Michaux's new album, Vitalisme explores common themes within the human experience
Is your passport up-to-date? If it’s not, now might be the right time to submit your application to ensure it’s valid. Because you’re going on a bit of an international trip: from Brussels to Denmark and right here back to the good old United States of America. You’re taking a little bit of an excursion and you’ve got the best excuse to do so: good music.
Nicolas Michaux has been listening to plenty of great music over the course of his lifetime and now - on this third full length album - he’s putting those influences together and mixing them with his own voice. And depending on his mood, his voice may be singing in either English or in his native tongue, Francais.
His latest record is titled, Vitalisme (which he helps me to pronounce) and it’s focused on his current worldview that - even though it was recorded on a small island off of Denmark called Samsø - it still reflects the anxieties and fears that we we face together, not as citizens of a specific country, but as denizens of this planet we call Earth.
So, it’s time to start wrapping up your time in the departure lounge because the announcement has been made to begin boarding. But - as with any trip abroad - prepare yourself to be surprised not at our differences, but by our collective similarities.
ezt: Nicolas, congratulations on your third album. I guess the big question here is, how does this newest record compare with some of your previous work before this?
Nicolas Michaux: I would say it's the continuation of what I did in the past, same process and same themes, same way to make music. I work a lot with many musicians because I'm also a music producer for other artists, but my solo project is more my little garden that I try to tend the best that I can, and, yes, so it's my own little bubble. I recorded most of it here in this place, in my little wooden house in Denmark, and then I brought some guys, some of my friends to record the drums and some guitars. It's a work of craft, yes.
ezt: Are you on-- is it called Samsø? How do you pronounce that? Is that where you are now?
nm: Yes, I'm on Samsø.
ezt: Samsø?
nm: Samsø, yes. It's a small island in Denmark. If you look at a map of Denmark, it's right in the middle of Denmark. It's between Copenhagen and Aarhus, and it's a small island. I live here because I have two daughters living here and so, half of the time, I'm here, and half of the time, I'm in Brussels. In Brussels, I run a studio, a recording studio called The Free House where I work a lot. I found that this combination of being alone on the island and working on my stuff and then going to the big city and work with other musicians is pretty beneficial for me.
ezt: Well, it's beautiful. I was going to say "Samsung." Samsø. [laughs]
nm: Samsø, yes, because the "O" with the bar, it means "an island" in Danish. "Ø" means "an island," so every island in Denmark is always finished by "ø."
ezt: I Googled it and looked it up, it's a very beautiful spot. I hope to visit there one of these days. That would be a fun trip.
nm: Yes, feel free.
ezt: Talk a little bit about the island because it is a little remote, as you hinted at, but what's it like recording a record there, hooking up with musicians? It's not a typical metropolitan area. You said you recorded it at home mostly there and you had friends come visit or is it people that you know there? How does that work? Because it's not a typical place to put a record together, right?
nm: No, definitely. No. For this record on Samsø, on the island, I worked alone writing the songs and producing them, the core of them. Then I went back to Brussels and worked with my friends and put drums over what I had done and some of the guitars with a great musician from Congo called Rodriguez Vangama. I mostly worked alone here on the island for this record.
For my previous record called Amour Colère, I had brought the guys here and we had spent, I think, 10 days, and we had worked here on Samsø. This time, it was easier for me to just work alone and then bring the tapes, bring the hard drive to Brussels.
ezt: You seem to have a lot of influences. As a producer, as a musician, you like a lot of music. What are some things that were very important to you growing up or the things that you're really listening to now? It could be older stuff or maybe some newer stuff, but what can people expect to hear in your influences when they listen to your music?
nm: I guess there are two main roots to my music. I would say there is the European and French tradition. From my childhood, I know the big songwriters from the French chanson like Jacques Brel from Belgium, Gabriel Fauré from France, Barbara, Georges Brassens, and many others, and so it's really the core of my writing. I would say the words I write are, I guess, influenced by that tradition.
On the other side, the other route is definitely the history of rock and roll, I would say, and mainly American music. Even though I really like British rock from the '60s, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and everything, but I'm a big fan of the great songwriters of America. I think, yes, I studied their work. I would say Lou Reed, Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan, of course, and all those guys, I'm very influenced by them.
