Name: torpedo
Nationality: Swiss
Members: Carro Loubère (vox, guitar) Jay Liseron (bass) Drew Hammer (drums)
Interviewee: Carro
Current release: torpedo's new album What the fucked do we all do now? | - Lights is being released in two parts via Broken Clover and Cheap Satanism. The second and final instalment is out October 10th 2025.
Recommendations on the topic of sound:
Music 109, Notes on Experimental Music - Alvin Lucier
Silence, Lectures and Writings - John Cage
Glass World (book + CD), Annea Lockwood (Presses du Réel)
Eliane Radigue
Les pianos ne poussent pas sur les arbres - Max Neuhaus (Presses du Réel). I don't know if this collection of text exist in English!
Inaudible, invisible – Une exploration des œuvres de Christina Kubisch (Éditions Héros-Limite) bilingual French/English

If you enjoyed this torpedo interview and would like to stay up to date with the band and their music, visit their official homepage. They are also on Instagram, bandcamp, bluesky, mastodon, and Facebook.

For a deeper dive, read our earlier features about torpedo about records they love for their sound, and interspecies communication. We also recommend our Orphax interview from the same series, who also reports almost exactly the same sensations expressed here.



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?

It really depends on what I am listening to, and on how focused I am on what I am listening to.

Sometimes a piece of music will create so much joy in me that it makes my body dance. It can also make me meditate or inspire my thinking. Sometimes, I will see or have the perception of colors, shapes, words, paintings or poems. Some music will change my state of presence and root me to the ground or elevate me in the air. It can suddenly connect me to an emotion or network of emotions.

When I am witnessing live performances, I often close my eyes to listen to the concert. I walk around with headphones all the time, on the street, while watering my jungle at home or working outside. Listening is a good part of my time and music is a shelter for me.

How do listening with headphones and listening through a stereo system change your experience of sound and music?

I'd say that each system spotlights some characteristics from a recording. My favorite headphones have a “color” that pushes the low frequencies. I just absolutely love these headphones.

To be isolated from the rest of the world and have the music diffused so close to my ears is a delight for me. The feeling of having my head inside the sound is even stronger. With the stereo, I feel my whole body is surrounded by sound, which is amazing, too. But less intimate, I'd say.

On the great system connected to my record player, the sound is wide, warm and powerful. Also the stereo seems to depend on the pan left/right of course, but also on the height of the headphones. It is what we figured out while listening to the test pressing of our second album, Orpheo_ Nebula.



During mixing, we worked a lot on the pan of the stereo. There were so many layers of sound and lyrics coming together that we used the left/right pan of the stereo a lot.

But what was amazing for us was that the headphones seemed to translate these many layers from the bottom to the top. So the stereo seemed to work in these different dimensions.

And so, sitting there and listening to a vinyl of some piece of music I love, enjoying the beautiful work that has been done on composing, playing, recording, mixing, mastering, pressing is a wonderful thing in my life. I am so glad I can figure out what "having vinyl in my hands" really means. How it is, like poetry, somehow always a miracle.

Do you experience strong emotional responses towards certain sounds? If so, what kind of sounds are these and do you have an explanation about the reasons for these responses?

Yeah! Some beginnings of albums (Like Prepare The Ground, Dream House), or songs or riffs will do that, too. They are connected to memories. Also, on a very different level, when I hear the sound of a dog walking on a wooden floor, it bring back the memory of my little dog.

On the contrary, some music will create strong repulsion in my body, because I cannot bear this sound and it aggravates my ears and my tastes and because of what they represent to me. I'd say. In these cases, I will be super happy that I always have ear plugs with me:) Sonic pollution (like car horns, work on the neighborhood, etc.) can create much irritation at time and then, when you hear the sound again, there is an emotional response.

Trains are using their horns a lot in the US, this was bringing me anxiety. I realized that, where I live, trains are using them only when there are dangers.

There can be sounds which feel highly irritating to us and then there are others we could gladly listen to for hours. Do you have examples for either one or both of these?

Yeah sure, sounds that are made by others because they are stressed or irritated are irritating to me (car horns, insults, someone walking stressfully behind me). Same with people talking in a way that creates irritation for me. Often it is because I can feel this energy. Also, screeching sounds of a train braking, loud engines and cars on the streets.

Birds song is a type of sound I can listen to for hours. This album by Rachel Grimes for example has a calming and sheltering sound also because of the beautiful field recordings of nature.



The sound of my piano when I press the sustain pedal makes a deaf sound, I love it! Sometimes, I can listen to the piano reflecting the sound from the room while the sustain pedal is pressed for a long time. The sound of the rain that starts.

