Noctule Sorix
http://www.myspace.com/noctulesorix
http://www.myspace.com/nsxproject
“I started to listen to music very young, and was quickly interested in bands like The Cure, Joy Division, Bauhaus… As soon as I started to play music, I wanted to build a band, and these influences were logically there.”, – recalls Noctule h., the found member of the French gothic/coldwave band Noctule Sorix. He got the real chance when he and his twin brother Mr. Fabb met the vocalist and the guitar player Zok, so they three took a strong background of the band, involving some other musicians as well and released their first demo in 1995. Soon after that the band lost the drummer and the guitar player, but got another one, Jerome AD, who was also the leader of the band, called “Drama of the Sphere”. In this line-up the band recorded its second demo, called “Sophia”, which got some success in small French “cold” magazines. But shortly afterwards Zok decided to leave the band. “At the early beginning, we were up to 6 people in the band. It was too much and we knew it, but it was a kind of fun and we enjoyed it. But at a moment the two brothers Noctule h. and Mr Fabb wanted to make the music they like and the band began to explode. Some people left but I didn’t because we were listening to the same type of music, at least with Mr Fabb. Even if it wasn’t the same bands, it was all close to the same style. Then Jerome AD joined the band. After some session together, I left the band because I wasn’t comfortable with the Jerome AD’s way to make music. I wasn’t happy with that, but since he seemed to perfectly fit as a guitarist I thought it will be more profitable for the band. Anyway, it was him or me, and since nobody seemed to have any problem with his behavior, that was me”, Zok explains. The band had to keep up working without the frontman, so they changed their sound to a more electro one and released the third demo, called “Troisieme enfer” in 1997, after which they felt themselves ready enough for an entire album. The album, called “Joa Slova” appeared in 1999 and consisted of five “Troisieme enfer” songs and six new ones. This album, with brilliant female vocals of another Drama of the Spheres member Mary was considered as “Female Batcave” and “Melodic Goth” while Noctule h. calls it darkwave. Well, it must be said that in comparison with this release many current fashionable obscure bands will feel themselves kids. “Joa Slova” is dance music, but it’s a dance of hysteria, dance on the peak of despair. However, this musical direction hasn’t had its development for Noctule Sorix. The line up of “Joa Slova” split shortly after the album was released. But the twins didn’t want to give up, and they offered Zok to return. Zok, who rejected the style the band took when he left (“some of my ideas appear on Joa Slova, but in a so dark way that a clown could kill himself after hearing one single track”), decided to accept the offer. The next album, directed by Noctule h. and Mr Fabb, was out in 2000 under the title “Sweet Asylum?”. In this album electro backgrounds still took their place, but the general mood has been changed as it could be expected, it became a kind of mystical melancholia with cold and pensive Zok’s vocals. This album actually can be described as “gothic (not goth) coldwave”.
