By Keith Walsh
As well as releasing their spectacular new album From Above, members of melodic prog band Lunear —Paul J. No on keyboards and vocals, Jean Philippe Benadjer on bass, and Sébastien Bournier on drums and vocals — have made outstanding music in other projects, at times very different from the music of Lunear, all of it showing dedication and skilled musicianship. In Part 2 of our interview we get further into details about their work, and some of the challenges to getting heard. (Part 1 is here).
Popular Culture Beat: Are you gonna bring it live? I know it’s almost impossible.
Sébastien Bournier and Jean Philippe Benadjer: Yeah.
Jean Philippe Benadjer: If we want to play live we have to hire two or three additional musicians,
Popular Culture Beat: I hear that. Yeah.
Sébastien Bournier: I turn fifty in three years and I really hope that I can invite…
(I regret interrupting Seb here because I missed hearing about his 50th birthday plans….)
Paul J. No: Golden anniversary.
Popular Culture Beat: You guys are just kids compared to me.
Paul J. No: I’m older. Sebastian is the younger one.
Popular Culture Beat: Okay, he’s just a baby then.
Paul J. No: Yeah, he’s our baby.
Sébastien Bournier: I’m only only 46.
Popular Culture Beat: Oh, that’s still a kid. So are you shopping the album to labels?
Sébastien Bournier: No, no. I would (like) to. I really think that “So Let’s Go,” is a song that could be played on the radio everywhere, but it will not happen. Because it’s just what it is.
Popular Culture Beat: I got a whole other conversation, like what are the channels and what are some challenges in distribution? Well, let’s investigate that a little bit. A lot of artists are dissatisfied with Spotify. And you guys have a very specific niche where your sound is, so it’s not just disposable pop — you really put a lot of care into the album. And so it’s not for your typical audience member. So what are you guys going to do to promote it? I hope you can really come up with some more videos or some strategy to get this to the right audience. And the right channels where it can get some wings.
Paul J. No: And for this part, I’m struggling, trying to find people who can review our album, listen to our songs. It’s complicated — many people ask you to pay, including prog blogs or things like that. They ask you, ‘okay, the record’s fine, but if you want me to publish a review of your album, you need to pay me like thirty, forty, fifth euros.’ So, if we have to pay everybody –I mean it’s rubbish.
Popular Culture Beat: Yeah, what about a PR agent? I think a lot of music is missed because there’s so much new music, but when something like your album comes along, I wish people would recognize it, like major publishers.
Paul J. No: It”s a full time job. It’s not a part-time job. We have to, as you said, there has to be a PR agent and we don’t have any PR agent. I’m doing this on my own, in my free time and it’s a lot of work. And it’s a pain in the ass because really we work very hard to make records. It’s a lot of work and when we have the finished results, we are very happy with it. We are very proud of what we’ve done, but, it’s very hard to find your way, to find the people who can help you promote the record. And we don’t have the key to that, maybe some people have…
Popular Culture Beat: Yeah, it’s a mystery how some bands have reached the awareness of the public, you know. Are you guys all playing in other bands like covers or originals?
Lunear: Yeah.
Jean Philippe Benadjer: I play in a pop band in my town for 22 years now.
Popular Culture Beat: Covers?
Jean Philippe Benadjer: It’s our originals. We made five albums and we will record the next in July,
Popular Culture Beat: I should know the name. Sorry.
Jean Philippe Benadjer: PolarSun.
Popular Culture Beat: Okay, how about you Paul?
Paul J. No: Yeah, I’ve made some records with Midrone. I’m working alone, with Sébastien doing drums many times. Sometimes it depends, because my last two records are more synth records, 80’s sound.
Popular Culture Beat: That’s a popular trend — 80s revival. Seb?
Sébastien Bournier: I have two solo careers. The first one is French songs, French pop songs, I’ve made 6 albums like this, and I have made an English album and Paul played lots of keyboards on it, and John Philippe mixed it. So it’s not Lunear. But it’s still a family.
