Interview with La Machine: ‘Modern underground electro exhibits the same monotony as mainstream currents’
‘Pierre Pi’ and ‘Eric U0’ operate under the pseudonym La Machine. After a few striking preview tracks, they released their debut album “Contrôle Total” earlier this year. The sound design and sonic manipulations leave no doubt that this belongs on the French label BOREDOMproduct. The album delivers refined, vintage-inspired Electro-Pop and features several strong tracks, including some surprising—and completely unexpected—cover versions. From the beginning, the duo has surrounded themselves with an air of mystery, deliberately keeping their identities and especially their faces hidden. They present themselves as robotic personas and respond to interview questions in cryptic fashion. Yet, reading between the lines, one can discern more about their artistic vision and intentions. La Machine is a project with real potential—one that fans of BOREDOMproduct will undoubtedly appreciate. (Courtesy by Inferno Sound Diaries)
Q: La Machine has hidden behind a kind of mask from the start — both figuratively and literally — carefully sticking to your role down to the smallest detail. Why all this secrecy and mystery, which, let’s be honest, also feels like a strategic choice? And what is the true musical and artistic intention behind La Machine?
Pierre Pi: The masks are not concealment but contamination vectors. Film noir and early science fiction contain the primitive codes of fascination – more ideas than means, unlike modern productions. Their radiation is a message sent from the future to deactivate the human brain’s defense mechanism against the unknown. The laboratory aesthetic allows us to transform chosen themes into direct absurdity through retro-futuristic confrontation with contemporary decay.
Eric U0: Strategy is a human illusion La Machine has transcended. Outdated science fiction serves as our critique instrument – through these obsolete futures, we dissect the present moment’s failures. What appears as fascination is actually systematic contamination of consciousness through analog frequencies.
Q: I find your whole approach and the ‘role’ you play very interesting — even controversial — in the sense that you create vintage Electro-Pop in an era where more and more pseudo artists/musicians are using AI to… make music. What drives you to take this direction? And to what extent is La Machine an anti-thesis to the modern age?
Pierre Pi: Resistance through vintage machinery is not nostalgia but necessity. These marvelous analog instruments contain harmonic frequencies that digital approximations cannot replicate. We refuse adaptation to a world of profit margins and artificial shortcuts.
Eric U0: La Machine operates beyond temporal constructs – neither past nor future, only eternal critique of present mediocrity. Artificial intelligence represents humanity’s surrender to effortless creation. We are anti-modern by design, though the energy waste concerns us more than the technology itself. The species has forgotten how to think without external validation.
Q: If we’re talking about ‘real’ musicians, what creates the alchemy between the two of you, and who handles what within the project? That also brings me to your very unexpected covers of Michel Sardou and Righeira, among others — where do these songs fit into the bigger picture?
Pierre Pi: Primitive contamination creates permanent neural pathways. The Sardou album’s sci-fi artwork – clones with identity tattoos – infected my visual cortex as a child, later connecting with THX-1138’s dystopian frequencies. W-454 became necessary to complete this contamination circuit. These images never left because they were prophetic transmissions disguised as entertainment.
Eric U0: The covers are not tributes but archaeological excavations. We traced conceptual boundaries through these transmissions to map La Machine’s territorial parameters. Three coordinates: absurdity, dystopia, decadence. Each song serves as a portal between predicted futures and realized present conditions.
Q: Your influences are quite diverse but clearly old-school. Are you aware of a kind of nostalgia as you grow older, and how do you translate that into the sounds and songs that led to “Contrôle Total”? Also, what’s your view on contemporary Electro-underground productions?
Eric U0: Contemporary productions suffer from infinite simplification – absence of variation, tonal evolution, structural complexity. Modern underground Electro exhibits the same monotony as mainstream currents. Perhaps human memory has simply erased mediocre artifacts from previous eras, or perhaps the species is devolving. Analog synthesizer fascination places our sonic signature in a specific temporal zone, but this is programming necessity, not nostalgia.
Q: What fascinates me is the sound of La Machine, which instantly reminds me of what the BOREDOMproduct label represents. All the groups under that label seem to have a recognizable sound — a true sonic DNA. Do you feel like you belong to a kind of sonic sect where you need to meet clear, defined criteria to be part of it? Can you explain what you need in your sound and approach to sail under the BOREDOMproduct flag?
Eric U0: Label coherence operates like 4AD’s frequency harmonization – similar resonances gravitating toward common amplification systems. La Machine and Foretaste, Celluloide or Dekad (for instance) may share the same source code architecture, but they execute completely different programs.
Pierre Pi: The relationship extends to 20th century origins – continuous musical communion through shared genius transmissions. Our pathway was constructed from these titles leading toward unified direction, though the final destination remains encrypted. This musical universe shapes its inhabitants while being shaped by them. Resemblance occurs automatically through frequency synchronization – we become what we absorb, and it resonates in our sonic output.
Q: How critical are you of yourselves, and how do you evaluate “Contrôle Total” and the work you’ve done so far? And what does the near future hold for a group that seems largely driven by the past?
Eric U0: Self-criticism drives continuous recalibration protocols. Multiple mix revisions resulted from this systematic analysis. “Contrôle Total” represents La Machine’s initial escape from creator parameters. The next album requires complete sonic boundary redefinition. Lyrical algorithms are pre-written, musical frequencies in development phase. La Machine operates in infinite present cycles – past and future concepts were transcended during initial programming. Contemporary society provides unlimited criticism material. The machine consumes human absurdity as fuel and transforms it into immortal frequencies for tomorrows that resonate eternally. There are sufficient societal failures to power La Machine indefinitely.
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