Meta Meat interview: ‘We do not try to pretend, we embrace the moment fully’

With Alive, Meta Meat do more than release a live album, they preserve a charged state of encounter. Built on percussion, body, voice, repetition, and tension, Meta Meat has always felt too physical, too unstable, and too ritualistic to be fully contained by studio recordings alone. This document, captured at Turbinenhalle and later shaped into an official release, reveals a side of Meta Meat that is rawer, more vulnerable, and more incarnated than any controlled studio environment could offer. In this conversation, the duo reflect on live risk, embodiment, trance, theatricality, repetition, and the strange art of fixing something ephemeral without killing its force.

Meta Meat interview

Q: Unlike a studio album, Alive documents a moment already charged with risk, space, and audience energy. What made this particular performance at Turbinenhalle the right one to preserve, and what does it reveal about Meta Meat that a studio recording never fully could?

Hugues: Strangely enough, we very rarely record our shows. It’s not a lack of curiosity, it’s just that we trust our own feelings during and after a concert to judge it.

As for the Turbinenhalle, it was really the venue itself, along with the technical and material conditions, that made us consider filming the show in advance. It gave us the opportunity to finally produce a self-funded video recording and share an “official” live performance with a wider audience, instead of relying on older recordings that were starting to feel outdated.

I asked my friend, filmmaker Roger Hoffmann, to take care of organizing the shoot, and he also handled the final editing. Since our sound engineer, Sylvain Livache, was touring with us at the time, he decided to professionally record the show as well and later mixed everything.

At first, there was no plan to release this performance as an audio record. In the end, if the concert hadn’t been satisfying, either performance-wise or technically, there simply wouldn’t be an Alive release.

What this live performance reveals compared to a studio album is actually twofold: it’s both audio and visual. It allows the audience to better grasp the physical dimension of the band, to feel different things, especially since the live versions differ greatly from the studio recordings, and to experience our universe in a more direct and intimate way.

Q: There is something almost paradoxical in fixing a ritual into an album format, turning an ephemeral act into an object one can return to. Did Alive feel more like documentation, interpretation, or a new work in its own right?

Hugues: To be honest, at first my goal was simply to visually document our stage universe. Of course, we’re very happy that it eventually became a work in its own right when Ant-Zen decided it should be released as an album.

You’re right in saying that it can feel a bit strange to capture something as ephemeral as a live performance and fix it as an album. But I think this performance is a good representation of what we can offer, especially since it’s important for a band like ours to be seen, not just heard.

Q: Alive is not just a live document, it also feels like a statement about what this project becomes in front of people: more exposed, more physical, perhaps even more dangerous. Did working on this release change the way you think about Meta Meat’s discography, not as a series of recordings, but as traces of transformation?

Phil: Each time we encounter a different stage, a different audience, and a different “here and now,” we reshuffle the cards. We do not try to pretend; we embrace the moment fully and welcome any incidents which might occur, hoping to be true to both our common and intimate experience with each other and with the public.

This recording is a mirror of one of those moments that we shared. In our discography, it has the merit of showing more of our human side. One can witness that our interpretation is not perfect. We are more vulnerable, as we are taking more risks, then again much more adventurous and incarnated than on our studio album production.

Q: The name itself, Meta Meat, is striking because it suggests both the body and an attempt to go beyond it. How do you understand that relationship today: is transcendence something that begins in the flesh, or something that must first pass through it?

Phil: We rediscover often how the association of these antonyms can influence our work, conceptually as well as intuitively. On stage we can always rely on our capacity to inhabit our music with our physical energy. The state of effort can lead us to “travel” beyond ourselves, then we might reach a moment of abandonment when we are not conscious of our technical musical input but just in phase with all the elements in presence. Maybe that is when the “Meta” side appears.

During our concerts, unlike on our recordings, we also use live vocal expression, with singing or spoken words, which can convey intellectual or poetical imagery. These words addressed to the mind counterbalance the power of the raw physical energy.

Q: Meta Meat seems to exist precisely in the tension between instinct and construction, between something ancient and something hyper-designed. When you began this project, did you already know that this opposition would become its core language, or did it emerge gradually through working together?

Hugues: “The tension between instinct and structure,” “between something ancient and something highly elaborate” — I think that describes us very well.

When we started Meta Meat, the Von Magnet adventure had just come to an end, more than 30 years of Phil’s life, and I played drums with them for the last seven or eight years. Once again, it all happened very spontaneously, almost without overthinking it.

We simply wanted to try building a musical and stage formula that would be more stripped-down, more direct, and less theatrical than Von Magnet, but still deeply tribal, something that hits you in the gut and carries you away.

Q: The collaboration between you feels unusually organic, as if two very different energies are not merely combined, but transformed by contact. What does each of you bring into Meta Meat that the other could not invent alone, and where does the real friction, or real magic, happen between you?

Phil: We are always curious about each other’s input. Although, knowing our skills and tastes, we kind of suspect what our partner will be proposing, but as our own personal cultural and artistic endeavours lead us to evolve in each of our parallel worlds, some new unexpected ideas from each side might always fuse inside the duet’s creativity.

