 80s was rejected because it gave lightness to this landscape when people didn't want that. They didn't want joyful catharsis. Today, these are pieces that are aging, that are part of a heritage and we have dug it up like ingots.
Your first album Matahari was released almost a year ago? Why did you choose this enigmatic character?
C: He is a character who has a very romantic side. And The Empress is that, it's just the affiliation with these romantic women. The Empress is the epic of feelings. And there is no more beautiful epic than through the history of great women. In the audacity of character, to free oneself from patriarchy at that time, to lie to everyone, to improvise spy, dancer, to fill the Olympia, to fool people, I found it quite fantastic to slip it under the hat of The Empress. Then it has a multifaceted side like our group. 
Why didn't you release this album earlier?
F: In a pure and simple way, it is very expensive to make an album. We are an indie band, we signed with Microqlima which is an independent label with few resources. From the moment we were at their house, we felt more apt to release an album. But even so, it's still a huge budget. It's also a question of expressing yourself differently because for an album, you have to have a lot of songs and something to tell. It's less conducive to experimentation than PEs. The album, we released it almost a year after the recording. You have to prepare everything: the release, the promotion, the schedule, etc. It's a huge puzzle. But it's also a great experience. We worked with a director, we expressed ourselves differently, we moved into the song format that we hadn't worked too much before with slower songs. It is a very interesting experiment but very costly in terms of time and money. People don't necessarily imagine it's that long. It has nothing to do with an EP, it's another approach. C: It's a financial, ethical and aesthetic risk because when you release an album, you crack something. You go up one floor and you will never again be in the freshness of below. The first album is symbolic, don't shit. Even in people's heads, you have an excitement, a discovery. F: Whereas paradoxically, if you don't make an album, the media doesn't really talk about you. You're still a starting band, even though you've done 10 EPs. C: It's French as a mentality. The big media is never going to kick their asses in a small room to see if there is movement, excitement around a small project when that's how it should be. Whereas that's what music is: anyone can put their track on the internet and try to mess with it. F: And the majors too. They push their foals to make albums directly because there is a lot of budget. C: There is not only one face and one recipe for music while the media tend to sanctify a one-sided voice. As a result, radios follow and revive a trend that is not necessarily the right one. The goal is just to reach a mass audience. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AOSNJj0WyPQ
It is said that your music is very pictorial, what is the reason for this?
C: It comes from a passion for cinema, soundtracks. Cinema arouses a lot of emotions. I'm thinking of the music of Ennio Morricone and Sergio Leone in Once Upon a Time in the West where he did a theme per character. I find it sublime to inhabit music in this way, when a great actor appears.
Would you like to collaborate on a film project?
Together: Oyou serious!
How do you build your clips?
C: In general, we pitch directors who re-pitch us behind. Depending on the scenario, we choose. What I want is for the director to have a very personal interpretation of the piece. Then he is left completely free to do what he wants. There must not be a diktat of the lyrics and the atmosphere of the song. F: The interest in the clip is to give another life to the song, another reading. 
You who like to make surprises, do you reserve us for 2019?
F: It's true that we like surprises, but here we are on the tour. The Olympia will be our next big surprise as well as the international tour from April. We'll be on tour again when we prepare the second album, our second baby. I think this album, we will compose it "in-between". C: We have a lot of stuff on the fire.
Interview by Louis Rayssac
