The first published a solo album in 2022 (“The Nonsense of Rhythm”) followed by another with Lee Ranaldo; the latter a best-of (“Electrified”) followed by a soundtrack (“Thatcher’s not dead). Suffice to say that if we still had to look for glandouille experts, we would not look in the direction of Perpignan, this center of the electrical world where Comelade and the Limiñanas finally decided to put on their crampons again for this “Boom Boom” where we hear sometimes the rhythm section of Gainsbourg’s “Melody Nelson” crossed with Pierre Henry’s Psyche Rock and a magnificent parenthesis (en)sung by Lionel ( Fin du monde ). In short, not really music per kilometer, all with a thought behind each silence and a word behind each note.

Question: what to do when faced with a record that is 99% instrumental? Answer: give the floor to those who refused to take it with the guarantee, as every time a microphone is handed to Pascal Comelade, of being splashed by the intelligence of the margins. No need to wipe off afterwards; Let’s go for a good interview in five minutes, shower included.

In 2015, during our first meeting for your first album, “Traité de Guitarres Trioleacteurs”, you spoke to me about it as a record of riffs. For this second album, was the idea the same?

Lionel: Very honestly, nothing was premeditated. The only thing we discussed before we started were things we didn’t want to do, and the most obvious one was not to use a soloist, the kind of guys who type solos into the song to fill in the holes ; avoid this kind of usual stuff. But what was obvious, for the Limiñanas as for Pascal I know, is that it always revolves around the riff. On this album, once again, I challenge you to find a chord change. So yes, “Boom Boom” is mainly riff-based, right-hand stuff. And everything was naturally decided after a meal, when we realized that we all had time to do it. We dropped 24 titles, we kept twelve for a vinyl, 6 on one side, 6 on the other.

Pascal Comelade: This record is a sequel. For this one, from the start the objective was a vinyl. A vinyl album eh, not a succession of tracks that we listen to out of order. And there was no question of making a CD. In short, a vinyl then. Something limited in time on each side, and everyone had the mission to bring around twenty skeleton pieces. And these scraps of nothing gave rise to the album recorded at Lionel and Marie’s in three sessions. Well then, I’ll tell you: for me the most important thing in all of this is the drums. It is around it that we shape the final title. Lionel mentioned the list of things to avoid, it’s true… we had to avoid all the liminanesque clichés, if I may say, or comeladian, BUT by ensuring that they were still present… without us being able to understand who did what. There are 3 names written on the cover, nothing more. There’s no concert, there’s no gala, there’s nothing except the record, that’s all. 

“It’s a spectorian record: I kept yelling at Lionel to stop stacking his guitars! »

Does the notion of constraint remain important when you make a record?

Pascal Comelade: We are only looking for immediate pleasure, something quick. But be careful, it’s not a wanker record, eh. You talked about our first album, it was a tribute to primitive rock and we could almost have played it live. This one: impossible. It is over-orchestrated, almost Spectorian. Besides, I yelled at Lionel a lot, I yelled at him: “  stop stacking guitars!”  “.

If I summarize: “Boom Boom” is a Spectorian record that was not made by wankers.

Pascal Comelade: That says it all.

In your opinion, is it possible to reinvent rock or ultimately, we just go around it again and again?

Pascal Comelade: I think we will never end it. Rock is a labyrinth, a superhuman adventure.

Lionel: The doubt on that, in my opinion, arrived six months after the birth of rock; people thought it would be a fad, a temporary thing. And it’s been like that since the beginning.

Among the many qualities of the album, and this is anything but a detail, there are the names of the songs which could almost be the subject of textual studies in faculties of countries which do not exist: “J ‘Hear voices that have bad breath’, ‘We don’t eat Veronica’s sauerkraut’, ‘The rififi glows yellow’… When do these names come: before or after the composition?

Pascal Comelade: It always comes at the end.

Burroughs-style cut-up process?

Pascal Comelade: Exactly. An esthete’s pleasure, through accumulations of ideas. “Boom Boom” is an instrumental record. So we can say that the title names have no importance.

By saying that, you are well aware that it is a lie, right?

