The twelfth album “D’une Pierre Deux Tombes” by the  French formation Opera Multi Steel has been composed by the original line-up. Franck Lopez, Patrick L. Robin and Catherine Marie set up the band in 1983. “D’Une Pierre Deux Tombes” released by Wave Records is a very intimate work about the loss of the members mothers. Poetry and melancholic Dark-Wave & Dark-Pop music have been merged together creating a poignant, posthumous, tribute.

(Courtesy by Inferno Sound Diaries)

Q: Opera Multi Steel is now active for nearly forty years! How do you look back at this amazing adventure and what’s the importance of Opera Multi Steel in your life?

Franck L: If we had been told forty years ago that we would still be active today, I am not sure we would have believed it. It was very difficult for us to find a place in France in the beginnings of the band, we were considered too atypical compared to many formations of the Indie movement of the time and we had to confine ourselves to self-production on our own label created for the occasion and on which we released our first albums up to “Stella Obscura”.

This one marked the end of the group’s first period. Recognition therefore came later thanks to a Brazilian label (completely unexpected!) which, after discovering our first works, released a compilation (“Days Of Creation”) which made us known there and which in the process produced the album “Histoires De France”. From this, curiously, the interest aroused by the group ends up returning to Europe. Since that time, support has continued to grow and apart from Wave Records, which has trusted us from the start, we can also mention the labels Triton (Germany) Meidosem Records (France), Dark Entries (USA), Infrastition (France), VOD (Germany)… which either through re-edition, compilations or production of original albums have enabled us to gradually broaden our visibility among the alternative scene. We are very grateful to them.

Catherine M: After all this time, if Opera Multi Steel still exists, it is simply because it is part of our lives. We can therefore assume that it will live as long as we have the strength and the creative energy to make it live and that the precious support of those who have long adhered to our aesthetics will continue.

Patrick L. R: Since I was a child, I’ve spent an important quantity of moments listening to the music through radio-shows, vinyl records and TV networks and I quickly decided to make music of my own. Because of this, Opera Multi Steel has always and will be definitely an important part of my life! Each moment of my existence since the beginning of the band has been rhythmed by its music and the flow of poetry I decided to write since the end of 1982 (the real beginning). I could not have imagined living without this meaning that gave me the possibility to stay really alive for forty years more. I swear and I promise to perform with this band until the end!

Q: How much of the ‘early’ Opera Multi Steel do you still recognize in your way of working, -writing, -lyrics and spirit today? And do you see contemporary bands reminding you to the ‘young’ Opera Multi Steel?

Franck L: Pretty hard to say. In fact, we have been composing and writing in the same way for all these years. At the beginning, we were probably more minimal than now, both by choice or by force of circumstances, and we used a little bit of everything that came to our hands. We discovered drum machines and polyphonic synths with the greediness of children discovering their gifts at the foot of the Christmas tree. We were not all great technicians and we touched a little on everything. Unable to imitate those who influenced us, we had no choice but to turn our shortcomings into a kind of strength. This is the way the group was born around an Elex synth, a Casio VL1 and a TR 606 rhythm machine, joined to a recorder and an old cheap Gibson copy bass.

Nothing has really changed since then, except that our sound has grown a lot and it’s more powerful. The whole thing sounds less minimalist. On the other hand, we have remained faithful to the sounds which rocked the birth of the band and which are the immediately recognizable mark of Opera Multi Steel. They are sometimes no longer played on the original instruments as at the time, but through various softwares. Other change, as time goes by, our lyrics have become a bit sadder and disabused that they were in the first years of the band. But it could be too long to explain…

In fact, among the groups currently claiming to belong to the Post-Punk/ Minimal-Wave label, which is ultimately very broad, we hardly find any equivalent to what we were, except here and there in the use of very connoted sounds which were our daily life at the time. Not sure that we have been emulators for some other younger musicians but we are not the best placed to say so. On the other hand, it is quite pleasant to note that groups that have not lived through the era that saw us born seek to rediscover and reinterpret it through their own work.

Q: Your new album “D’une Pierre deux Tombes” is an appropriated title for the concept or main theme of this work dealing with the loss of your mothers. Do we have to understand the album as part of your mourning process? And can you give us more details about the content?

Patrick L. R : Yes of course. Personally, I’s been a way to achieve the work of bereavement started since my birth (father and grandfather died when I was just one) then grandmother, then no mother. I had been prepared to that fatal eventuality so when my mother died, it did not surprise me. Rather than a real sadness, it gave me the very part of my life. I could imagine all those people assembled in a kind of Sky, maybe Heaven? all together now and waiting for us, the next ones on the list. This gave me the inspiration when I created the lyrics of this last album and the strength to the three of us to turn this mourning into music. Don’t know if they can listen to us, wherever they are now but the releasing of this album was for us the way to pay tribute to what they were.

