Interview Mathias "Lena" Delplanque

La sua avventura comincia nel 1973 ad Ouagadougou (capitale del Burkina Faso). Giovanissimo studia organo e piano e si dileggia ascoltando disco, reaggae, zouk e rumba congolese, per squarciare successivamente i suoi orizzonti musicali con Stockhausen, Tom Waits, Art Of Noise, Public Enemy, Pierre Henry,... fino alla scoperta del digitale, dopo la quale comincerà a sperimentare dando vita a Bidlo, interessante progetto che venne pubblicato da Harmsonic, passato un po' in sordina, ma di cui avemmo la fortuna di accorgercene suo tempore. Lena nacque incespicando sui libri di Faulkner e su un personaggio -Lena Grove- di un suo libro (Light in August, testo avvincente caratterizzato dallo sfondo delle violenze e dei pregiudizi razziali degli Usa del periodo del KKK, in cui l'autore si diverte a sperimentare salti temporali, l'uso del dialetto, stream of consciusness e suspense in un'aura di parabola biblica) in particolare. In occasione della pubblicazione del suo secondo album Floating Roots, il cui passo è sostenuto da una chilldub molto ritmata e a cui hanno preso parte Black Sifichi e MC Tablloyd, abbiamo fatto una chiacchierata con Mathias. Lena "Floating Roots" (Quatermass - Audioglobe Distribuzione) Tracklist(en)ing 01.Wax Model 02.Under False Rulers 03.Storm Blowin' 04.Smoke Screen 05.Casquette Of Sound 06.Marabu 07.Wah Gwan? 08.Mountain Dub 09.Floating Roots 10.Mountain Dub (Daniel Meteo remix)

Hi Mat. Hi Vito.

How are you? Fine, thanks. I'm in Montreal at the moment for a 6 monthes residency. Getting seriously cold around here.

First of all, compliments for your album. Could u make a short brief about it? What kind of people are your preferred addressee? Thanks. I'm not adressing to anybody specificly. I'm adressing to people with ears. Wrong: I did a gig last year and a couple came to see me in the end, the guy saying: "my girlfriend really liked your set, she said she preferred it to the one before you". The girl was deaf. I don't know for who my album is done, but I know to who it is not AT ALL adressed. The guy coming in the middle of my set and saying: "huuu, can you speed the tempo a little bit ?".... And that other met at the bar later and saying: "mmm yes, it's interesting, but isn't it a little bit too..... eerr groovy ?"... So it's not done to people who want to hear something else that my music in my music....

Could ³floating roots² be considered your present for Christmas? For me ? No thank you, I already got it (arf arf).

You inherited your pseudo from a character of Faulkner¹s novel ³Light in August². Why? Didn't they tell you ? Lena Grove was my grandmother, and the baby she's waiting for in the novel is actually my father.

Have you ever read ³the sound and the fury² by the same author? If yes, what do you think 'bout it? One of my strongest literary experience. A global sensation of visions, sound, feelings and thoughts. I remember it starts with a extract of Hamlet: "I could be bounded within a nutshell, and still count myself a king of infinent space".

A propos of literary references, how did u get in touch with the king of black humour black sifichi-? What about your collaboration with him? I never met Black before we recorded that track. I knew his voice, and he played a couple of tracks from my first album on his radio show. We exchanged a few e-mails, then I sent him the instrumental. He recorded all the voices and I had just to put the vocal track on the top of my instrumental. It was a fantastic job, I really like that track. Now we became friends, we started to play live together, and his presence on stage is very important for me, cause he's used to improvisation, collaborations etc..... We're working on another common project at the moment. Kind of weird hip hop stuff.

In the past, we appreciated a lot your work as ³bidlo². Are you still working under this moniker? Wow, someone who knows the Bidlo album !!! How did you do, this album was really badly distributed, and the label crashed before the complete release ... ? Bidlo is my other musical character. For the moment he remains a little bit in the shadow of Lena, although it's my first solo project. A second album is coming. Actually I never stopped working on that project, it's just a little bit longer to produce, because my mind changes all the time. Actually, since 4 years, I wrote about 5 versions of that new album but I wasn't completely happy each time. Approaching... Bidlo and Lena explore two different ways of making music, even if the tools and the sounds are really similar. Lena explores the bewitching, repetitive, hypnotic and dramatic side of sound composition, while Bidlo is more into disruption, nervosity, cut up broken forms. For info, there are also pieces made under my own name Mathias Delplanque; two of them will soon be distributed on www.notype.com.

What are your masters in music? The musics I really like are enigmas that I can't resolve. James Stinson, Maurizio, Tom Waits, Curd Duca, Spectre... These are things that I listened to a lot and I still don't know how they are done and what's in the mind of the person who made them.

Your sound sounds clasped to the german dub-chilled engine. Among actual artists, what are your ³beloved²? I listened to a lot of "german dub" a couple of years ago. People regularly draw a parallel between their music (Pole, Meteo etc....) and mine, although I think there are quite big differences between both today. In the dub area, I'm now more looking for inspîration in the works of Scientist, The Congos etc... Wonderfull melody makers...

Who are the false rulers? And in a roundabout way, who are the true ones? This is MC Tablloyd's words, I'm not at all responsible of their meaning. I personaly consider that our rulers are the best we can have, the world is just fine like that, don't change anything, it's gonna be all right and there isn't any problem at all. My album was nearly called "My life with the ghost of Bush".