Today, we present you a young singer from the Opal Coast. Maxime Raux has always been passionate about music. When he was younger, he was already setting up these first groups. It is therefore quite natural that he created his own eponymous structure, four years ago. It is as an autodidact that he learns singing, guitar, and it is thanks to knowledge acquired during his studies that Maxime develops his musical project.He lives entirely from his passion and transmits it when he talks about it. So, let yourself be lulled by his warm and hoarse voice and by his worked texts imbued with a striking sincerity. Hello Maxime! Can you introduce yourself? My name is Maxime Raux. I am an author/composer/performer. I am 25 years old, I live in the Pas-de-Calais and I make pop in French, with a great importance that I bring to the texts. I've been fortunate to do this project for about four years. It's a project that is super interesting for me, because it allowed me to live very quickly, from my music. We do a lot of live, about 80 a year, all over France. It's a team project because we have the chance to work together and collaborate with a lot of people. It is a very beautiful story and it is above all a magnificent human adventure. Can you explain how you started music? Of course! So, I started music very young. Around the age of 10/11 and at that time, I was a real metal enthusiast. I happened to start by putting together a metal band with friends at the time, something very amateurish, really for fun. And then I set up a project a little more pop, which was called Happiness. I very quickly wanted to professionalize myself and make music in life, 100%. So I decided to found the Maxime Raux project 4 years ago. With Happiness , I had already done a lot of concerts, we had moved a lot too. I became passionate about music, even more than before, and I said to myself: This is exactly what I want to do in life, I don't want to do anything else. And I'm going to fight to be able to do that. You taught yourself singing, guitar, synth. Why did you decide to learn on your own and not by training in a school or taking classes? It's true that at first, I wanted to do all this as an autodidact because I had access to the internet and I found that it was really simpler. I didn't want to sign up for music classes at all. And it's quite funny as a reflection, because being self-taught was a real positive point at first. But now that it's my job, I'm going back to basics and I'm taking a little singing lessons, a little coaching so that I can continue to progress. Maybe erase some bad habits that I took by being self-taught, but at the same time, consolidate my journey. Training in music, instrument, voice, is always something essential. And I think it's very important to keep improving all the time. You started music early, but you also did studies, a bachelor's degree and a master's degree. You worked. What drove you to these studies? And what was the trigger, when you said to yourself: I'm putting together my project and I'm completely playing music! Initially, I wanted to study biology because I have always been passionate about nature, the environment and all these things. I thought it was really nice to be able to combine my passion with my studies and work in a branch that I liked. And then as I got my degree in biology, I started doing a lot of concerts. I said to myself: Today we know that an artist entrepreneur is always very good. Someone who will know how to manage his tool, have a small structure, all that, it's very important. And I said to myself: Following my bachelor's degree, I'm going to do a master's degree in management to try to learn a little bit of all this, learn to undertake. I continued to make music throughout this period. And then I worked for about a year in a communication agency. Every morning when I woke up, I said to myself: Well, that's good, I love my job. It's cool, but it's not really what I want to do. There was a reorganization within the company, which allowed me to leave. I made this choice to go to make music because I think it was the right time for me. And that's what allows me to really blossom the most. So I quit my job. I set up my structure in music. Then I continued to develop this structure and hire collaborators. 
Can you tell us a little more about your structure? Tell us what you plan to develop next with it? I have set up several structures, the most important is called MRG Music. This is the structure that essentially deals with the booking and development of the musical project. A structure for which, we are three employees, of this micro-label. It allows us today, to market our concert dates, to manage internally the management of payroll, employment contracts, sales contracts. And it is also MRG Music that applies for grants, to finance our clips, our achievements, because today, we really do everything ourselves. That is to say, most of our clips are homemade, in-house, some photos are also made in-house. We really manage everything, from A to Z and that's really what we wanted to develop. There are two other structures which are MRG Production and MRG Learning. They are rather on the part of music lessons and development of other artists. We work with a lot of other artists on opening acts. We open for other artists. We give ourselves the opportunity to be able to help each other a little. It's very interesting to share what we do, especially when we make music. You recorded your first EPs with it. And you also develop other artists? So, exactly! We have developed other artists for the moment. We work with them, we can very well apply for an EPK grant to Spedidam, to allow an artist from the Opal Coast to have a little teaser of his project. And then, we will do the recording of the voice-overs within the structure. That is what we can do. We can really accompany, make the first demos, record the first EPs, like the 1st label of the artists. Put their foot in the stirrup, help them to set up a legal structure too, on their side, if they want to develop their project. Support them in the structuring of this project. Can you tell us about your latest EP, Nuit Yes, absolutely. It's an EP that's very personal for me, because it's really about my life. It is very autobiographical. We composed it at the very end of 2019. We left with my whole