Name: Robbing Millions
Members: Lucien Fraipont, Raphaël Desmarets, Anatole Damien, Geronimo de Halleux, Elias Devoldere
Interviewee: Lucien Fraipont
Nationality: Belgian
Current release: Robbing Millions's Rêve Party is out now.
Recommendations: Ben Varian is a multi-instrumentalist / songwriter who deserves bigger recognition.
I’ve been listening to the band Water From Your Eyes very recently.
One Year In The Life of Crime is an incredibly raw and heart-breaking documentary that has been haunting me ever since I watched it a few years ago.

If you enjoyed this Robbing Millions interview and would like to stay up to date with the band and their music, visit their official website. They are also on Instagram, Facebook, twitter, and Soundcloud.



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?

I listen to music in various circumstances. A lot of the time while doing something else that require my eyes to be open not to hurt myself. I never fall asleep while listening to music, it excites my brain too much.

I like closing my eyes while playing, especially when I sing. It helps me focus, immerse myself deeply in the music and prevent me from stressing, if too many familiar faces are in the room.

What were your very first steps in music like - and how do you rate gains made through experience versus the naiveté of those first steps?

I can’t really remember the very first steps. I think the first record I enjoyed listening to and wanted to listen to again and again was a record by the French vocal choir band Pow Pow.



My father is a filmmaker but has been playing guitar since a teenager. He had a bunch of nice guitars at home so I guess it was just a matter of time for me before I started noodling. My parents subscribed me to classical guitar classes. I had a very nice teacher who was teaching us a lot of South American composers’ easy tunes.  I remember recording little jams with a nylon guitar, a mini realistic synth that had drums sounds and djembe on cassette, overdubbing through my bedroom’s stereo pretty early on.

Much later I studied jazz at Brussels Conservatory. I’m still have nightmares of the exams and the sitting jury. I sometimes think the experience moulded my intentions, I feel the need to constantly prove some musical technicality. It made me become a bit more self-aware, which doesn’t help with my inhibition. But for the most part, it was an inspiring experience, and it strengthened my bond with music

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

This is pretty much the period when I had my first band, a rock trio for which I was composing and recording tracks on a digital 16-tracks Boss digital recorder and bringing it to the other band members so that we could adapt it in the rehearsal room. Which is roughly the same method I’m still using for Robbing Millions (except for the digital hardware recorder).

Those years were so important and shaped my musical vision in so many ways: creating songs from scratch, bringing them to my bandmates, figuring out lyrics together and performing them before an audience - that was so formative.

Over the course of your development, what have been your most important instruments and tools and how have they shaped your perspective on music?

Nothing crazy. My Fender Telecaster and Gibson ES 337 are the objects I probably spent the more time with my whole life.

The discovery of garage band around the end of my conservatory years and the Juno Alpha 1 synth I got around that time shaped my musical creations a lot in the years that followed.

I’m a  big supporter of the idea that you can do a lot with very little.

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

I think I’m craving strong melodies over certain specific harmonic changes that either have to satisfy something emotional or surprise me while making it sound effortless and fluid. I like allying epic, cinematic musical moments with sounds (or lyrics) that’ll will make you smile.

I’m really instinctive when it comes to composing and recording music. I usually have no idea what I’m going to come up with beforehand and I have to think about it when people ask me about it afterwards.

Listening to a song I did the day after, having completely forgotten what I had recorded the day before is the best feeling. I’m addicted to that.

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 agree about the first impression, the overall sound creates the mood and that’s what sticks around. I then associate a song to a sort of image that becomes indestructible, printed strongly in my mind.

But melodies and chords are very often what makes me love a song so much, that I must listen to it on repeat.

Sound, song, and rhythm are all around us, from animal noises to the waves of the ocean. What, if any, are some of the most moving experiences you've had with these non-human-made sounds? In how far would you describe them as “musical”?

I love incorporating non-human or more generally musical sounds (all sound is musical but you know what I mean) into songs because it tickles the imagination, helps connecting the music to life and reminds us of film music.

The last moving experience I had with a non-human sound was when I was watching the intro scene of “Benny’s Video”, a movie by Michael Haneke, in which you hear a pig screaming before getting killed. It’s a terrifying sound.



From very deep/high/loud/quiet sounds to very long/short/simple/complex compositions - are there extremes in music you feel drawn to and what response do they elicit?

I would love to make an album made of miniatures and extremely long tracks mixed together.

The extremes in Robbing Milllions stand more in the alloy of sometimes very tricky rhythms and immediate, easy to whistle melodies.

From symphonies and traditional verse/chorus-songs to linear techno tracks and free jazz, there are myriads ways to structure a piece of music. Which approaches work best for you – and why?

I often lean towards an intro-verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge-chorus structure when it comes to my poppier songs.

When writing / recording less pop, more abstract things (which have been mostly tracks sleeping on my hard drive until now), the structures tend to be more complex, although I like repeating parts when they feel good or are worth being heard more than once during the occurrence of the song.

Could you describe your creative process on the basis of one of your pieces, live performances or albums that's particularly dear to you, please?

I don’t like to restrict my creative process which is the reason why I’ve been releasing albums that are fairly long so far. To kind of give a fuller scope.

The diversity of tracks on both last records Holidays Inside and Rêve Party is a good look into my creative process I think.

Sometimes, science and art converge in unexpected ways. Do you conduct “experiments” or make use of scientific insights when you're making music?

Harmony is all math and I touched that a bit when studying Messiaen modes briefly, as well as Coltrane changes, for example. But I also like to let my fingers move on the fretboard and let my ears lead where things are taking me.



The whole recording aspect is very much engineering, but I usually learn just enough to be able to record myself and to not get stuck.

How does the way you make music reflect the way you live your life? Can we learn lessons about life by understanding music on a deeper level?

Choosing music as my main occupation definitely shaped my life in many ways.

Emotionally and economically it’s clearly not the steadiest path, I have to say. I think that listening to a lot of music sharpens your sensibility and curiosity towards the world in so many ways.

Do you feel as though writing or performing a piece of music is inherently different from something like making a great cup of coffee? What do you express through music that you couldn't or wouldn't in more 'mundane' tasks?

I’m far from a chef in the kitchen, although I can manage some pretty decent dishes. But musicmaking would be more like making a luxurious Chinese fondue (which I never cooked) for me. Strong ingredients, a good amount of different flavours but not crossing the thin line of making it too heavy. You want it to surprise your senses, but not to overwhelm them. The lesser ingredients, the stronger they must be.

There are definitely parts of musicmaking where I can let my more extroverted side shine, while in normal life, I’m pretty introverted. I like the idea of people being surprised to hear music coming from me they wouldn’t have expected.

Every time I listen to "Albedo 0.39" by Vangelis, I choke up. But the lyrics are made up of nothing but numbers and values. Do you, too, have a song or piece of music that affects you in a way that you can't explain?

No real physical side effect I can’t think of, although some songs make me want to re-live some fantatstic moments again and again.

“Bonny” by Prefab Sprout, for example makes me want to ride my bike in the city at sundown with held tears in my eyes, emo/post-breakup style.



If you could make a wish for the future – what are developments in music you would like to see and hear?

I guess that if some kind of law could force streaming platforms to pay artists in a better way they do now, it would be a good start.