Yes, I think it's a meeting point and I think my music-- I sing partly in French, partly in English, so it's a meeting point of these two traditions with a bit of-- also, in the mix, you could add a bit of African music because I'm a big enthusiast of Ghanaian high-life music and that kind of stuff. Yes, it's melting-pot music.
ezt: Very cool. Of course, Serge Gainsbourg came to mind when I was listening-
nm: Of course.
ezt: -with that blend of chanson but a little funky and, of course, there's spoken words in French and stuff, so that's really enjoyable.
nm: He was the master, yes.
ezt: Yes, he was the master. He knew what he was doing, right?
nm: Yes, definitely. Definitely, he's very influential on many artists and me included, of course.
ezt: The album sounds great. I haven't heard it on vinyl yet, but I did listen to it digitally and it sounds really great. You've got some really thick, strong bass happening, but it's not overwhelming. It's just you've got a great sound. Can you talk a little bit about maybe working in your studio, in your home studio or just how you got the sound, how you approached it sonically from a producer's point of view rather than a songwriter?
nm: Yes. I work on a daily basis with the sounds I like. I'm a pretty minimalist guy. I like to have limitations and barriers because then you evolve in frame. It helps me because, otherwise, I can go left and right and lose myself a little bit. For this album, yes, I decided to keep it traditional and to base things on mainly very dry drums, to go back to Serge Gainsbourg, also this very dry sound and old-time '70's bass lines.
The Wurlitzer played also a big part in my production. I bought the Wurlitzer I think now five years or six years ago, and I use it on all my productions, actually, because it fits this little place in the low-mid that I really like, and it's always very welcome. Yes, I try to keep it simple.
Sonically, my favorite albums are the Beatles post-break-up, the first solo albums by McCartney and by Lennon. I go for that or that kind of-- Even if we talk about Bob Dylan, I really like the minimalistic John Wesley Harding and that kind of stuff. I always try to keep it simple so the song and the voice have space to express themselves.
ezt: What are some of the things that you produce? What are some of the other artists or acts that you produce? Have you brought any of those tricks, things that you've learned along the way and infused them in your record? I would imagine the answer is yes, but I wonder if there's any specific examples that you might be able to cite?
nm: Yes, definitely. It's an ongoing learning process, and working on my solo stuff, working for others, for me, it's all the same. I'm 100% committed and I'm always learning about sound, about music, about artistic expression in general. Yes, definitely, I feel very lucky because the last years, I was able to work with really great artists. I produced two albums for Turner Cody, who is a great songwriter from America.
Recently, I was in New Orleans, actually, to produce an album for Irma Thomas, the great soul singer. A gospel album that I produced with an American co-producer. Yes, I'm always learning, of course. It's also very interesting for me to wear different hats and to be in different shoes because then it helped me to have a bit more distance to my solo work, working with others, to see where they were struggling and where I was struggling as well, and trying to help them helped me along the way as well.
ezt: What kind of a producer do you think you are? Maybe your artists would have a different description of you and your production, but what kind of a producer are you, hands-off or hands-on? What do you think? If you had to define your production style, what do you think it would be?
nm: I think I need trust from the artist because I need space to express myself, and I need to be on the driver's seat in some kind of way. That helps me a lot to be able to influence the record the way I want. I try to keep it simple, and I always try to focus on the important things. For me, the content and the mood, and, yes, it's always more important than technical aspects or the perfection of the performance or whatever.
I'm trying to search for some truth. Whether it is for my music or for the music of others, I want it to sound lifelike. I want it to sound real. Yes, so I try to do things pretty quickly and to not overthink and not get lost in too many technical or sonically -- Yes, I try to go straight to the point, actually.
ezt: The track Watching the Cars has a very distinct new-wave vibe. It seems to channel there's this feeling, this tension of dystopia. What was the initial spark for that song? It's also got-- if people are learning about it, they should check out the video online, on YouTube or on your website. It's a very cool video and it matches the song very well. I wonder if you could just talk about that particular song and the creation of the video to match it.
nm: Yes. It's one of those songs that really came to me. I didn't calculate anything, it's just something I started finding the verses first, had those words. I didn't really know what they were meaning in some way, but they were there, and they were sounding good, and they were very appealing to me.