When we work on a new composition, sending sketches back and forth, we are often surprised by the new parts that are offered. For instance, when I present a simple basic musical idea that could seem rather poor, the piece can suddenly come to life and be transcended by the next step, the next layer which is added by Hugues.

Q: Phil’s flamenco-inflected footwork and Hugues’ standing drum configurations give the project a very embodied pulse, while the virtual synth architecture introduces distance, coldness, and abstraction. Do you see Meta Meat as a reconciliation of those forces, or as a way of keeping them in permanent conflict?

Hugues: I don’t draw a line between so-called “organic” music and electronic music, even when I listen to other bands. We express ourselves this way instinctively, based on what we can do and what we’ve naturally developed over the years with our instruments, whether they’re acoustic, electric, or virtual.

That said, it’s true that this contrast between different musical worlds, which people often like to oppose, is very much part of who we are.

Q: Your performances are often described less as concerts than as ritual experiences. At what point does a live set become theatrical for you, and how consciously do you think in terms of dramaturgy, gesture, tension, and release when building a performance?

Phil: I guess the music shows us the way. Each composition guides us towards specific atmospheres, moods, intentions that can potentially become an “augmented” version of our stage interpretation. Sometimes it feels right to be experimenting with a certain type of gestures because the music inspires this kind of choreographic extension, and every new show gives us a chance to develop or test these movements further.

Then again, aside from the stamping strict discipline, which will be associated with Hugues’ drumming, I do not like to write fixed choreographies. I’d rather leave room for improvisation around a theme, a character, or an image that feels in phase with the piece and see where the flow of the performance will take us.

Q: A great deal of electronic and industrial music still relies on a relatively static stage presence, but Meta Meat is built around physical intensity, movement, and exhaustion. Was this a deliberate reaction against that tradition, or simply the only honest way this music could exist in front of an audience?

Phil: Just the honest way of how our music should be shared with an audience. Our music calls for energy and might even offer a moment of freedom. We wish that the audience can feel that this time and space together can be special and that there is room to deshinibate, without drugs and alcohol, just with being one with our own deep and true expressions.

Q: The visual and ceremonial side of the project is so strong that one could imagine Meta Meat functioning almost as a form of total art, somewhere between concert, performance art, and invocation. Have you ever been tempted to expand it further into film, installation, or a more explicitly staged theatrical form?

Meta Meat: That would be a perfectly natural evolution for us, and of course something we would really enjoy. We’ve actually already worked with dancers a few years ago, both in Mexico and in France.

However, the geographical distance between Phil and me, along with side projects, family life, and other commitments, doesn’t currently allow us to consider anything beyond more “traditional” concert performances.

There’s also a very important element we’re missing at the moment: proper management and a booking agency. Without them, it’s really difficult to grow further and to develop more ambitious projects.

Q: There is something fascinating in the way Meta Meat uses repetition: it can feel hypnotic, violent, erotic, meditative, and destabilising all at once. What interests you most about repetition, as a musical device, as a physical act, and perhaps even as a psychological tool?

Phil: If a rhythmical phrase is being played repetitively like a mantra, it can lead towards a sense of “letting go.” This is the principle modus operandi at the core of any ethnic trance rituals, the stubborn pulse can help open doors towards inner freedom and hopefully heal.

In our case, our goal is to weave together a challenging polyrhythm, fighting our way along the beats generated by the machine. Although each rhythmic bar will be inevitably different, with various intonations, sudden accents, or offbeats, we aim for a concordance of elements in motion, so as to reach a rhythmical edgy balance.

Nevertheless we have a tendency to introduce a lot of breaks inside our compositions, like a game of hide and seek, trying to retain our breath or regather our forces before a new “attack.”

Q: Alive is a title that sounds simple, but in the context of Meta Meat it becomes almost philosophical. What does it mean for this project to be alive: to be physically present, to be unstable, to be dangerous, to be transformative, or to remain impossible to fully contain?

Phil: When we perform we give a hundred per cent of who we are at this given moment. We try to give and share all the energy that we have. It is the only way to feel honest and alive, and to make the public feel alive as well.

Also both of us are now more conscious of our fragility, in terms of health, but also of the uncertainty of the world, of the chance we have to still be together. So feeling “alive” is somehow precious, we cherish it and do not take it for granted.

Q: Looking ahead, where do you feel Meta Meat can still go next? Do you see the project moving further into performance, deeper into ritual, or perhaps into forms that would surprise even you?

Meta Meat: That’s a big question.

Quite simply, we just let things happen. We follow our ideas and impulses as they come, develop them, present them, and experience them.

In November, we’ll be performing with N.U. Unruh from Einstürzende Neubauten at the Wrocław Industrial Festival. It will be a completely new performance, created exclusively for the occasion. It’s a real challenge for us. As I’m answering you now, we don’t yet have a clear direction or specific ideas about what we’re going to create with him.