Q: I can imagine your way of working has maybe been different because of Covid-19 restrictions. How did you manage this situation? What have been the different stages to achieve this work?

Franck L: In fact, Covid-19 did not really affect the development of this last album which was already composed, recorded and mixed just before the first confinement was proclaimed here in France. During the lockdown period we refined the graphic design of the album remotely with Hernan Czauski, Brazilian designer who made the cover from images that we had provided to him. Normally, we would have done the same anyway!!! We also produced the videos of the album remotely while exchanging images with Lexx Grave of Wave Records to the development of three clips of the album (“L’Après-Mort”, “Cimeterre” and “Jardin Du Souvenir”). The very first one, directed by French videographer Isthmaël Baudry on the title “L’Annonce” had been carried out before the health crisis. However, the release of the album has been postponed several times following the cumulative delays in the pressing factories due to the closures imposed during the health crisis and to think about them during each step of the creating process of “D’une Pierre Deux Tombes”

Q: After all these years working together there must be a true chemistry between you all. What makes this chemistry and what’s the input of each member? And how does it happen when there’re decision to make?

Franck L: Since this last album (“D’une Pierre Deux Tombes”) we have returned to our original trio formation (Catherine, Patrick and me) as we were at the time of our very first album “Cathédrale”. It is not wrong to speak about alchemy as it always seems so easy to compose and create together as soon as the three of us meet in the rehearsal room. No more ego problems for a very long time now, everyone brings their stone to the songs and the Opera Multi Steel-‘style’ is so integrated in each of us that everything has become over the years of great fluidity and great naturalness to the point that we no longer even have to censor each other to obtain a compromise. It practically happens by itself.

The involvement of each member is now well defined. I develop a large number of rhythmic patterns that we select together to know which ones will serve as bases for our future songs. Patrick on his side always has a large number of texts at his disposal (he writes all the time). From these two elements, lyrics and rhythms prepared in advance, we work out the pieces together, each finding their own instrumental or vocal lines generally played or sung by the one who created them. It is very rare that a four-hour session does not lead to the already very accomplished structure of a song. Chemistry, that’s the good word!

Q: I noticed your label Wave Records has released a box featuring the works you released as O Quam Tristis which was a side-project between Opera Multi Steel and Collection D’arnell-Andrea. I always saw a connection between both bands for the sound, influences and dark poetry. How do you look back at this experience and why did this project stop? What’s the next plan for Opera Multi Steel?

Franck L: Yes, Wave Records recently released a beautiful box set (“The Complete Works”) containing the whole 4 albums originally produced by “O Quam Tristis” on Palace Of Worms. This integral is accompanied by a bonus-CD containing rare titles, covers and various remixes produced by the band between 2000 and 2008. O Quam Tristis is not strictly speaking a side-project between Collection D’arnell-Andrea and Opera Multi Steel. Carine Grieg (Collection D’arnell-Andrea) had already participated as a vocalist in Opera Multi Steel albums like “Eternelle Tourmente” and “Une Idylle En péril” and I myself have been a Collection D’arnell-Andrea bass player for many years already. When we decided to set up this Electro-Medieval project largely based on female voices, it was only natural that we called her.

There is indeed a link between Opera Multi Steel and Collection D’arnell-Andrea that now goes back a very long way. This link undoubtedly goes beyond our poetic and musical styles which are all relatively distant: Dark-Wave / Cold-Wave for Collection D’arnell-Andrea and Dark-Pop / Minimal-Wave for Opera Multi Steel. Beyond the differences in style, we should probably look more in the care that we both bring to the particular aesthetics of our respective projects. It is probably also an old friendship story born around common artistic inclinations.

Catherine M: We carried out the O Quam Tristis project during a break of several years in the activity of Opera Multi Steel. It was an opportunity to explore more deeply our love for Medieval music and the Latin language on Electro rhythms. Towards the end of the 2000s a renewed interest in French New/Cold-Wave emerged. Several labels have offered to reissue the first works of Opera Multi Steel and the Brazilian label Wave Records has put us back in the saddle following the publication of the double compilation “Parachèvement De l’Esquisse”. So we focused on our original project again and we haven’t stopped creating with Opera Multi Steel since then. The O Quam Tristis parenthesis was therefore definitively closed with the album “Les Chants Funestes”. However, it’s not forbidden to think that this side-project may have belatedly influenced the way we now arrange the titles of recent Opera Multi Steel-albums, in particular the latest and most certainly the next ones.