Yes, I just carried on working on it, refining it. It's a kind of paranoia trip, someone who is in a cell or in a motel room and he's locked somewhere by someone else, and it's a bad trip in some way. All the verses were about that. Then I made a stop because I could not really find a chorus. For a few months, I just had the verses, and that's how it was.
Then, at some point, I just found this chorus because, I don't know, again, it really came to me. It was more sometimes I can jam with myself here. I just put the rhythm, and I overdub myself again and again. This chorus with the layers of vocals, I just did that in maybe half an hour or something, and then it was that. It was there. A couple of days later, I listened back, and I thought, "Wow, this is pretty strong, actually. The verses and the chorus, it just fits together perfectly, and it weaves a story, but still a bit mysterious," and so, yes, I thought I would go for that.
Regarding the video, I asked a friend of mine that I collaborate on a regular basis and he lives in Brussels. I think he came up with this great idea that we would use a robot, so the camera was put on a mechanized robot arm. I don't know how to call it, really, like a motion control. The character, me, is really driven by the moves of the robot, and it echoes, in a nice way, the lyrics of the song.
ezt: Yes, it's a cool video. It's not often that you see videos that have a unique look like that. You've seen everything, right? I remember growing up in the '90s and '80s and seeing a Michael Jackson video and being like, "Whoa, that's-- we never saw that before," but now we've seen everything. There's something new to the look of that video that's really cool.
nm: Yes, thank you. I'm glad you appreciate it.
ezt: [chuckles] You're very welcome. The album's title is-- well, you're going to correct me because I'm going to mispronounce it, Vitalisme?
nm: We would say Vitalisme.
ezt: Vitalisme? Okay.
nm: Yes, Vitalisme. I think, in English, it would be "vitalism" or something like that.
ezt: Vitalism?
nm: Yes, vitalism. Yes, that's what it means.
ezt: It's this idea of the organic versus the inorganic and the struggle between those two things, just vitalism. How did you come up with this idea? Where did you get this idea of that philosophical thought, and how does it relate to the songs on the album?
nm: Yes, very good question. The thing is that, again, it brings us back to the idea that I try to make lifelike music. I try to talk about real things in the lyrics and I try to capture moments of life in the production. Yes, there was that aspect. The other aspect is that this album is not so much conceptual in a way that the themes are very broad. I talk about many different things. About love, about illness, about healing, about political issues, and everything.
It was a little bit all over the place, like life is in some way, and that's why I thought that title would fit.
ezt: I see. Of course, there are songs in French and there are songs in English. How do you approach those different languages differently as they relate to different songs on the album? Do you see them as complimentary or it's almost like choosing a certain instrument? Like you're going to play guitar here, but which guitar will you choose? You're going to share some lyrics, but which language will you use to share those lyrics? How do you decide what gets to be French and what gets to be English?
nm: I think I really see more and more languages like tools, and I don't speak a lot of languages. I speak French because it's my native language. I speak a bit of English and I read in English, and so these are the tools that I have and that I can use. The French allows me to do things that I would not be able to do in English and vice versa. That's as simple as that, and so I'm very lucky to be able to use both tools to express myself. It's as simple as that.
I also think that I'm truthful to what I am because I live in French and I live in English because I live here in Denmark, I don't speak Danish. For me, it's logical to what I am and also, I think many people in Europe are in this situation where we have our own language -- Spanish, French, Italian, whatever, and now we have this world language, which is English. I think it will only be a half of me if I was singing only in French and it would be only a half of me if I was singing only in English.
ezt: Is there a specific track on the album that you feel especially connected to either because of its emotional weight or maybe just the way that it came together during the recording process? Is there something that really stands out to you from this record?
nm: I would say maybe "Peace of Mind" is a special song because it's really the mix of French poetry, Gainsbourg style, and the new-wave vibe that I like, and so maybe it could sum up the whole thing and maybe sum up my whole project in one song. It's also a song that talks about my life, and so it's a very honest and very direct song. Yes, if there was only one on the album that would have to sum up the whole thing, I would say "Peace of Mind" is a good one
ezt: It's hard to choose a favorite.
