Interview with DISLIMN

What’s the story behind DISLIMN’s formation? How did you three meet?
Basile: The project is the result of a wish from Florent (guitar) and I, Basile (drums) to create a Stoner-oriented band, with a prog touch. We’d known each other for 3 years and we’ve been members of a few projects prior to this one, so we basically complete each other musically. Initially, the band was supposed to be a duo, but we quickly concluded that our creativity would run short with such limited resources. Thus, we decided to bring in a third member, a singer, and that’s when we called Alix. Alix and I are friends since high school, and we’ve also been part of some amateur projects in the past. And that’s how DISLIMN was created!

What influences your percussive and melodious vocal style?
Alix: I’ve always enjoyed playing with my voice, switching from percussive to light and melodious. It gives me the ability to load my voice with feelings when recording or performing live. In my teenage days I’ve been heavily influenced by rock and metal bands with singer who had powerful and saturated voices, and it influenced me a lot! Growing up, I’ve decided to bring more nuances and precision to my voice. I fell in love with Scandinavian singings that mixes both styles, a melodious and percussive voice (Kalandra, Wardruna, Gåte, Heilung). The melodies and their vocal techniques have constituted a strong identity, and they inspire me a lot whenever I’m composing.

What themes do you explore in the lyrics of your debut EP?
Alix: In this first EP we talk about Anxiety through the character of Esmee, who we created for the occasion. It has been written and composed like a book. Each song represents a chapter of Esmee’s life, telling her battle against her demons.
‘Anxiety’ is the first song in which we gave a voice to Anxiety, displaying it taking hold of Esmee’s mind. The second song ‘Esmee’s Story’ starts with an open letter from our character. She reveals her dark thoughts, the whole track represents her descent into hell. ‘Gulfoss’ is the instrumental song of the Ep; it represents the moment when Esmee starts thinking. The song is as busy and fast as we can suppose Esmee’s Mind to be. The following song, ‘In My Mind’, is split into two parts: In the first part Esmee is tired to live a life without purpose, she’s still expecting to follow the same routine as usual, using any means to escape the boredom of her life. During the second verse she’s having a kind of revelation, which leads to the second part where she decides to fight and take control of her life. ‘Release Me’ is the final chapter of our story, in which Esmee gets into her final fight against her demons.

How do Scandinavian melodies influence your music?
Alix: The vocals are heavily inspired by Scandinavian melodies. In this EP, the listeners are carried away through parts with lyrics and melodious vocal lines that contribute to create an atmospheric, almost mystical soundscape. As said earlier, it’s a common process used by band such as Gåte or Heilung.

Basile: Since Alix really brought this Scandinavian vibe, I’ve decided to bring some of my own influences. I like the way percussions have a primary role in this style, so I’m heavily inspired by artists such as Danheim to compose some sort of tribal drum parts! Of course, we’ve been lucky enough to host Paul Void as a guest musician in our EP. He’s the one responsible for the ambience, the traditional Scandinavian percussions and the synth parts. He did an amazing job enhancing the overall vibe of the EP

Can you describe the creative process for one of your EP’s tracks?
Florent: The process of creation is similar for every track. I like to compose using effects. What I mean is that I’m always looking for a guitar sound that will inspire me to create a riff, or a melody. To do so, I’m using all the effects at my disposal: Distortion, Reverb, and Delay. When I’m inspired by a sound, I press the record button, and I start jamming with the bands. Afterwards I start arranging the ideas that came up, the ones that are interesting of course, to create the beginning of a structure. Then we start working more precisely, getting deeper into each part until we are happy with the result.

What challenges did you face recording your debut EP?
Basile: It took a long time for us to finally be able to release this EP. As our first very own project, we were very enthusiastic, but we also wanted to make things right, even if it would take time. At first, we didn’t have any interesting ideas to start composing, we had to know each other more intimately. At some point a true friendship was created, and we started letting go of our emotions, truly expressing ourselves with our instruments, and it leads to ideas way more interesting. That’s where we composed our first song which was In My Mind. Then we started getting into that composing process, but we also had to create our identity, our socials that Alix is leading formidably, to take pictures, to decide on which track we were going to pick to shoot a video clip, we also had to start looking for gigs and labels… All of this took a lot of time because we were starting from nothing! There were some disagreements, sacrifices were made, but as the family that we are now we’ve always managed to talk it through and DISLIMN is now more stable than it ever was.
At the end of the day, it’s all part of the life of a band, and there will always be challenges, otherwise, it means that we aren’t moving forward and that is not part of the plan!

