I try to make this interview a little bit more interesting, because music of Rony & Suzy is very experimental and unusual, and speaks for itself and that's why my role in this interview is very little, and here is only musicians speech.
Please welcome! Rony & Suzy talking about their childhood and involving in electronic dance music, their style and thir music, their "Others Are Us EP" and poster for this release, future plans and many more.
Our passion for music started with the Indie scene: Pixies, Sonic Youth, Nick Cave, Crass, Einstürzende Neubauten, Slint, Nirvana, Codeine and much more…It was really an exciting time! Our parents and our sister listened a lot to music at home. We were always on discovery, recording innumerable tapes and we loved to discuss about all these bands, their attitudes and the incredible sound they made. A little later we discovered the techno/house scene which made the nights even longer and more mysterious. New sounds, new morals, different acting and being!! The mix of the two cultures brought us to enjoy « extremer » forms of electronic music. Artists like Aphex Twin, Squarepusher, Otto von Schirach, Animals on Wheels, Unit Moebius, Bisk,... have carried us to other dimensions…
At the very beginning we made music seperately. Thomas distorted his guitar with friends while I played the drums with others. Once in a while we got together to try out new stuff. With our own instruments, an old Casio Keyboard, an old recorder, a microphone… When we discovered the techno music one thing came clear : We had to save money for a Computer and a Synthesizer. That’s how everything began. Bit by bit new machines joined. The instruments and machines have always influenced our music(style) a lot : acoustic instruments, midi, analogue/digital, hardware/software,….
We perform since more or less 10 years and we have never played DJ Sets. We would certainly have fun doing it : We could pack in it all different styles of music and observe how it is received by the audience…But you don’t become that easily DJ and the time we would need to invest in we would loose for our own muic. For us it is more important to research and to puzzle out our own sounds, rythms and emotions.
Every aspect of life influences us and as you have already noticed, we have a bunch of different influences. It’s impossible to count them all. And amongst them we don’t count just music. We are flowed through with influences and we nourish from that. Additionally comes the medium. We wouldn’t get to the same result if we would play with guitars, drums and tomato tins or if we would work together with a rapper on the newest version of a known sequencer software. That goes without saying! Even if nowadays you can copy a lot. As well even if you are able to mix everything or to link one with another. It is simply not the same feeling.
At the moment we are very much dancefloor orientated. We just love to watch the people move on our music. It brings us much joy. And we enjoy a lot to create danceable music, less with the head and more with the heart and emotions. It can also go to many directions. But that’s rather not us deciding about. Right now we feel that we are influenced a lot by reggae and dub and that’s fine like that as long as we enjoy it. If tomorrow we would be more involved with techno or ambient it wouldn’t be a crime either, would it ? But we are lacking of time!! It is actually one of the most important aspects of our creative process.
We are very glad!! incredible glad about our new 12"! Finally we have the possibility to release our own record. It is something conrete, tangible, tactual. Of course, with a little more distance we would have changed a few things on the tracks. But with distance everything is easier…. We are very grateful to Quentin and Christophe from the label « lamadameaveclechien » for this project!
That’s difficult to tell how long we had been working on it. The ideas were there a long time. That’s why the beginning went very fast, as usual. But then comes the setup, the structur and the subtleties and it takes terrible much time until we are satisfied with our work. We do exchange a lot too! Many sounds and rythms are worked on by each of us seperatly till we eventually can say : “ that’s exactly it ! “ . We often put songs aside for some time so that they can mature and we can take some distance. It is quiet crazy how much time and effort we invest in it. We think that some of our friends don’t really understand it.
As mentioned, it was very important for us that our music gets released on something tangible, concrete like vinyl. It was as well supposed to be useful for DJs. Many of them are using software too. Maybe we are already too old, too conservative or oldschool…no idea! On the one hand music in the internet is something really great : since we are surfing in the net we discovered hundreds of musicians. Otherwise we would never have been able to do that so fast. But on the other side it looks like excessive consumption. To how many percent of what we downloaded are we still listening? How many do we remember? What did the artists receive of it?
About poster we can say that it is engravings. They originate from Cheryll’s thesis during her art studies. The topic of her thesis was «personal impressions of Brussels». They are part of a complete collection and we chose them. They apealed to us. It was simply a feeling. They were a perfect match to the music, to the atmosphere and to the title of the record. But they leave as well space for interpretation. That’s what we like most. She made as well an engraving under the influence of our music but we had already made our choice.
We don’t have plans. We just want to continue making music and to have fun doing it. But one thing is certain : We want to have more often live performances and if we have the possibility we want to continue releasing our music. But not an album. Right now we are not interested in it.
We have tried already once to make a track with lyrics in a while and are still trying. We enjoy trying but till now the result was never satisfying. We love the human voice. It brings warmth and humanity in the music style which sometimes seems to be a little cold. Oh I forgot ! We have once made a remix of a song with rap. We hope very much that it will be published one day. We are crazy about it ! The voice found its role in the song but we guess the lyric have lost much of their meaning. We have « abused », well, changed it so much so that it is more used as sound and not anymore as comprehensible language.
OthersAreUs by ronyandsuzy
You can found them on:
-Myspage
-Soundcloud
-Homelabel site
