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For two years, my Bloody Valentine had let drawdle one of the most awaited albums of the times, pushing away the limits of our trust and our patience. Shut up (smoky) in a studio, feeding their extravagant idlers myth, the band became the reference as regards of intelligent noise, totally absent and yet omnipresent. End of the vacuum, the dazzling Loveless deals the cards again and sends the rock back to the labor. The nineties are starting here, in a controlled skid. Tommorrow will look like a big red guitar.
I always had an obsession, a subject that totally captivates me. For years, i was only interested in martial arts. Beteween 14 and 16 years old, I was completly immersed in the related philosophies. At this age, you're still looking for your way. Me, I had found a good direction. Thanks to martial arts, I was no longer the kid everyone was beating at school. Finally, I could defend myself and I was no longer afraid, the others left me alone for the first time. Me, I didn't want to beat anyone, all the violence that was sleeping in me was deported, it became a real way of life. I felt so good that i didn't want anymore to fall out with anyone, I was no longer afraid of the others, I knew that I could move them back without any violence, by impressing them with my calm ... The violence is only attractive when you're afraid. And, for the first time, I feared no one. At this age, there are great size differences in the school classes and the tallest ones always take advantage of this to terrorize the smallest ones. But then, i was no longer moving back in front of them, finally i was trusting in me, they were moving back. I learned a lot from this experience, I spent my time talking about it. We were a group of four or five, martial arts were our only subject of conversation. One of my pal had totally recovered the walls of his room with pictures of Bruce Lee, even the ceiling. Thanks to all this, I had become non-violent, I no longer had been implied in any fight. But three years ago, violence began to come up at the surface again, there has been some fights with bouncers, on tour. Fear had taken myself back, I reacted badly, I had become aggressive again when I should have stayed still. Nobody is aggressive in front of a calm person, it doesn't exist... On the other hand, violence is sure here, in our music. But it's not pointed at anyone. What I'd like - and I never succeed - is to let my guitar become a wild animal again. Like with Hendrix. Sometimes, you really have the feeling that his guitar totally gets away from him, that he is riding a mad beast. I admire this chaos.
Where does this fascination for the guitar as an object come from? You are producing one in close-up on the cover of Loveless, your new album.
They are the ones that provoke the music, far more than a keyboard. A pretty guitar makes you wanna play. On a keyboard, you feel that you are playing on a comsuption product, that it had been constructed for bad reasons. Everything that has been constructed en masse lacks beauty, soul ... A pretty guitar, with a pretty color, talks to you, it exists by itself. When you are playing, you're feeling that there is life, that something is happening. I could never compose on an horrible, produced on the assembly line guitar, I hate the reason of their existence itself.
NEVER saw the sun
It's ridiculous to spend two years on an album, don't you think? Yet, I didn't have the impression that we have been staying so long in the studio. These two years have been so vague, so fuzzy ... If you do absolutely nothing with your time, if you don't wake up, if you don't meet anyone, you lose all sense of reality. At the end, I didn't have any conscience of the time. I was working 14 hours in a row and I was collapsing, I was sleeping one day long... Everything was moving forward, the world, the music, and us we were making no headway, unable to move forward. What should have taken me half a day took me whole days. I was more and more tired, I was losing more and more time. Six months ago, I could only work three hours a day, my brain could not work like this long again. I was becoming depressed, we almost didn't see the light of the day for months. We spent our nights in the studio, days we were sleeping, I didn't feel very good. In this country, sleeping beteween 9AM and 4PM is enough for never seeing the sun (laugh) ....
My Bloody Valentine was very present on the scene, on the medias, before this two year stop. Didn't you feel some jealousy, some rage, being reduced to silence in such a way?
I had totally lost this spirit of competition until the last weeks... Sometimes the only fact to release a record that is better than the neighbor's is enough for my happiness, I like this little competition. During two years, it didn't interest me anymore, I was offside, I didn't want to know what was happening. Yet, i need to release records, to play live, i need the feedback of the crowd. After two years out of things, i needed to know. Because we are living withdrawn into ourselves, without having a single opinion from the outside.
Is it why you released two singles during these two years, to prove to the world that you were still there?
As we released Glider EP, a year and a half ago, we sincerely thought that the album would be out four months after. The same for Tremolo EP. We thought that we came at the end of our efforts, and six months later, we still didn't have moved.
Did you need to prove yourselves that the band was still alive ?