Pascal Comelade (looking falsely dejected) : It’s true… Wait, we’ll do it again: “There ‘s nothing more important than the titles on this record  .” It’s okay, are you okay? Seriously, at some point you always have to name each song and there aren’t 36,000 solutions: either the cold post-war solution, contemporary music style with “Sequence 3” or “Parallel 2”, or dripping poetic things, or that way… For my part, I accumulate notes, parts of sentences, telling myself that they can always be useful. And finally, the most difficult part of this record was finding the name of the album. Should have been shorter than the first. It was another constraint that we set ourselves. So something that exploded was needed.

“My only position has always been to work towards a policy of degenerate instrumental muzzak production.” (Pascal Comelade)

We were talking about instrumental music, and Pascal has a conception of unsung music as a silent manifesto. “Boom boom”, is it a desire for detonation, for terrorism?

Pascal Comelade: Terrorism… you’re going far there. Here I’m going to be a little selfish but instrumental music, I’ve done it all my life and it’s a production which initially is intended for nothing: the record for the record’s sake, no images, no films , Nothing. And I have no problem with that. What I like is the perverse aspect of this practice, because from variety formats we manage to create mutations. And it’s not even a posture, we haven’t theorized anything. But it is true that in an album easily found on the market, you can slip in… cans of tins. Let’s make it clear: I am not positioning myself with a sticker “ gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, I am an avant-garde musician  ”. My only position has always been to work towards a policy of degenerate instrumental muzzak production. The interest there was to get together with Lionel and Marie and to place all these tics, theirs and mine, to make them work together. The most interesting thing is that today I would have a hard time telling you who thought what on this record, apart from two details: a bass riff typical of the Limiñanas and Marie’s drums. And Lionel’s voice, obviously…

We’re talking details… what is the one that you are most proud of on this record, and that you are sure that no one, at least no media, will hear it the way you intended it?

The three (long meditative silence): ….

Pascal Comelade: Interesting question… there is surely something, but where? There’s something about This is a magnetic recording , with Marcel Duchamp’s poem… It’s okay, I’ve got it! On this title, at the end of Duchamp’s sentence, something happens, something is played by an instrument: it’s a melodica which plays the beginning of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring . For what ? Because on the original cassette which was used to record the title, afterwards there is someone who recounts Duchamp’s spoonerism about the Rite: “we  must say the dirt of the eardrum and not the coronation of spring  “.

Lionel: We recorded a lot of material for this record, so there are lots of shots like that.

Finally, is Catalonia a fundamental common point between the three of you? On “Boom Boom”, we sometimes have the impression of rock composed in an imaginary country straddling France and Spain.

Lionel: In Marie’s case, it’s a little more true, but I’m an emigrant son of pied noir. But what links us to Pascal, and that I am certain of, is the Mediterranean. On humor, food, respect, Moroccan bass parts, it’s true. You are the only person to have raised this point.

Let’s say that it’s hard to believe that this record could have been recorded in Grenoble.

Pascal Comelade: I have a hard time seeing what makes you think of that on “Boom Boom”, but yes there are still two great guitarists from Barcelona, ​​unfortunately little known here. But we come back to the details, it’s true, there are unconscious geographical points which lead back to Spain, in particular the cassette used for This is a magnetic recording ; it is a recording of the poem by Duchamp Mark Cunningham, discovered on the famous compilation on No New York by Brian Eno. I met him in Barcelona, ​​we played together for a long time and the recording dates from 1992 in Barcelona, ​​so yes, it’s true that there are geographical points on this record, how should I say, a…

A perfume ?

Pascal Comelade: Perfume?! I was talking about words that were much harder, like relents… the two of them [Marie and Lionel] don’t dare tell me, but something is happening since I changed my eau de toilette , haha! But yes, Catalonia, you are right. I see what you mean, but on this record, it doesn’t seem to jump to the eyes, rather to the ears. We have simply internalized our influences, we know where we come from, we know where we are.

Pascal Comelade, Lionel and Marie Limiñanas // Boom Boom // Because (vinyl and digital)