La Colonie de Vacances - Quadraphonic holidays

Active on the French rock circuit for over ten years, the ensemble La Colonie de Vacances has earned the praise of critics and fans alike thanks to its "quadraphonic sound system, which places the audience at the centre of a concert performed by four bands simultaneously". Featuring six guitars, five voices, four drum kits, four synthesizers and two basses, La Colonie de Vacances debuted with the nine tracks of “ECHT”, a stimulating sonic exercise straddling math-rock, polyrhythmic layering and noise-rock fibrillations. To find out more, we put a few questions to Eric Pasquereau, one of the guitarists and singers of the French ensemble.

How did you come up with the idea of merging four bands into one?

It was a very slow process. Papier Tigre, Marvin, Electric Electric & Pneu started playing around 2003-2007, and around that time they also began touring France and Europe. We met along the way and at numerous shows. We became friends right away, sharing music and talking about life. In September 2010, we organised a nine-day tour around France and called it "La Colonie de Vacances": all four bands played every night, separately. It was an exhilarating experience for all of us, and we've kept many fond memories of sold-out venues and the connection with the audience. During an arts festival in Tours, our bands were offered the chance to play one song each, one after another, with four stages and the audience in the middle. From that moment on, the idea of a 360° show with a quadraphonic amplification system took shape in our minds, and so we started touring with it, refining the set year after year, until 2019, when both Emilie of Marvin and Vincent of Electric Electric decided to leave the project. La Colonie de Vacances thus became a full-fledged band in its own right, with Julien, Rachel and Nicolas joining us, while all the other members of the four bands were let go, going on to form four new line-ups ready to play live in 2022.

Do you share common musical influences and passions?

Our passions include almost every kind of sonic experience, food, natural wines, talking about 90s metal bands, the comedy duo Tim & Eric, cinema, literature, and probably still more music.

Why did you choose to call yourselves La Colonie de Vacances?

As with many decisions made within this ensemble, no one really chose it. I honestly can't remember how or why La Colonie de Vacances became the ensemble's name. What's certain is that it was the name of a tour we did in 2010, and then, for reasons unknown to me, that name stuck with us and no one ever tried to change it. And it's perfect.

You've been active since 2010, but you only released your debut album this year. Why did it take so long?

For a long time, we were just a live show, mostly built on songs from the four bands mentioned above; then we started writing unreleased material specifically to play at our shows, and we kept refining our set until 2019, the year our lineup changed. At that point, we wrote a whole new show with original songs, so it seemed more sensible to try making a record, so people could listen to our music on their phones.

What does the album title, "ECHT", mean?

"Echt" means "true", "authentic" in German. It seemed nice and sounded genuine.

While doing some research on you, I came across this album: https://store.kythibong.org/album/la-colonie-de-vacances. What is it?

Over the years, we've released a few things: what you're asking about is a 10" with a book illustrated by artists Marion Jdanoff, Double Bob, Quentin Faucompré and Geoffroy Pithon. Then we made a live recording with Greg Saunier of Deerhoof: it was a 60-minute song written by Saunier himself. Things that made sense at the time but weren't entirely tied to the live set we were playing. It's a bit hard to turn down genuinely interesting collaborations. Spontaneous, instinctive things are a good way to make this ensemble work.

Before arriving at your debut album, you made a name for yourselves mostly through your "quadraphonic show". What kind of wonders, in your view, does quadraphony hide? In the live dimension, I think there's also a sort of telepathic experience among you...

I have to think it is, given I've been on a stage for all this time. But when we put together the experiences of several people, they seem to mostly hint at the sonic vortex, at endless possibilities (polyrhythm, dynamics, orchestration...), at not being told where to look and what to hear... At our shows, the audience is at the center because it's the main focal point: that's where the action actually is. All of us just focus on playing and fully enjoying the moment.

When you started out, did you already know what kind of music you wanted to play? All things considered, your roots lie in math-rock, although, as you can hear on "ECHT", minimalism also seems to be one of your guiding stars...

Our roots are in rock music, and our first repertoire was a mix of all the songs from the four different bands we come from. From 2019 onwards, everyone has changed and nurtured their own tastes and musical practices, so we're influenced by lots of things: contemporary and traditional music, electronic music, but we play rock instruments (electric guitars, basses, synths, drums, vocals...), which narrows our possibilities quite a bit. It's hard to talk about minimalism, since we're a twelve-piece band, but yes: some tracks are definitely minimalist, maybe just a bit too minimalist.

In a track like "L'amour universel" I hear echoes of Glenn Branca's Totalism. Is that just my impression, or is it one of your "hidden" influences?

I don't think it's a hidden influence. Glenn Branca wrote a lot of pieces with numerous electric guitars, and we grew up with Sonic Youth, so I'm not really surprised you mention him. I couldn't say whether Branca had an influence on that specific song. It was Eric (Bentz, ed.) who wrote it.

I found it very effective to close the album with such a distinctive track as "Fernweh", which in my review I described as "a lunar, polyrhythmic blend of post-punk-inflected singer-songwriter craft and dark melancholy". Where did the inspiration for this track come from?

"Fernweh" was mostly written by Rachel (Langlais, ed.): I handled the vocal line and the lyrics instead. The drum parts are written so that they bounce off each other across the four stages, and the same goes for the synth melodies, the guitars and the basses. It took a while to get everything working properly. But it's really a great way to close the album, in a way that's both reassuring and unsettling. I think the song was a bit softer at first, but then the band added some rough edges to it, which is where that post-punk atmosphere you mention came from.

Is there a common thread running through the lyrics of "ECHT"?

The common thread running through "Echt" is mainly a collage of different languages, real-life stories and haiku. A lot is left to wander here and there, not much is guaranteed in terms of context, there's a lot of anxiety, alienation and a sense of the absurd. It's a bit hard to know where to place yourself these days, so many things are off-kilter, so the lyrics try to engage with this instability, slinking around like extracts and fragments of situations rather than proper stories.

How do your songs come about? 

There are six people who write regularly for the band, then the music gets adapted to a live set up. So a lot of things can change or stay the same from the original demo to the final album version, depending on how good/efficient the writing is to begin with. Everyone does their share of work for the band, depending on time and ability, and there's a lot to do: recording, taking care of videos, cooking, drinking, running around and trying to get paid for all of it.

How long will we have to wait to hear a new album from you?

We're recording a new single with two new tracks for early 2023. I have no idea if or when a new album will happen. But I'd love to come play in Italy with La Colonie de Vacances!

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