Concerning Opera Multi Steel plans, we now have more than 20 new tracks ready to be mixed. Time will tell what they will become.

Inferno Sound Diaries

I have been working for over 30 years with Side-line as the main reviewer. My taste is eclectic, uncoventional and I prefer to look for the pearls, even if the bands are completely unknown, thus staying loyal to the Side-Line philosophy of nurturing new talents.

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“Cathédrale” was the very first studio album of Opéra Multi Steel, originally released in 1985. Based on sounds of nowadays mythical analog synths and rhythm boxes (Elex E, Roland TR606, Yamaha MR 10, Casio VL 1 among others…) the band mixed these electronic ingredients with acoustic instruments such as guitars or flutes and powerful melodic vocals. The mix has sometimes been qualified as Medieval Minimal Wave and is audible throughout the band’s catalogue.

This album includes several classics of the band, “Cathédrale” of course but also “Un Froid seul”, “Frantz est mort” or “Du Son des Cloches”.

This reissue is the opportunity to rediscover those songs in their original versions on the medium that saw them born, packed in a sleeve designed in order to respect the atmosphere developed at the time of original release. The special 35th anniversary edition, was mastered by Marcelo Gallo (Pitch Yarn of Matter) and comes in 2 different versions on vinyl, ultra clear with black splatters and ultra clear with black marbles.

All of the version come in limited quantities of 100 copies each.

Check out these very old official music vdeos.

Bernard - Side-Line Staff

Chief editor of Side-Line – which basically means I spend my days wading through a relentless flood of press releases from labels, artists, DJs, and zealous correspondents. My job? Strip out the promo nonsense, verify what’s actually real, and decide which stories make the cut and which get tossed into the digital void. Outside the news filter bubble, I’m all in for quality sushi and helping raise funds for Ukraine’s ongoing fight against the modern-day axis of evil.

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Opera Multi Steel can be considered as truly ‘veterans’ from this scene. Set up in 1983 by the French trio Franck Lopez, his brother Patrick L. Robin and Catherine M. Marie the band started releasing their music on the good-old cassette format. Later on they released vinyls and CD’s while today you can find their work at digital platforms. Their band feels like a safety home where they can accomplish their very own music style and their taste and passion for literature, poetry, paintings ao artistic formats. They last year released their newest album “Au Fief Des Rémanences” on Meidosem Records. It also was an opportunity to speak about Franck Lopez and Patrick Lopez Robin about the past and the present.

(Courtesy by Inferno Sound Diaries)

Q: Opera Multi Steel started in the early 80s. Even today the 80s remain a real reference for artists and music lovers. What did this decade evoke to you and how did you see yourself as band and musicians evolving throughout the years?

Franck L: The 80s will remain for us the decade that saw us setting up this band. After the 70s, dominated by symphonic- and progressive rock that gave birth to virtuoso musicians, the arrival of punk and his sudden death combined with the democratization of the drum machines and synths injected a new breath to rock and pop. This fact uninhibited many people who could, without being expert in their instrument, engage themselves in music and composition. We were part of this generation. Thanks to the latitude from that time our musical and literary imagination could emerge at the surface without any censorship or a specific, increased musical knowledge. The emergence of new creative artists initiating new styles, still present today, was a great stimulant for us. After all, if they could do it, why don’t we?

Electro-pop, synth-pop, cold-wave, new-wave and so on come from this decade; this era was not monolithic stylistically speaking. The fact that we are still here today, besides that creating is vital for us, is the proof that the styles initiated in the 80s were constantly rediscovered in the following decades and that the audience managed how to renew itself. Therefore many groups born very recently can claim this aesthetic, that’s the proof of a flagrant vivacity. Over the years, Opera Multi Steel has evolved together with the influence of emerging musics without losing the singularity that draws in the sound of some vintage instruments; a way of making songs undoubtedly very eighties-like mixed with everything we have been able to digest over the years and throughout our human respective experiences, which are not without any influence on our lyrics and compositions.

Q: Opera Multi Steel went through several breaks, the members got involved in different side projects, but in the end you’re still alive and kicking. What has been the impact of it all on your music and the newest album “Au Fief Des Rémanences”?