How has your past musical experience shaped DISLIMN’s sound?
Basile: In our band, each other’s background has shaped our sound. Florent is heavily inspired by his favorite artist ACDC, but also by the stoner and punk scene with bands like Mars Red Sky, Kyuss or Elder. He’s inspired by those when it comes to compose heavy riffs such as the ones in our songs “In My Mind” or “Release Me”. Alix is inspired by Scandinavian bands like Heilung or Kalandra, and she heavy participates to the unique sound of DISLIMN. When Florent and Alix are melting their ideas together, it leads to the creation of atmospheric and eerie parts, like the second verse of ‘In My Mind’, the long crescendo that is ‘Anxiety’ or obviously the bridge from ‘Release Me’. Finally, I come from metal, prog music, styles with more complex drum parts. So, I try to mix my influences and theirs by listening to as many stoner and Nordic music to follow my fellow band mates during the composition process. At the end of the day, DISLIMN’s sound is a matter of mixing all our genres, without restraining our creativity.

How do you see DISLIMN fitting into the heavy doom music scene?
Basile: That’s the issue about our style: we don’t fit in a precise box, and at the same time, we are able to fit into a lot of music scenes. We’ve already considered touring and opening for some bands from the heavy Doom scene like WITCHORIOUS, a French band from the same label as ours. Of course, we don’t consider to be as heavy as those bands are, but we also bring something different to the table. Our music is all about dynamic changes, and our heaviest parts end up highlighted by the lightest ones. We can thank Florent for that who’s a genius at arranging and traveling through dynamics, and he manages to use the vocal talents of Alix to create such parts.

Which artists have influenced your music the most?
Basile: As I said before, many of our personal influences brought ideas to the table, so we have a lot of influences! If we had to pick 3 of them, the main ones, it would probably be Mars Red Sky, Kalandra and The Ocean.

How do themes of revolt and resilience come through in your music?
Basile: We wouldn’t say that revolt is among our themes, I think it’s more about letting go, feeling free and learning to love yourself, and of course resilience. In order to answer accurately, I must say that, for the 3 of us, we feel for the first time in our young musical career that we can truly express ourselves through our music. That’s also the purpose of this EP: Through the character of Esmee, we tell our story, we talk about things that we’ve all experienced and that some of us are still experiencing from time to time, like Anxiety.

What’s been the most rewarding part of releasing your debut EP?
Basile: The day we finally released it, without a doubt. It was followed two days later by our release party, it was amazing to see everybody’s reactions, and people identifying themselves to our music. We had people telling us that they are experiencing some of the things we talk about, people having chills or even dropping a tear, people cheering us, and that was the objectives. It’s also the way we see our live performances: Those are not only about us, They’re about everyone, and everybody listening and participating to our music are part of the story of DISLIMN.

What can fans expect from a live DISLIMN performance?
Basile: Fans can expect to be a part of a live experience, to be touched, to sing along some of our chorus, to identify themselves to the story of Esmee, but also to the other stories we will tell in our next EP. We want to create a space where people will allow themselves to let go of their emotions, to scream, to feel joy, to experience nostalgia, and at the end know that they’ve part of a journey through our music. We do our best so that everyone identifies themselves to our music.

How do you see DISLIMN adapting to changes in the music industry?
Basile: The industry is moving so fast forward that it seems almost impossible to adapt. Nevertheless, Alix and I are very connected to what’s happening on social networks, and we keep an eye on how to emerge from the masses. That being said, DISLIMN is not meant to follow the current. We don’t consider our project as mainstream, and we don’t want to force ourselves to fit perfectly in the music industry. We want to enjoy ourselves first of all, and everyone who wants to be part of our journey is more than welcome. All in all I’d say that we will adapt to the changes in the music industry, even if we don’t tick all the boxes boxes.

Where do you see the progressive and doom genres heading, and how do you fit in?
Basile: In our opinion, we can almost qualify the doom and progressive genres as “underground”, in particularly in France, where Rap, Electronic and all the other Urban styles have conquered the music market. Nevertheless, that scene still exists and have some great days coming ahead. There are more festivals than ever, some great albums are being released and the progressive and doom audience is growing, even if it’s not as dominant as the urban style. We believe that we can fit in with all the effort we put into creating our identity. As said previously we bring something different to the table. It’s hard to find a band that mixes doom, prog, shoegaze and Scandinavian music. When it comes to our EP, we believe that Anxiety and depression are important subjects that speak to everyone, used often in those music genres. At top of that, the cover of our EP is a drawing made by the amazing Stéphane Levallois, and it’s an idea that we took from our influences. Having a drawing as an album artwork is easy to read and gives the opportunity to our listeners to interpret it as they wish. So, we take these ideas and make them our own, creating our own identity.

What’s next for DISLIMN after this EP?
Basile: We are already working on our second EP. We can’t say much about it, but it will be a bit different than the first one. We don’t set any limit to our creation, so we aren’t afraid to explore some new territories. Apart from that we have a few concerts coming towards the end of the year, all in Paris: The 18th of October at ‘La Peniche Antipode’ in Paris, the 19th of November in ‘Les Disquaires’, the 23th of November in Meaux at the Eightball Studios, and finally the 30th of November at the ‘Guitar fest’ of Clichy.