Holistic in its emotional quality and deep in vision, “Le temps du rêve” by French post rock / post metal maestros SYNOPSYS provides a way into cinematic instrumental music for many, and challenges the conversation about modern sonic experiments without compromising. The record is both smooth and powerful in a way that got us really interested in this troupe’s work. We sat down with them to ask about the details behind their process and understand what drives them to create.
“Synopsis [sinɔpsis] nm: A brief summary of the major points of a subject or written work or story, either as prose or as a table; an abridgment or condensation of a work.
Photo by Lionel Degiovanni / SYNOPSYS is Jean Michel Llorca, François Evrard, Vincent Taïani, Grégory Lonegro, and Julien Ollier.
Hey guys! Thanks for joining us here on IDIOTEQ. How are you? How’s Avignon?
Thanks for inviting us to be featured on IDIOTEQ ! Avignon is fine, summer is coming !
Sure, my pleasure!
Alright, so let’s dive into your newest work, a quality debut full length! Finally :) How content are you with this offering compared to your previous writing and recording endeavours?
Thank you ! We are very pleased to deliver this album. This album is our first full length, and we worked on it a very different way than our previous EP & DEMO. One of our first ideas was to create a musical piece on with others musicians can collaborate with us. You can hear some additional classical instruments in « Le temps du rêve » recorded at the same studio than drums, voices, bass and keyboards. The studio we decided to record in, is a other evolution of the band with this album. An analog vintage studio in south of France. We wanted a vibrant and organic sound. And as a third point, we can mention that we composed a full length film with the album. This film will be released probably in september but we already use it on stage. The previous video we made for stage was not directly « linked » with the music concepts. That was contemplative scènes. This time there is a real relation between music and pictures.
Were there some experiences with SYNPOSYS that would lead you towards the ideas displayed on ‘Le temps du rêve‘ ?
Probably the EP Timeless and our first demo was some kind of researches… But there is our own lives, people we meet, other artists we discuss with about art, because there are lots of artists around us and we like to share ideas and experience. We used to experiment for some others projects and it is very inspiring to think not only about music but about art more generally.
What are some of the criteria that make you feel satisfied with a sketch of a new track?
First of all : the kind of picture that comes to our mind when we listen or play a new track. Sometimes it comes with insignifiant and very small piece of music, sometimes with quite full composed tracks and after a long way, playing and working around what we searched to accomplish.
What does improvisation mean to you?
We are not using a lot of improvisation, as people use to think about improvisation i mean. But looking for a starting for a new piece of music could be near of improvisation. We could say that we have some solitary ways of improvisation, when we lets our hands go on an instrument and see what it come with the mood of the moment…
.Lyrics wise, is there a concept behind this album? Did you seek to achieve a thematic consistency?
Speaking about concrete things on a poetic way and lots of metaphoric sentences are our writing forms. Theses forms are natural for us so we did not search something different. Words are pictures for us, and words can be multiple pictures and we let the listener make his own journey through the text as through the music. But our idea on « Le temps du rêve » was to develop the texts the same way as we did for the music : like a cycle, a turnaround. A sort of universal journey, with no beginning and no end.
Le temps du rêve tends towards cinematic soundscapes and it seems like a perfect soundtrack to a visual experience. Have you ever collaborated with visual artists before?
In fact lots of our friends are visual artists, painters, conceptual artists. Some of them make films, documentaries, are exposed on art galleries… And we share a lot of ideas and experiences with them. Some are already asking us some existing tracks for soundtrack. One of them (Thomas Fabiani) have made our first film we used to screen on stage.
On an other way we have already collaborated with artist for « Le temps du rêve ». As you should know we will release an entire film witch will illustrate the full album. The film is already done and we asked our artists friends to collaborate. We always thought that Synopsys is more a project than a band. This is so interesting to mix people and see what can emerge from this blend.
What experimental and post rock artist do you think exemplify the current or next exciting move in the genre?
Post-rock is so abounding today. We could speak about lots of great and famous bands like Godspeed you ! But in fact we are really surprised by all the unknown bands we share stages with. Lot of them renew the style, musically or/and visually and its very refreshing.
Ok, so finally, what’re working on now and what is in the pipeline for the band?
Today we are looking for tour dates. This is the most important point for us at this step. And in an other hand, we are always composing new songs.
Great! Be sure to let us know as soon as you have more captivating new music to share around. Meanwhile, thanks so much for your thoughts. Feel free to share your final words and take care!
Thanks for featuring us on IDIOTEQ !