nm: [chuckles] Yes, of course. They are all my babies. Some parts of the record came to me very quickly, and sometimes it's a very quick process, but, on the other hand, I also take my time to think and to choose the songs and everything. Many songs never appear on records because I don't think they are good enough. Once they are on the records, I must say that, yes, I like them all, of course.
ezt: Of course, this is going to have a vinyl release or it does already.
nm: Yes.
ezt: Were you particularly involved in the special mastering for the vinyl, or have you heard it? How do you feel that the vinyl component turned out for the album?
nm: Yes, definitely. I put a lot of attention into sound in general, so I mix my album myself, and then I work with always the same guy called Remy Lebbos in Brussels. He mastered for the digital version but also for the vinyl version, two different masters. Yes, of course, I listen to everything he does, and we do back and forth and stuff like that. For me, the best way to discover what I do is just to get the vinyl and to listen to the vinyl, definitely, first because of the sound, and second, also because of the scenario of the record, to listen from top to bottom. Yes, if I have to listen to it that's how I would do it.
ezt: Do you have some good record stores on Samsø, or you have to go to the mainland to buy your records, or you have to order them from Amazon? [laughs]
nm: No, no. I mainly go in record stores in Brussels. Brussels has very nice record stores, and so that's where I go. It's also, when you travel, it's always a nice goal for a walk or something just to find the record stores around, and so when I tour, when I play concerts, I like to find the record stores of the town and buy one or two LPs.
ezt: Did you grow up with records? Was that a way that you consumed music? Or because I think you're a little younger than me, I think that probably CDs were probably around a lot as you were growing up, but I wonder if there was a record collection in your life as you were growing up?
nm: Yes, there was one. My dad had a record collection but not a huge one, and, at some point, the turntable didn't function anymore, and he didn't mend it. Yes, my teenage years were more around CDs definitely, but as soon as there was this LP revival, I got into it a lot. Myself, I have a pretty good vinyl collection but not as big as yours, I can see. [laughs]
ezt: I know. I'm cheating over here. I'm a ringer, I know. Your latest album is personal but also collective in its themes. There are themes that are obviously individual to you and things that everybody can relate to. What do you hope people get out of this record if they're listening? And when they walk away from this, whether they're listening in French or in English, what sort of feelings or themes do you hope that they grasp when they're done listening?
nm: I hope this record can bring a bit of refreshment maybe. I would say that what I try to do with my concerts or with my albums is to show that another way is possible, maybe that another world is possible. That you always have a possibility out there, that the light is there. My music and my lyrics, they talk about real things, and I don't avoid talking about hardships and difficult subjects, but I also make a point to always keep light at the horizon.
I would say, yes, let's keep hope alive and let's not forget that another world is possible. I think the record is about that.
ezt: The record just came out, but what things are you doing to work on it? Will you be doing a touring play? If people are interested in this, what can they look out for to see you around doing things with this new record?
nm: I'm just out of two big, released gigs, one in Brussels and one in Paris, and it went really great. It was great to celebrate this release with the audience, and the audience is growing, so that was great. For next year, now we are, yes, booking shows for next year mainly in Belgium and France, but who knows, maybe I'll play in Canada as well.
Other than that, I think I'll just keep up. We have the studio in Brussels called The Free House, and I want to work more and more in the studio producing for other artists and keep up. I want to keep up. Yes, I'll just keep up making music and, I don't know. These days, also, you never really know what can happen, and so I try not to overthink it. I think people like you and music lovers, they will know about it at some point because it's there. I'm making more and more music and, yes, so I trust the process and I trust the fact that music lovers will discover what I do.
ezt: Very good. Nicholas, merci for your time today.
nm: Merci beaucoup.
ezt: Thanks for a great record and can't wait to hear it on vinyl and really crank it up because it's a fun record to listen to from beginning to end. I think it's a great piece, you have a little bit of everything in there. Thanks so much for your time today to talk to me about it, and best of luck with it.
nm: Thank you so much.
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