Franck L: We indeed have been involved in various projects outside Opera Multi Steel, but we have always returned to the original band despite some judgments that we never considered final. Some projects have even been run concurrently with Opera Multi Steel. In fact, it is the O Quam Tristi project that mobilized us most during the 2000s because we still made four albums under this name and all Opera Multi Syeel members without exception were part of this heavenly medieval electro act under various pseudo names.

Apart from that I also sang in the Franco-Brazilian electro pop band 3 Cold Men with which I recorded three albums. These two projects were the most engrossing ones but, together or separately we have collaborated or still collaborate in many other formations (Collection d’Arnell Andréa, Thy Violent Vanities, Seven Sobs Of A Sorrowful Soul, Tiramist …) These experiences outside Opera Multi Steel are for us the opportunity to deepen styles that we only touch on with our heterogeneous group. These different experiences came to feed the evolution of the group, but without altering its deep roots. That said, the mix of electric- and acoustic instruments was already present in the beginning of the band as well as our love for folk- or ancient music (Middle Ages, Renaissance). We can also find them all in our last album. “Au Fief des Rémanences” includes very pop songs, very dancing ones, some others more oriented towards introspection, some darker ones, some cold-wave like, others more folk… We are ‘multiple and various’, the band’s music is the reflection of this diversity without any form of restraint. What binds the pieces between them is the treatment and use of particular instruments that we have never really abandoned over the years and albums (Elex keyboard, Casio VL1, bass pedals, recorders etc …) and the very special lyrics that Patrick writes in his so special style.

Q: The title of the album is quite intriguing and dark, but what’s the deeper meaning of the title and the lyrical themes running through the album?

Patrick L. Robin: At the beginning of this Century, only a few days went by without the media echoing technological innovations of all kinds. Occultism and witchcraft are two particularly affected areas, often wrongly.

To restore the balance and cope with the noises that run, we needed to reclassify all this and relativize the phenomenon or rather those unexplained phenomena with sounds that move and thus with chants that speak in a fief protecting these metaphysical values which come and go, go back and come back like past like recurring membership and which still are perceptible from Before to Now and from Today to Tomorrow (Remnants). Hence the title of this album.

Once open those different doors of the Below, we have compiled eight ones that correspond affectively to our metaphysical concerns towards the Hereafter. Each one of this title composes a part of the album: “Les Litanies”, somber stubbornness that, by a trance or beliefs effects, can lead to the inner revolution and perhaps to the madness of adoration in a “Chapelle Sixteen” or various small churches that are often the subject of “Représailles” from the biggest ones.

Fortunately for us, no need to bury ourselves in caves where to scratch the walls. We can, thanks to the artistic genius of the great painters, contemplate and then illuminate to surpass ourselves and finally pour into the wonder where we can find “Solutions De Félicité” in the absence of anything else.

Affect is a way of relaying our visions with the help of “L’ Emotionnel” which rises in arrows among various societies with all the upheaval that it may cause, rightly or wrongly (unreasonably elsewhere), leading us unknowingly towards our last home where to be chastised (“Le Châtiment Ultime”). Thus, redirected to an imaginary and morbid purgatory, we will be able to get out of it or not, especially if we manage to avoid the Fatal Judgment, “Le Coup De Grâce”. We could, then re-illuminated, stay on our guard in a stronghold under a high spiritual supervision.

Q: I always have seen Opera Multi Steel as a ‘total artistic concept’; it’s much more than only the passion and love for music and lyrics, but there always have been references to painters, sculptors, poets etc…. What means this artistic exposure to you and more especially the ‘artistic freedom’? And do you think artistic freedom has some limits?

Franck L: The group is not only for us a way to expel our fantasies, our neuroses and psychoses more or less well digested. We do not miss to use it for that through our texts in particular!

But Opera Multi Steel is also the big patchwork of everything we are passionate about in our everyday life outside of music. The covers and jackets of our discs reflect our inclinations for symbolist-, mystical- or Sulpician painting, among others; our songs are dotted with references in the form of sound effects that evoke near or far artists or eras of which we are nostalgic, but also events or situations that only make sense for us and that ends up as a kind of sound memory album with which we try to share our universe which can sometimes seem hermetic to many people.

The different labels that have trusted us have always left us free of our artistic choices. Effectively artistic freedom has its limits which are those of cutting us off from an audience that could not understand the meaning of our texts, who could sometimes find our songs too different from each other by their style or who think that we do not enough obey to the precise dogmas of certain musical movements or who could be allergic to our iconoclastic imagery. It is true that by embracing here and there all genres that please us we end up either with a non-style, or with a too marked style that could cut us off from a wider audience. But the main thing is to make us happy, to have fun and to give with each of our albums some good time to all those who apprehend our music as a ‘total artistic concept’, to use your expression, or simply as a ‘quite’ normal band providing more or less pop songs or more or less dark tracks… Music has never been our way of getting rich, it is our way of feeling alive. This is probably the main reason why Opera Multi Steel has survived the years.