Noctule h. comments: “It is a transition album with few lyrics, but two tracks that remains what we can call our hits: “Blood” and “Agonie”. It was my favorite for a long time because I made it almost all alone with my brother. Definitely the most emotional”. But very shortly after the album was recorded, global changes waited the band. Zok recalls that period: “We met again with Mr Fabb and Noctule h. We agreed that Noctule Sorix should have a real voice on the songs instead of just voices far away. Many projects were running, a new album was coming, and another one in mind, probably a double, it was really a great meeting and I will always remember it. I remember it because it was a Monday in March 2000, and on Thursday, Mr Fabb died. It was a tremendous shock for me. Just at the beginning of something new we had to face some kind of end. Noctule h. built Sweet Asylum on this end, with all the material left. And then we started Noctule Sorix as we know it today, even if it evolves we work the same way since then”. So in spite of the fact that the co-founder member and just a very close to the band person was gone, the band didn’t split. Noctule h. :” I would not speak about the decease of my brother Mr Fabb in 2000, I would simply say that the fact he was gone made me sad a lot and I found very difficult to imagine continuing this group which I created with him. It is Zok and Dieter. G who made start the band again at the end of 2000. We understood each other very well, so at the beginning of our collaboration we found our marks fast. I simply think that we were happy to work together on something that corresponded to us. Of course, there was some small catches between us and some arbitration from time to time, but it is the case in all bands”. So the band got its new voice with two EPs, following the second album, “Chrysalide Child” (2001) and “Mr. Brown” (2002). This period can actually be called the beginning of what Noctule Sorix is now. In this period the band got a very good guitar player, Dieter G., who added very touching pop coldwave sounds to the general “light” melancholic approach which was kept. “Chrysalide Child” reflects what the band in this period was very well with all its “things”. “Mr. Brown”, in turn, has unexpected more electro backgrounds, and though Noctule h. calls it “close to what the band expected”, personally I find it a step back and a quite boring thing as well, even though it’s short. So, after these two quite contradictory, but at the same time, promising releases, only fall or success could be expected. And it was success with a touching pop coldwave masterpiece, called “Zygene de la Filipendule”. To start with, this album lasts more than 70 minutes, but that doesn’t make it boring. Listener can notice “I suppose I spend pretty much time listening to this album”, but it won’t cause a feeling “so when they’ll finally finish”. Quite unexpected Japanese anime design is perfectly combined with music and lyrics. In spite of the fact that the subjects of Noctule Sorix messages aren’t that new, the way it is played and reflected really makes sense of primacy and sincerity. This greatly balanced mixture of dark pop and coldwave seems as the band’s peak, which, without doubts, can be hardly reached again. Unfortunately, Dieter G., due to feeling himself tired of musical life, left the band so fast after the release that the band even didn’t have an opportunity to present the album live. So the band remained the duo of Noctule h. and Zok, as it still is today. Though, the band also has Franky Hillman who helps with soundcheck and Dieter G. occasionally appears as a “guest” musician. As it was said, it seemed really hard to do a new “Zygene de la Filipendule” and due to facts that very talented guitar player left, and there also was no reason for repetitions of themselves, the band just stepped forward in the direction they wanted to. The next and the latest for the moment band’s release is an EP, called “Nonsense” (2007). The changes begin from the design, which is still anime, but this yellow alien doesn’t seem a right person to cause some dark senses as it was in the last album, so the music of the EP confirms the cover. Musically the band changed the “label” to more danceable and “light”, though if a one looks deeper, he will find there those Noctule Sorix as they were in past. Noctule h. comments the EP: “It is globally more rock but also more electronic to compensate the loss of Dieter G. It was long and difficult and came after many tries. Zok and I worked hard to find what music could fit with the new lineup made of only the two of us. The result is interesting and gave us the will to make some concerts”. Currently, the band plan to make a new album. Noctule h.: “Today I would say that the band makes a kind of electronic cold wave. But the next album will not really have a style. It will mix tracks from new wave, rock, pop, techno or experimental music. It is just good like that I think. We make a music which is the «Noctule Sorix Music»”. So, the only thing we can do is to wait and see what the next album will show us.