Popular Culture Beat: You know, I thought about an idea, you guys, since obviously you can’t do a twenty five minute video of “In Their Eyes.” Maybe you could do little reels of just the solos like, you know, you got Jean Philippe’s solo, you could just do a clip with some kind of abstract graphics and put those on reels just so prog rock fans would hear that, and they might get interested in hearing more. It’s more manageable that way.
Paul J. No: Yeah, it’s not a bad idea. Yeah, it’s a good idea.
Popular Culture Beat: Ok, the album is called “From Above.” So what’s the spiritual aspect –do you feel like there’s a divine power that works through music, or tell me about that? Who made up the title?
Sébastien Bournier: I came up with title and I really can’t remember why.
(Lots of laughter)
Lunear: It came from the artwork. The artwork.
Sébastien Bournier: It was a fractal. I don’t know if it’s the word in English. It’s mathematical thing Jean Philippe did, and I thought that it looked like a picture of the Earth taken by a drone.
Popular Culture Beat: I’m gonna have to publish the interview, probably in two parts because we’re going on forty five minutes. I’ve got a review, so I’m gonna publish them probably in a week. Fantastic work you guys.
Sébastien Bournier: Thank you very much.
Popular Culture Beat: You have to work together and work with this new workflow, because the results are so pristine.
Jean Philippe Benadjer: The next album will be different. I we know that we try to make something different each time. So we will see.
Popular Culture Beat: Okay. Yeah,
Paul J. No: But I think the good thing was to work, the three of us in the same room. Maybe, if the idea is to make the next album, the three of us together in the same room, that could be great. That could be great because we had a very good moment. It was a really fantastic moment.
Sébastien Bournier: It was a challenge. We were not sure that we could write twenty five minutes of music in three days and we did it, and I really think that it’s something we can be proud of.
Popular Culture Beat: Yeah, there’s like that synergy, and the lightning in the bottle — the inspiration happened.
Paul J. No: Yeah, yeah. It was like that. It was inspirational. It was great because everybody has his own qualities. And I think the three of us together make it make it great. I tended to arrange the thing. to arrange the chords, Seb was trying to do a pattern on drums and singing lines and so Jean Philippe was exploring ideas on guitars and it was all flowing ideas, one idea to another, one idea to another….
Popular Culture Beat: It was magic.
Paul J. No: Yeah, it was great. And that’s the great thing with the first song, there’s nothing that is repeated. Many times you have an epic, and the ideas are repeated many times, and here we have really five songs. in in one song.
Popular Culture Beat: Who are your favorite composers? Paul?
Sébastien Bournier: Tony Banks!
(Laughter)
Popular Culture Beat: How about classical composers, since you talked about motifs and themes.
Paul J. No: Classical? Debussy.
Popular Culture Beat: Debussy.
Paul J. No: Debussy, Ravel.
Jean Philippe Benadjer: Romantic French.
Paul J. No: Sometimes some Wagner too.
Popular Culture Beat: A German guy comes in the room, with his grand themes.
Paul J. No: Yeah.
Popular Culture Beat: Thank you so much. Have a good evening you guys it’s late.
Sébastien Bournier: Thank you very much.
Paul J. No: Thank you.
Popular Culture Beat: Thank you so much. Thank you very much. Goodbye.
Paul J. No: Bye.
Jean Philippe Benadjer: Bye.
| Paul J. No Midrone On Facebook Midrone On Apple Music Midrone On Spotify Paul J. No On Youtube | Sébastien Bournier Sousbock On Bandcamp Sousbock dot com Esse On Bandcamp | Jean Philippe Benadjer Polar Sun Dot Com Qurtis On Spotify |
Lunear Music Dot Com
Lunear On Bandcamp
‘From Above’ On Apple Music
‘From Above’ On Spotify
‘From Above’ On Deezer
Lunear On Facebook
Lunear On Instagram
Part 1 Of Lunear Q&A On Popular Culture Beat
finis