Q: “Au Fief Des Rémanences” appears to me as one of your most ‘electronic’ works to date although still featuring the use of ‘authentic’ instruments. What did you try to accomplish sound-wise and where do you place this album in the band’s discography?

Franck L: I do not know if this album is really the most electronic one. It depends from the point of view. We have always used ‘authentic’ electronic instruments (TR 606, TR 808 mainly) to realize our rhythm tracks, our synths being also electronic in some kind of way… Now we use a lot more sampled sounds, but we remain faithful to the instruments that we used at the beginning of the group even if we do not use them as physical units. Perhaps it is easier to judge this situation for someone outside the band. One thing is for sure, we are huge fans of ‘electro-pop’ music even if it not always an explicit way in our sound.

Covenant or VNV Nation both are part of our flagship groups although they’re not from our generation and their music is much punchier than ours. The fact that we always use acoustic instruments (guitars, recorders among others …) tempers our electro inclinations, but perhaps we will slightly move to something more ‘radical’ in our future works. Who knows?

Q: I already evoked the ‘darkness’ running through your composition, but it often feels that authentic it rather appears to be ‘torment’ and ‘despair’, but still a kind of ‘therapy’ to exorcize internal demons. What does music and especially this band really stands for?

Patrick L. Robin: It is an “Initiatory journey in the land of Music and Magic” (Norma Bowl in Paranormal Sciences Institute Review 1983). This is indeed what makes me think your question contains already  the answers that I will briefly raise and summarize, in spite of all  false ideas of what we think or would like to convey … The “Curious”, the “Worrying”, the “Irrealist” are often found inside our lyrics.

‘Darkness’ and ‘Despair’ are indeed recurring and allow us to adhere to the walls of a well which we would like to reach the bottom, to raise the head, to raise the eyes towards the Sky, to help us to redirect our existence and why not the listener’s ones who would gain by this introspection a kind of mind therapy and to wake up then as transformed. We would not speak of true exorcism, but rather of dispossession of loose ideas, commonplaces and standards that only clutter the eyes and ears of the non-blind and the non-deaf that we are, insensitive to the point of not wanting to read between the lines and unable to change our point of view when it’ s still time! Alas, this well is without bottom and we find ourselves  facing the “Appearances Of The Inaudible”, “The Remanences Of The Invisible” because they goes hand in hand. This self-proclamation remains the best solution, final or terminal for a new life, a new ‘elsewhere’ towards infinity and beyond!!!

But all of this remains fundamentally ver-ti-gi-nous!

Inferno Sound Diaries

I have been working for over 30 years with Side-line as the main reviewer. My taste is eclectic, uncoventional and I prefer to look for the pearls, even if the bands are completely unknown, thus staying loyal to the Side-Line philosophy of nurturing new talents.

www.side-line.com

“Reminiscences” is the title of a brand new studio album by the French coldwave band Opera Multi Steel (OMS). Brand new? The album holds a a selection of 8 tracks of the band revisited in a punchier and more electro style compared to the original versions which were recorded in the combo’s usual style mixing medieval and renaissance elements in electronic music.

The album will be out as a picture vinyl right here.

The Bourges based act was formed in 1983 by Franck Lopez, Patrick L. Robin and Catherine Marie. The band is

Not only the music was revisited, the band also fully re-recorded the vocals using sounds and historical instruments cherished by the band since its beginnings: TR 808, TR 606, TB 303, Elex, Casio VL-1, recorders, medieval choirs and various samples.

The tracks on “Réminiscences” are taken from albums such as “Cathédral”, “A Contre-sens”, “Les Douleurs de l’Ennui”, “La Légende dorée” and even from the very first ever release of the project: the vinyl EP “Eponymous” from 1984.

Here’s an official video for the track “Les Sens”.

Bernard - Side-Line Staff

Chief editor of Side-Line – which basically means I spend my days wading through a relentless flood of press releases from labels, artists, DJs, and zealous correspondents. My job? Strip out the promo nonsense, verify what’s actually real, and decide which stories make the cut and which get tossed into the digital void. Outside the news filter bubble, I’m all in for quality sushi and helping raise funds for Ukraine’s ongoing fight against the modern-day axis of evil.

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