Part 1
Names: Seb Brun, Simon Henocq
Nationality: French
Occupations: Drummer, composer, improviser (Seb Brun), Sound artist, performer (Simon Henocq)
Current release: Seb Brun and Simon Henocq team up for their collaborative album Vallées, out via Carton.
If you enjoyed this Seb Brun & Simon Henocq interview and would like to know more about their work and music, visit their respective homepages: Seb Brun; Simon Henocq.
Most collaborations start with the simple wish by two or more musicians to play with each other. What was the initial spark to extract yourself from Parquet for a while to perform as a duo?
SB: Simon and I have been sharing our know-how for several years. He joined Parquet after the recording, and that’s really when we started working together on the album’s post-production.
At first, we had asked for help from a few people whose work we admired, but their feedback didn’t align with what we were looking for. That’s when we realized that we ourselves had a very clear artistic direction and the skills to pursue it.
From there, we developed a shared language and devised specific signal processing and routing techniques … I think I was even dreaming about them at night. These techniques now feed into our respective solo projects, our duo work, and Parquet.
Simon was working on his solo project, and if I remember correctly, I asked him if I could come and “make a bit of noise” with him. When we listened back to the recordings, it was obvious: we had to make something out of it.
SH: Lately, I’ve personally been gravitating toward more intimate collaborations. They allow for a closeness and complicity in the work that feels right for me at the moment.
With Seb, we’ve been collaborating for quite some time, especially since working together on Parquet’s album. We share practices, knowledge, and desires. We’ve had countless discussions about sound, music production, collective organization, labels … We often work around the same questions or techniques—like feedback for instance.
When the idea came up to exchange around the specific issues at stake in my solo guitar project, we felt it was worth taking the time to sit down in the studio with our instruments, almost like continuing the conversation through music.
The music came naturally. We spent two days in the studio for what was supposed to be just a meeting, and we walked out with an album.
How important was it for you to play new music but using the same instruments that you usually play and know inside out?
SB: I think it was important to work with the same instruments, because they are both our language and our field of experimentation. Knowing them intimately allows us to push boundaries without losing precision.
We wanted something human, I believe. It’s that ambiguous space in our practice where we blend electronic precision with the musician’s organic quality.
We had so much to figure out in understanding the duo’s setup that we needed to feel completely at ease with our tools. That’s the uniqueness of the duo: the setup itself, and how it exists as an autonomous entity.
We created a monster within the cables, one that has a life of its own. We evolve with it, and we needed a place of trust. That’s where novelty emerges: not by changing instruments, but by changing the way we think about them and make them interact.
SH: I agree. I have several practices myself—guitar, electronics, studio production—and each one feeds into the others. Electronics gave me a way to translate emotions I couldn’t express on the guitar. But I don’t put much importance on the instrument itself—it’s a means, not an end.
After dedicating many projects to live electronics, I’ve now come back more naturally to the guitar, enriched by what electronics have taught me and by the possibilities they open up today. For me, it’s above all about pursuing an ongoing process—a line of research, a way of thinking that becomes sound.
Each collaboration grows out of a desire that moves in that direction. That’s exactly what happened here with Seb
There are many parallels I could draw between the music on Vallées and other electronic acts. For you personally, were there reference points which served as a departure, a goal, a conceptual spark?
SB: I often talk about this monster in the cables. For a long time, I played a kind of music where correct execution was the goal with the idea of rightness, of possible mistakes, of right and wrong.
Here, we chose a different path. A path of immediate reaction. You have to listen and play with this untamable monster that swallows our sounds and transforms them into something else, sometimes throwing them back at us violently. I don’t think there was any starting point other than our artistic personalities, which decided to pause for a while and play this game.
It’s also, in my eyes, a good metaphor for the world today: an external monster that distorts all the realities and inputs we feed it. The difference is that we, sometimes, manage to silence it by pressing a button.
SH: Our personal stories are our own starting points. What fed us, individually, and collectively. Many references here of course, but not a single one.