One more aspect to speak about is the label “N-SX Project”, which was created by the band in 2000 as a space for the band’s releases. When Zok and Noctule h. were asked about their musical activity, they many times underlined that Noctule-Sorix is a kind of family, so, due to it, it can be said that N-SX project allowed this family to get some relatives. The first not-Noctule Sorix release of N-SX project was the EP “Good time is forever gone” by electro-pop band “Virus 37” Although this project could much better fit a synth gothic party than a post-punk one, it doesn’t seem as if the project was done as a “commercial” follower of some fashionable bands. When the EP recording was in process, Zok offered his participation in the project, because it hasn’t had any vocalist, so he sung on two songs and it worked out really well, so the release seems to be fit the label. Zok comments: “Even if “Virus 37” found some difficulties to exist later, this experience was really very rewarding for everybody. “Virus 37” did not interest mass media with this EP, but, paradoxically, they sold more CD’s than Noctule Sorix’s EP. The band would also like to record an album, but nothing is still in progress at this day. I do not know if the members of the group still play the same music? We do not often talk about that even if we all are close friends. It was really fun to sing on “Virus 37” songs. It made me change my habits and I have to find something special and different from “Noctule Sorix”. It took time to finally find the way I will sing on it, but I am quite proud of it some years after”. But there also was one more release of not Noctule Sorix music. In 2008 the label released it’s currently latest release, the EP of the French band “Dorcel”, called “SINS”. “Dorcel” was born in 2003, and “SINS” is their second EP after the EP “Closer” which is now available for free download on Zorch Factory Records. Hard to explain the style “Dorcel” plays. It is exactly of the same family as Noctule Sorix, enough pop, enough wave and enough dark, but whereas Noctule Sorix pay much attention to combination of electro and guitar sound, and their music can be described as “thoughtful”, “Dorcel is a more guitar sounded band (though, some electro additions take their place as well), and their music is more “dreaming” than “thoughtful”. Cyril, the band’s guitar player, says: “Well, we don’t really know where our place is. Dorcel is a melting of new-wave, pop and rock music. That’s why we call our music “pop-wave”! Some people think we play Cold Wave. Why not! But I don’t think it’s that radical. We’re somewhere in between. It’s a little bit difficult to define its own music and when we are composing, we don’t think about that… neither after, in fact”. So how did it happen, that “Dorcel” were signed by N-SX project? Noctule h. explains: ““Dorcel” made many concerts in Metz and I used to go see them live there. I liked very much their music which sounds very good live. After some time, I began seeing some of their members and we became friends. When I heard that they wanted to record and to realize an EP, I offered them to sign with N-SX Project. They recorded their songs in a studio in Paris. The result was really good and we produced the disc and assured promotion with N-SX Project label. Shortly after the release of the EP, the bass player left the band. They had to find quickly a new bass player to make sure they can make all the concerts which the group had to make for the promotion of the EP. They offered me to take the place of bass player provisionally. This is going to make one and a half year and more than 20 concerts and I am always here… I think that they do not search for a new bass player indeed … They are actually working on the writing of their first album. But composition is long and difficult. It is more difficult to work with four members that with two. So the instants of cogitation and doubts are more present than in “Noctule Sorix” for instance. The album should be ready before 2010. Wait and see …”. Cyril: “They just love music. So when they came to tell us they’d like to help us to produce Sins, the first question we asked was:»What do you want? Why would you do that?». And they go like:» We don’t want anything, we saw you on stage two times and we like your music. We want to help you to make it seriously.» That was the beginning. They’re really great! They don’t want to intervene on your music. They want Dorcel sounds like Dorcel does usually”. Currently the label has plans to keep up releasing the signed bands, but also to produce the first EP of another related band, “Batten”, and if it goes fine, to release a compilation of eastern French bands.
So there’s a small musical family in France, which can be called one of many as well as a unique one. These people love the music itself and their musical sincerity can cause no doubts. As it isn’t necessary to play pop music to be pop, it also doesn’t mean that you’re pop if you play pop music. So though N-SX project and its bands is about bands which have some pop elements in their music, the label itself can be called an underground one, as well as its bands, two of which (“Dorcel” and “Noctule Sirix”) have their own voices in the French coldwave universe, being enough dark, but having their own approach to it. Zok says: “Noctule Sorix, excepted for Joa Slova, never ended in some dark goth cliches with a voice coming from the graves, eating violet bats and crucifying purple cats on the crosses of despair. And I am glad of that, or I would have been out of it for a long time”. I suppose, these words can be used to everything, what is related to N-SX Project.
Pall ‘Nattsol’ Zarutskiy
‘Grave Jibes Fanzine’
