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Joined: March 04 2008
Location: Retirement Home
Status: Offline
Points: 3658
Topic: Outside Posted: December 20 2011 at 09:54
Strasbourg-based French Neo Prog band, formed in 1996 with Phillipe Rau on guitars, Didier Grillot on keyboards, Florian Poirier on vocals and Joël Goetz on bass with drummer Olivier Sapte joining a couple of years later. It was the same time when the band released their self-titled debut, followed by a contract with Mellow Records and the sophomore work of the band Freedom from 2002. The next year Grillot and Goetz left the band, followed shortly afterwards by singer Florian Poirier. They were replaced by Pascal Huck on bass and guitarist Julien Clerget, who also took over the vocal spot. The new Outside quartet recorded and released the band's latest effort The limit in 2011, this time on Musea Records.
I got in touch with them and Philippe answered my questions.
When and by whom was your band born
? Did any of you, past and present members, play in any other bands before
joining up in your band ? Why did you choose that name ?
I met Didier GRILLOT (keyboards) in 1994 and we
quickly began to work on the tracks we already had written on our own and on new
songs, then we were looking for the right musicians for this style and we found
Joe GOETZ (bass guitar). The first band's names were ARTOKINE then EXHIBITION
but we eventually changed for OUTSIDE in February 1996 after we found our first
singer, Florian POIRIER, because it was a shorter and easier name and we simply
found that it sounded good !! All the past and present members played in other
bands before joining OUTSIDE.
France has traditionally had a very strong
music scene. Your vocals are in English. Are you mostly inspired by the English
bands like Marillion and Genesis or are you most inspired by French bands like
Ange ? How would you describe you music ?
We are inspired by all kinds of music but not really
by French music ; my opinion is that the French lyrics does not fit very well to
the rock or the progressive music. Our music is the result of the mix of all our
influences : sometimes soft, sometimes more aggressive, with many changes, but
always very melodic with expressive vocals and guitar solos. We also try to be
ourselves and not to copy a band in particular...
How is life and the music scene in
France now ?
The rock music or the
classic rock are not really as traditional in France as they are in England or in Germany for example. There are many
bands with different styles in our country, most of the rock bands playing
alternative pop rock, but only a few of them plays progressive rock, so I don’t
think that we have what we could call a big French progressive scene.
Over to your three albums. Your
debut album was the Outside album from 1998. Please tell us more about this
album.
This is our “youth album”. It was
recorded by Jo Merizen (who is actually our sound engineer on stage) in his
private studio in late 1997. Olivier Sapte (drums) has just joined the band so
we recorded all the songs we were working on since 1994 for this debut album. We
released it during the French Arena tour in 1998 (we opened for their concerts
in Paris and in Strasbourg). The Outside album shows very well our first
influences like Marillion or Genesis. We keep on playing “Old actions” in our
current concerts.
The follow up album Freedom was
released in 2002. Please tell us more about this album.
We took a year to repeat the 7 songs
we had written for this album, before recording it in 2001 at Miguel Ruiz’s
private studio. The band was the same with Florian Poirier (vocals), Didier
Grillot (keyboards), Joe Goetz (bass guitar), Olivier Sapte (drums) and myself
on the guitars. The tracks were much longer, darker and sophisticated than in
our first record, Miguel did a great job in mixing them during many months
and Mellow Records released it in 2002.
Then you took a many years long
break. What were you up to during that break.
We didn’t really took a break, the
band always continued to write songs but we had to face the departure of Didier
Grillot (for professional reasons) who was one of the leaders of the band. Joe
Goetz left too some months after. It was a difficult period, with many auditions
to find the right musicians… We also wanted to change our sound with more
electric piano and Hammond organ and less electronic sounds. Eventually, we
found Pascal Huck (bass) and Fabrice Bechet (keyboards). We did a four tracks
demo in late 2005 but no one was really pleased with the result so Fabrice
decided to leave us. We continued then to work on new songs and to do concerts
as a four piece band without any keyboard.
You returned earlier this year with
the The Limit album. Please tell us more about this album.
When Florian Poirier left the band
in 2008 just before recording what could have been our third album, we quickly
met our new singer, Julien Clerget, who also plays acoustic guitar. He gave us a
lot of energy, we immediately found a new alchemy to perform live and to write
new songs, we rearranged those we were working on since “freedom” and began to
record this album in 2009. Michel Clauss co-produced it with us and did some
miracles to give us this big great sound. We also worked ourselves on the
artwork with the help of Bartosch Salmansky to finalize it ; an amazing
experience !!! We were very proud that MUSEA released it in February
2011.
What have you been up to since the
recording of that album and what is your plans for the immediate future
?
We carry on working on new tracks
and to do live shows with our new bassist, Matthieu Heise (Pascal Huck had to
left to concentrate himself on his own band, Ash of Sound). Olivier Schaal has
recently joined the band as a full time member on the keyboards. We
hope to have the opportunity to begin the recording sessions for the next album
in 2012… Wait and see…
To wrap up this interview, is there
anything you want to add to this interview ?
Thanks for asking your questions and for your interest
in the band !!
Thank you to Philippe for this interview
Their PA profile is here and their homepage is here
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