I absolutely love the sound of your duo on the album, I have almost a fetish for precisely this kind of crunch … What kind of sonic world(s) were you looking for? What kinds of sounds do you personally appreciate?
SB: I like layering, strata, and subjective focus. I like not having everything laid out or already digested when listening to something, so that everyone can have the chance to tell themselves a unique story.
The sound materials we use and the stacking of information can lead to saturation. When listening, the ear often needs to focus on one element in order to find relief. That’s where the experience becomes personal.
It’s an approach I also find in the works of Grischa Lichtenberger, Alva Noto, or Emptyset.
[Read our Alva Noto interview]
SH: I grew up with distorted sounds. But not only about music.
In northern France, in the old mining region. There wasn’t much light, and the social fabric was deteriorating. I worked for years in factories where machines chew up metal and spit out shavings. That left me with a blend of sonic memory and a rough, abrasive atmosphere, which inevitably comes through in the music. Crunchy, a bit dark, with some light.
In terms of musical references, Seb and I are very much aligned.
Distortion and feedback are important aspects of the album. Can you briefly reflect on these two so essential components and why it is possible to create such profound and profoundly different music with them?
SB: I come back to the monster, I love this notion. Distortion and feedback make it possible to generate output elements that weren’t present at the input.
Distortion enriches the sound by adding harmonics, while feedback creates unpredictable resonances tensions that grow and evolve almost like an autonomous organism. These two tools offer a space where the music becomes both profound and radically different at every moment, because the result is always beyond our control.
SH: Self-oscillating matter that feeds itself, and matter that distorts—two morphologies of sound, achieved through fairly simple processes, nothing too sophisticated in themselves. But the way you handle them can be incredibly harmonious. The grain, the evocative power, open up an infinite field of perception.
At the same time, it’s a very subtle and precise area of work. Chasing those textures leads you toward something quite essential. Once the material emerges, there’s no need to overthink concepts—you know immediately you’ve found a sound, a timbre.
What, exactly is the set-up for both of your instruments? I understand that both the drums and the guitar are heavily processed … But at the same time, sometimes I can actually clearly hear the drum set shine through as well …
SB: I use the same setup as for my solo work: a piezo on the snare drum, a contact microphone on the cymbals, a Nord Drum 2, and a few compression, distortion, and reverb pedals. All of this runs through an audio interface controlled by a computer, which allows us to reverse the signal routing very quickly.
By changing the order of the pedals or the relative volumes of the elements, and especially thanks to compression, we create new sonic entities. The core of our sound comes from the fact that we send our signals to each other. With compression and its settings, a softly played cymbal can make a very present guitar disappear. This creates an intense state of listening and reaction.
The speed at which sounds reappear becomes an element in itself. We don’t fully control it, and it acts like a third person, a bit like a percussionist playing the clave late at night after too many drinks, and yet you still have to follow them.
SH: I play guitar with P90 pickups and use a few pedals that naturally compress the sound (like Fairfield Circuitry). I can also send synth loops from the computer.
Both of us use OTO Machines to distort and sidechain each other’s signals. This way, we react directly to one another’s sounds, creating interdependent waves of dynamics, with blurred and fused trails of sound that become one.
Tell me about the space of your current studio/workplace and how you've set it up to optimise creativity.
SB: This is the big topic: space and setup. I like having a minimal setup that’s the same for both live performances and studio work.
I have a few piezos and a Nord Drum 2 synthesizer that runs into a modular system for gain staging and then into a filter. All of this goes through an audio interface that I use as a small mixer to change the routing of the effects loops through two pedals. It is a fairly simple setup.
The system is controlled by software that allows for very precise and radical routing, even though no sound actually passes through the computer.
SH: I work in a nine-square-meter basement. It’s my studio for mixing, mastering, sometimes recording, electronics, guitar … I’ve got many guitars, way too many guitar and bass amps, way too big monitors, drums, and even a washing machine in there.
Every cable has its place, I am organised and control freak, but dealing with the lack of space isa big part of my daily routine. I try to get out of Paris as often as possible to find bigger spaces.
