The People Vs. Neige: Alcest’s frontman on bad gigs, black metal and retro videogames

Neige knows fans of his band are more invested than most. "Our fans tell us, 'We really need your music,'" says the Alcest frontman. "'Please, please, never stop making, making this music…'"

Which is very nice. Handily, Alcest have just released more music in the shape of their seventh album Les Chants de l’Aurore. Half a decade on from its predecessor, the heavy, dark Spiritual Instinct, Neige recently told Kerrang! that, "I needed to come back to that original approach." Thus, the album is a more dreamy, major-key, uplifting, fragile thing.

"The two last records were… stronger and more angry," he explains. "That’s one side of Alcest, but the main sound of this band is this very uplifting and spiritual sound. After having done two albums that were quite inspired by the darkness of the times we live in, I saw that – especially in these dark times – to make an album that has a lot of harmony and beauty and positivity could really stick out. I thought maybe people would really enjoy it, because it feels almost like a healing.”

Having taken us inside the album, we caught up with Neige to put to him a load of questions sent in by you, the fans. Over to you lot…

Bacj_09 asks… Were there any moments where you didn’t know what you were going to do with your career?
“That’s a good question. In the very beginning, I just created Alcest as a project, but it was something I had to do. I needed to put out some very specific emotions and very specific ideas, and I thought it would be really great to create this whole project with a very strong universe. But I never thought it would be my job. I hear some musician friends saying ‘It's been my dream to be a rock star since I saw AC/DC onstage.’ I never wanted to do that, you know? I just had a very specific idea in mind for music. I was initially at the Music Conservatory, I was learning classical guitar, and I was supposed to be a classical guitar teacher. And when the band really started to take off, I decided to quit everything and focus on the band. And since this moment, it's been my job. And I'm very, very happy and very grateful, because I know how difficult it is as a band to make a living.”

Leon asks… Who is your musical idol?
“Neil Halstead from slowdive. I discovered them at the same time as I was recording Souvenirs d'un autre monde, my first album. Some people were thinking about a mix of black metal and shoegaze. I didn't really know what that was, and so a friend played me this compilation of shoegaze and post-rock that had slowdive and Sigur Rós on it. I was like, ‘Wow. What I'm actually trying to do with Alcest has been kind of already done in a different way.’ It was very strange to discover that the type of thing I had in my mind already existed, like, a decade before.

“I have actually met Neil several times. I'm kind of friends with slowdive because he came to Iceland when we recorded Shelter [2014] and did a guest appearance on a song. But when I met him the first time, I was really young, and I was such a fan, and I felt really shy and intimidated. I kind of had to hide the fact that I was such a fan and try to play it cool!”

Juliette asks… Do you still listen to black metal?
“Yeah, usually in winter, because I appreciate black metal with a certain type of mood and atmosphere. The black metal I like is more like the Scandinavian bands – I love Bathory and Darkthrone and Emperor. It's funny, because what I do is really not black metal. It has a few black metal elements, but it's very different. When I listen to black metal, I tend to listen to the true stuff, I am not into post-black metal. It's really not my type of thing. But when I listen to early Ulver or something like that, it brings me into some kind of dark fantasy universe, like a dark forest at night with evil spirits. That’s very clichéd, but that's what I like – the stuff I liked when I was a teenager.”

Lisa asks… You’re French, which makes me think you can cook. What’s your speciality?
“That’s a funny question (laughs). I'm from the south of France, and we have a Mediterranean type of cooking culture. I'm very good at making ratatouille, that’s a speciality. And Provence tomatoes, like a tomato with a lot of garlic and parfait. I can do everything that my mum and my grandmother used to cook. It's very Provence type food, lots of garlic. And the ratatouille I make, some of my friends told me it's the best they’ve ever had.”

Mike asks… What’s the worst show Alcest have ever played?
“We’ve had a lot of bad shows, like all bands, but the one when we felt the audience was the least engaged was an early show in Greece. We were a studio project for 10 years before we played live. So by then we had a lot of fans, but we were not good, we were really inexperienced. The first two years of the live version of Alcest were really crap, and it took a few years to be good onstage. At this time, we did a show with Triptykon and Anaal Nathrakh in Greece, which is not the type of crowd we usually play for. I guess they thought we were very strange, and it was at the time when this whole black metal-shoegaze thing didn't exist, so I guess they really thought we were very different, but maybe not in the good way. It was almost like a provocation to go onstage as a metal band and sing so soft and have such a shy attitude. It was a very different time.”

Tim asks… Other than music, what inspires you creatively?
“I'm very sensitive to nature. I try to spend as much time as possible in the nature around my hometown in the south of France. It's a very, very beautiful region, and I think it has inspired me a lot for Alcest. When I'm not working in Paris, I go back to my hometown and just spend some time in nature. Apart from that, I'm highly into art and paintings. My preferred movements are all the pre-Raphaelite painters from the 19th century. I have a huge collection of images, and sometimes I’ll open one of my books of paintings and I play guitar while looking at them, so I'm getting direct inspiration. I guess that's why I think the music is so visual. I'm also very much into Japanese culture. I learned Japanese, and I'm very interested in everything around this culture, so I guess it has impacted me in some way.”

Kate asks… You’re a videogame fan – what’s the best thing you’ve played recently?
“I don't play recent games. But let me think… The most recent game that I really, really liked is maybe 10 or 15 years old. It's a game called Journey, and it's a very short game, but it's really life-changing, in a way. It's very, very spiritual, and I think it made me cry at the end, because it's so beautiful. So, yeah, that’s the newest thing I’ve played. Otherwise, I like Super Nintendo and Mega Drive and ’90s games. I have a small collection of retro games, but only Japanese games, and old-school games.”

Sarah asks… Do you have any creative regrets?
“I don't have any creative regrets, but I have shitloads of production regrets – not the songs themselves, but the way they are presented, the way they sound, the way they are produced. I think I'm not happy with any of our albums, sound-wise. Even on the new one, I swore to myself, ‘Okay, this time, you are not going to have any regrets. It's going to be perfect.’ And of course, I'm having plenty of regrets, and I already want to remix the album. It's very difficult, because I have this vision in mind. I picture how the song has to sound, and it's never exactly right in the end, you know? I'm very much a perfectionist. A lot of people just accept the songs as they sound, but it's classic for musicians to focus on the small flaws, instead of seeing the big picture.”

Matt asks… Why did you pick your stage name, and were there any other contenders?
“I picked up this name when I was 14 years old, maybe. I was a kid, and I was into black metal, and I took a trip with my parents to the mountains in winter, where there was a lot of snow. I decided to come to call myself Neige, which means snow. It's cliche, but not 100 per cent because ‘neige’ in French is female, so it wasn’t like some of the demon names. I guess I was already trying to express a bit of a difference and a more vulnerable side. It had a black metal component, and it also had a more fragile component, and that's why I still kept this name, even if it doesn't reflect me at all. That's how people know me, but it's not really important. I don't want people to call me that, even when we meet fans. I just ask them to call me Stéphane, because it's a bit ridiculous, this nickname, I think.”

Alcest's album Les Chants de l'Aurore is out now via Nuclear Blast. The band tour the UK with Svalbard and Doodseskader in December.

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