team, so a sound engineer, one of my musicians, a graphic designer. In fact, we rented a villa in Belgium and we put our suitcases there, about ten days. We set up a studio and really recorded the whole EP there. We did all the basic recording, the arrangements, on site. That's what was very interesting, this team dynamic. And being able to be with friends, make music all day, it's really a luxury, it's something that's amazing. We had some great experiences and I think we feel them in the EP. Following this week in Belgium, we worked with other people like Alban Lico or Fabrice Ordioni on mixing and mastering. It is an EP that is composed of five tracks. It's quite eclectic because it's going to deal with both a lot of subjects and a lot of musical aesthetics. With a majority of pop titles exclusively in French, with great importance to the texts. It's an autobiographical EP because, for a track like Les soirées, it's going to talk about things I experienced during my adolescence or youth. But also more recent things, like my fatherhood and it's a song, Les Hommes, that I was able to compose during the pregnancy of my ex-partner. These are subjects that are for me, touching, very personal. Delivering this EP to the public was something interesting from a musical point of view, but also very enriching personally. You released a 1st EP, Brune. What has changed in your way of writing, how have you evolved musically between these two EPs? How did I evolve musically between these two EPs? I think that I have already tried to be more personal, in Nuit than in Brune. And I really wanted to leave a place forward to the texts. Try to work more on my songs and go back to composing them only with my guitar and then arrange them. And not to start with production. I wanted to leave a large part to the texts and it is also in this direction that I will go for the album I am writing. What are your influences in writing, in composition. What influences you? I love the work of Vianney or Julien Doré. And to be on artists a little less mainstream, I also really like the work of Antoine Elie or Nicolas Foé. These are artists I love. In terms of productions, I really appreciate the work of an artist like Eugénie, who I think is great. We are fortunate to have, in France, very good artists. There is an artistic diversity that is immense and it is really very inspiring. The current period is a bit complicated, how do you plan to defend your EPs? For the moment, we tried to defend them by doing a lot of live-streaming, which everyone is doing at the moment. But we tried to come up with something quite professional, with several cameras, several shots. A good networking and everything in 4K, so as to try to bring, anyway, a real live with a quality sound to our audience. And we are obviously in a hurry to defend them on stage. This summer, we already have about thirty dates booked. Hoping that they can be held, that's really what we hope for today. Otherwise, we tried to share this EP as widely as possible, via networks, via live-streams, via also, the work of our press officer and the work we do on a daily basis to disseminate the project as much as possible. And besides, it's also a little thanks to the media, who spend a moment with me, to listen to what I have to say. It's great, it makes me really happy. We managed to find a new model around all this, that is to say that we tried to keep the jobs of our intermittents, throughout the Covid period. So far, we have succeeded. But of course we are in a hurry for it to resume and for us to do our job properly. 
Do you think live-streaming could be something to keep, even after Covid? I think so, and for two reasons. The first is that what we have done to keep artistic jobs is to sell advertising space in live-streams, so that advertisers can buy an advertisement. And we, with the money we collected, we made fees. So that's something that could be done again in the future. And I have the impression that now, some concerts could take place live, but could also be broadcast in parallel, live-stream. With a ticket office or that sort of thing. It's a new perspective and it can be interesting to dig, develop and include live-stream in this model. Because, if we can, perhaps, do concerts at first with 1000 people instead of 5000, why not go get the remaining 4000 via a ticket office on the networks. And to sell the places in physics a little more expensive. We should try to find something about this and be able to continue to keep jobs in the sector, in the sector. Keep playing live, because it's still essential. I think everyone today is trying to find solutions, each in their own way and that's going to be important. So it will still have allowed, Covid, to think of other ways of disseminating music? Of course! And then, I also think it was a very creative period. I see a lot of artists who have released a lot of things, who have taken a lot of time to compose. Sometimes it's also good to go back only to the music and what you want to say. For you it was the case, it was a creative period? Yes, really! Because, precisely, I started writing a new album. I also did a lot of production. I also spent a lot of time on my guitar, working on the instrument, I was able to take a lot of music lessons. And beyond that, it was a period where we worked a lot, because we were lucky enough to be able to hire an apprenticeship contract in addition. There were good aids this year that allowed us to do that. So it allowed us, not to develop the company, because it is above all live that we manage to do this, but in any case to try not to stay doing nothing and move forward anyway. Do you have a word for the end? The last word, thank you very much! And then, if I made you want to listen to my music, it would be super nice if you went listening. Do not hesitate, to all the people who will read this article, to give me feedback, because I love spending time reading what people write to me, answering them, spending time with them. And if I had to address artists who also want to develop their project, to have confidence in themselves, not to hesitate to release as much music as possible. Thank you Maxime for your time. See you soon! You can find Maxime Raux on instagram: @maximeraux_ And his EP Nuit available on all platforms.
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