Part 1

Name: Ni
Members: Anthony Béard (guitar), Benoît Lecomte (bass), François Mignot guitar), Nicolas Bernollin (drums)
Nationality: French
Current release: Ni's Fol Naïs is out via Dur et Doux.
Recommendations: What comes to mind at this precise moment and after this interview would be:
In music: Captain Beefheart's Trout Mask Replica, which goes hand in hand with what we've been saying about transgression.
Painting: Carlo Zinelli in general.

If you enjoyed this ni interview and would like to keep up to date with the band and their music, visit their official homepage.They are also on Instagram, and Facebook.



When I listen to music, I see shapes, objects and colours. What happens in your body when you're listening? Do you listen with your eyes open or closed?

Ben: It depends on the style of music. Between contemporary music and big deathcore, I don't have the same listening behavior. It's usually in the body.

Anton’: For me, there are so many different ways of experiencing music. But when I'm touched by a track, I often close my eyes and let myself wander into something almost cinematic. Live, when I catch something that moves me, I can sometimes have tears of joy.

One thing's for sure, though, and that's that the music infuses my body and really gets under my skin!

What were your very first steps in music like and how would you rate the gains made through experience - can one train/learn being an artist?

Nico: François and Anto met in college and started playing together quite early ... I joined them in 2010, we started mini-touring in 2011, met the band Poil, signed to the Dur et Doux label and hit the road. The experience of playing live obviously gave us a better understanding of the way we play and our sound.

[Read our Poil interview]

Learning to be an artist? that's another question that deserves not to be mixed up with others, because it all depends on what you define as an artist.

Anton': I started playing music when I was very young, with my brother. We were rock fans and wanted to form a band. We had idols we wanted to be like. It was like an endless path for me. There's no such thing as an "artist's" own path in music, but I imagine that his identity is formed above all through the human and musical encounters he makes throughout his life.

Personally, I have the feeling that each path has its own particularities. But I imagine that what every artist has in common is a desire to express the indissoluble, a bit like a science of dreams ... I have the feeling that it's little by little, playing music to have fun with different people, that a person's creative potential develops.

That said, it's true that some people are more creative than others. I think we can put this partly down to the upbringing provided by the family environment, although some people become great artists without having had the good fortune to be born into a home that nurtured this creativity at an early age.

If there is a way to learn how to become an artist, I'd like to conclude by saying that it lies in the ability to be open to oneself and to others, and to remain curious under all circumstances.

According to scientific studies, we make our deepest and most incisive musical experiences between the ages of 13-16. What did music mean to you at that age and what’s changed since then?

Ni's music began with a lot of impertinence and insouciance, with a very humorous flavor, wanting to zap from one part to another in a fast, rather schizoid rhythm.

As we've gotten older and each of us has had different experiences, we've written songs that are a little different, albums that have a different feel ... When we were young, we were very cheeky and spontaneous, and the ground was virgin. As we get older, we think more about what we want to do, and a lot of things have come into being in the meantime ... So we continue to validate our music together in the rehearsal room, and that's representative of what we are today ...

At the age of 13, I was already playing with Ni's drummer (Nico) and the other guitarist (François). We were young teenagers who wanted to be the stars of the school. We were at the end of the 90s and what was playing on the radio was mainly the American rock of the time: RATM / NIRAVANA / OFFSPRING.

We were completely transcended by this energy, because back then foreign lyrics didn't matter to us. The few words we understood, often vulgar, gave us the impression we were listening to something rebellious, and our parents often scanned the lyrics of the bands we were listening to in total horror. I think that encouraged us even more haha.

I'd say that what's changed today is mainly the professional dimension of the thing. Because somehow I'm still the same over-excited kid when it comes to playing loud and making it sound good.

What, would you say, are the key ideas behind your approach to music and what motivates you to create?

A desire for madness, for infectious energy, for spreading a positive feeling of madness, and a desire to create music that people aren't used to listening to, and the motivation is to create the music you want to hear.

As far as I'm concerned, and I believe in the band in general, what motivates us is always the same thing: to experiment with new things. You never know what the next album is going to be like. We have desires, projections of what this new musical object could be, but we move forward like in a jungle: we clear things out little by little, sometimes we get lost, we go backwards.

Perhaps artistic creation is always a real adventure. A journey. With all the positives and negatives that come with venturing far from home. But also in the sense that the purpose of a trip in general is to explore something new. And not every member of the group will necessarily have the same sensations or desires.

On the other hand, when we all discover a place that unites us and grabs us by the gut, something quite magical happens, our energies increase tenfold and we become another entity ... we become "Ni".

To quote a question from the great Bruce Duffie: when you have a musical idea, did you create the idea or did you discover it?

The idea found us!

Sometimes we think we've had the idea that no one else has, but that only lasts for a few seconds. Whatever happens, we try to renew ourselves. I think it was Picasso who said, "Good artists copy, while great artists steal."

I personally believe that the process begins with discovery and ends with creation. Nothing is lost, everything is transformed ... that's the law of our earthly existence. What makes a musical idea original is the personal and emotional involvement of its performers ...

Paul Simon said “the way that I listen to my own records is not for the chords or the lyrics - my first impression is of the overall sound.” What's your own take on that and how would you define your personal sound?

I understand exactly what Paul Simon is saying!

Before going into the studio, you validate the compositions, and then you get stuck into the sound when you're recording in the studio for a long period of mixing and mastering. It's liberating to listen only to the sound of your music and no longer look for the details of playing, arrangements etc ...

Ni's aim is to sound powerful, precise and massive. If this is the case live, it's always more complicated to reproduce it in the studio, which requires considerable resources. Fortunately, as time goes by and thanks to the support of Dur et Doux, our productions can get closer and closer to the unique energy of live performance.

Fol Naïs is our best production to date, and remains very faithful to our live sound. Because yes, our aim is also authenticity, at a time when most bands don't even use amps anymore.