In a way, yes. Also, it allowed ourselves to have not to work on the album, to forget it in its spot. We completly deserted it during almost one year to record these two singles. I had to learn the work of sound engineer when we were in the studio, it had become necessary. I didn't want to have to deal with the studio's sound engineers any longer, they never understand us. You have to fight, it's crazy. In England, there are three kind of studios: the top-of-the-range ones, well equipped, expensive, efficient, pleasant. The rotten ones, cheap, and under-equipped. The worse ones are the middle-of-the-range studios. Nobody takes care of the maintenance, the technicians don't know how to use their machines. In view of the time we were spending to record, our label, Creation, preferred to rent one of these middle studios. They feared that after six months we would just have recorded the guitars. And that's probably true. We found ourselves in a vicious circle: we work slowly and so, we are renting bad conditions studios. As these studios are not high-performance, we work more and more slowly. But i've only got myself to blame. If I had promised to Alan (McGee, the boss of Creation) that I would do everything in a month, he would have rented the best studio. But I know that you can't rely on me.
Are you all of you four as slow as each other, or do you slow down the others ?
At the beginning, it didn't disturb them. But after a year and a half, they began becoming strange. The last six months have been very bizarre.... Me, I was permanently in the studio, often with Colm, the drummer. The two of us can do everything, we need nobody. Belinda and Debbie only come when they want to.
So you never prepare your songs in advance, you never record a demo at home ?
We took bad habits. We really have to be gotten with our back to the wall to work. In the studio, we've always managed to write songs. I was coming with a vague idea in the head, and everytime we pulled something out of it. I used to think that we owned a miracle recipe. An then, on this album, it didn't work. I managed to find the melodies, as easily as usual, but the rest didn't come. We went from disaster to disaster. We should have stopped, start again from new basis. But we persisted, we tried to overcome the obstacle in force... We'd never been in such a critical position. Then Colm felt sick, he couldn't play the drum anymore. Instead of leaving the studio for a few months, we stuck at it, we forced him to play, at all costs... When the moment of recording the guitars came, I was already exhausted, I felt totally burned, empty. But then, again, we have get one's head down, thinking that the inspiration would necessarily come back. Yet, at home, I used to find a lot of melodies. I was lying on the floor, I was taking the guitar, and I was playing while watching TV. I used to find sometimes twenty melodies a day. But once in the studio, i had to be serious, I couldn't keep these pieces of songs I was composing to have fun. On something as personal as an album, you can't allow yourself to steal, I don't see the interest of investing on a fake, a borrowing... I don't find a single motivation in doing that. Nothing is more inspiring than an idea that comes to you like that... If you are suspecting the origin of it, it becomes hollow, boring. Yet, I never looked for the originality at all prices. I know that everything comes from other music. It's like a language: in themselves, the words are neither new nor original. What really counts is the way you are placing them, your own way to build the sentence. All I want is to is to create my own language, my syntax. To be able to tell very different things in a language which is immediatly identifiable at the first hearing. Everything that's good in our music comes from the back of my brain. The problem is, what you find here (he bangs the back of his crane) is as well the inspiration as the memory. So I never know where the melodies come from.
The last time we interviewed you, you said you wanted to record fast, to not kill the spontaneity.
Unfortunately I still believe this. In the future, we are going to to spend months to work on the songs, to refine them, in order to be able to record them very fast. I don't want for anything in the world to find myself back in a studio for so long. For the previous album, Isn't anything, we had spent only seven weeks in studio. And i couldn't stop saying "Ah... if only I'd had the time".... Now I know that it's not a question of time. All the time is bringing is tiredness. Throughout these two years, our biggest fear was not to die from boredom. We had to make up a lot of subterfuges to push the weariness away. For example, we had a rule that said that we should never listen what the others had recorded before the final mix. It was the only way to keep a little bit of freshness in our music.
We never did anything for the glory, we never focused on the sound which would establish us. I hesitate too much to take so permanent decisions. Right there, I've got three obsessions in front of me, which almost never tally themselves, and I don't know where to go... In first, i'd like to work on a music without real structure. I never heard of Brian Eno before we were compared to him, before knowing he likes our records. So i listened to his albums, and I was stunned. I never realized he was behind one of our favorites pop-songs ever, the Once in a lifetime of the Talking Heads. The background noise, the bells, the rhythm, it's him. The more i've listened to what he did, the more i've understood that he's God. The same for Steve Reich. A pal told me "That's great having sampled Steve Reich" on Tremolo EP. I never heard of him, I listened to a tape, I adored that, these never ending loops, his music that's turning around. This music went straight to my memory, i remembered it. I already heard this kind of things when i was a kid. I was watching TV everytime, it was my main influence, and this kind of music was often used during the documentaries. Everything has stayed in my brain, in a different manner as for a record. When you buy a record, you know what you have to expect. But when you're watching TV, everything can happen, your memory can be taken by surprise. My second desire is to own a real band sound, to play very loud. I hear a lot of interesting things in heavy-metal, in speed-metal. I'm not talking about Guns and Roses, but about a multitude of unknown bands who've got an innovative attitude, far from the cliché of the genre. An then, there's my third passion, the dance-music.