Or thunder from afar. Of course the sound of waves.

Are there everyday places, spaces, or devices which intrigue you by the way they sound? Which are these?

Yes, the sound of the trapdoor where we enter by a scale in our premises is very particular and has fun reverberations. It is a great place for singing and playing acoustic guitar.

We also occasionally recorded the reverberation of our music: We put an AKG414 on the trapdoor closed by the big metal door of our room and then recorded only the echoes of the song we where playing on the other side of the metallic door. We used those recordings on a few part of our record Orpheo_ Nebula.

For exemple at the end (around 4:55 minutes) of “Part V_ Interstices:” ...



... and in the middle (around 3:05 minutes) of "Part III_ La Mort":



About devices, the sound of the washing machine when I put my hoody on it. The zip hitting the glass of the machine does that. Weirdo rhythm!! Also our dish washing machine has a soft and reassuring sound to me of the water rhythmically hosing inside.

My typewriter sounds particularly beautiful to me :) though its rhythm depends a lot on me! My sewing machine from the 60s as well sounds amazing (also it smells lovely!).

What are among your favorite spaces to record and play your music?

My premises!! This is where we recorded our two last albums Orpheo_ Nebula (2022) and What the fucked do we all do now? | - Lights (June 2025 / October 2025) both out on Broken Clover Records, San Francisco.

I also love my living room with my piano. I love its sound there, how the sound can develop in this room. I often improvise for the plants and my room mates! 



It is recorded as well on “POEM” from our previous album Orpheo_ Nebula:



And on one song from my solo project Sauvageoness, on "Bedtime," from the album PHOEBE. It is a song whose lyrics are coming from a poem by Denis Levertov.  



Do music and sound feel “material” to you? Does working with sound feel like you're sculpting or shaping something?

Yes, it is definitely like sculpting, painting and modeling something, at least some part of the work is. I really felt like sculpting the sound as a material, especially on the first movement of | NOISE.

This movement was fully released with the first part of our album What the fucked do we all do now? | - Lights at the end of June. It is a noise ambient song composed using layers of feedback loops and noise drones, guitar textures, bass screed like a concrete ground for the song.

And then 6 lines of vocals made of 6 poems intertwined. Each line of vocal is a poem and the whole combined is another poem, which mixed with the sound would let you grab words that will change from one listen to another:



How important is sound for our overall well-being and in how far do you feel the "acoustic health" of a society or environment is reflective of its overall health?

I don't know what this is like for others, but sometimes I'm strongly questioning myself about this. My well-being and health definitely depends on my acoustic health.

I usually wear headphones with (and sometimes without) music, and if I don't, I generally wear ear plugs to walk around on the street. There is something reassuring for me, that keeps me in my comfort zone maybe, while I'm surrounded by others and their energies as well (to which I am very sensitive).

Listening to music or sound generally protects me. I feel our society is so much focused on vision and so little on the acoustic health or harmony of our collective sound. I am sensitive to sound and its harmony, it is then pretty difficult to live without protecting myself from the sonic pollution.

I really experience the general sound of the city like a form of pollution. I guess lots of people aren't that aware of how this pollution is tiring them on the long term. I am strongly dreaming of a harmonious society that would sound beautiful!! This would help my life for sure. It should be much more of a collective concern!!

When I am staying in nature, I don't use my headphones that much, cause my senses aren't aggravated and I love the sounding of nature.

Tinnitus and developing hyperacusis are very real risks for anyone working with sound. Do you take precautions in this regard and if you're suffering from these or similar issues – how do you cope with them?

I always protect my hears when I play live, rehearse or record. Each time I am exposed to a high volume of sound. I am lucky not to suffer from those.

We can surround us with sound every second of the day. The great pianist Glenn Gould even considered this the ultimate delight. How do you see that yourself and what importance does silence hold?

Both silence and sound are essential to my life. I need to get silence at some point. I love the living silence of nature, of my peaceful neighborhood, these are sheltering listening.

This sort of silence is evoked and reflected in the second and third movements of the song | NOISE that will be release in October 10. A silence full of life. https://torpedo-cyclope.bandcamp.com/album/what-the-fucked-do-we-all-do-now-lights-2

But silence can also be deadly. They are so different, in an inexplicable way. You have to feel it. Two songs of our last record, "SOME WOLVES" and "sugar love" are talking about this sort of silence:



Seth S. Horowitz called hearing the “universal sense” and emphasised that it was more precise and faster than any of our other senses, including vision. How would our world be different if we paid less attention to looks and listened more instead?

I imagine, that everyone will figure out that the sound produced by our society has to be harmonized!! And it will surely be much more comfortable for me:)

I would love this! Can we do that right now??