Have you hesitated a lot between these three ways during the record?
We were lost in doubt many times, true. We arrived in the studio at 6 PM and actually we began to work about 11 PM. Then we ordered the dinner, which took about three hours. Actually, in a night in the studio, we worked about only a hour and a half... We never had time to analyse what we were doing, to think about our music.
Have you ever thought to chuck it all in?
Never. But secretly, I hoped that extraterrestrials would disembark on earth. Thanks to them, i wouldn't have had to concentrate on my music any longer, it would have lost all its importance. It was our only chance to get out of this. But to stop from my own initiative, I could not have been able. Yet, all we were doing had ended up seeming so small, so trivial to me... We were watching TV, we were watching the Romania, the war in the Gulf, the famine, the floods,... faced with that, i would have had the feeling to be a coward if deserting. Our position is finally so confortable, so pleasant... Those events commanded the humility. I'd got so many chance being there, in the studio, with just a record to finish.
Do you sometimes feel uncomfortable earning your living in such a way?
I would be if I was earning a lot of money, if I was speculating in the mediocrity. But everything we're earning is invested again in the band, in order for him to become better. I'm not interested in becoming rich. Yet, i'm obsessed by the swindlers. I see too many bands exploited and stolen by the show-business, it makes me crazy. I know it's an old cliché, that everybody agree, but you have to stay vigilant. With my sister, Anne-Marie, who's the manager of the band, we're known as shitheads. We refuse the orders, it's a permanent war. For the moment, we didn't win any significant battle, but it will come. For example, we managed to impose our own crowd control during our gigs, that's a beginning... But earning money, ensuring the future, no, I don't think about that. The future, i only concieve it on an abstract plan, to avoid thinking about the present. I've got a safety valve: i'm doing what I like today, even if it means writing in a commercial way for other bands when I grow old. We allways functionned that way, for the fun. There is no particular reason for this band to exist, only idealistic reasons. Nothing is planned, quantified.
People say your album costed 250.000 £ to Creation, that the label will not standup for itself.
That's a fanciful sum. Actually, the budget we used would have been tiny for a big company. The album cost half this sum, which is not very important. Most of the records you see in a shop have cost more than ours, til' five times his price. Even the small labels are spending more than 10.000 £ on an album. On Creation, every album costs between 50.000 and 100.000 £.
Don't you feel responsible for the bankruptcy of the label?
Why should i feel responsible? If they absolutely want their bands to sign contracts, they have to assume the consequences. Nobody force them to work with expensive bands. Anyway, I'm sure that everybody will have the invested money back in the six months. And it's our money that we have spent, the money our two previous singles had yielded. I don't owe anything to anyone. We were the first band to really be signed on Creation. Thanks to us, the label has become more professionnal, we didn't stop kicking their behind. Before us, they were amateurs. I won't give any name, but some bands that will never sell a record have costed more money than us to Creation. Especially in the field of the dance music. The label has invested fortunes that it will never get back. But we, we are profitable (smile) ...
How did the band came out of these two years of trials? More united or at the contrary?
We're not a very classic band. Our music is really collective, but we're not working in an orthodox manner, we are never in the studio at the same time. During a long time, the band didn't exist anymore as a band ... That's why I'm absolutely refusing any picture session, because I don't know if My Bloody Valentine still exists. We didn't make any meeting to know if, yes or no, we're going on together. Everything is very blurred, we didn't have the time to talk about it. I don't know what the others think.
Do the relationships in the band have changed during these two years?
Completely. We are very linked, there isn't any animosity between us, but it just comes from our way of working. Everyone knows exactly his place. Colm and me formed this band, a long time ago, because we needed an excuse to leave Ireland, to live in Germany... Then after a few years in Germany and Holland, we came to London and there, it became more serious... Debbie arrived because she liked the same music as us, the same for Belinda. But they never really joined the band, we didn't give them an audition, we didn't put an advert. They're there, that's all. Belinda thought she would do choirs, today she's a guitarist, she sings half of the songs. The problem of the band is I am obstinate, I can be very fussy. We're so honest between us that we're ending up being very cruel, very hurtful. I totally lack diplomacy, I say what I think, without the form, I can be horrible, very hard ... Between us, there never has been tension, because everything is said in a very direct way. There isn't any single ego problem between us. There would be some if there was a second person as me.
TO PLAY WITH THE SEX PISTOLS
Belinda and you are living as a couple, you are bringing up together her little boy. Isn't it difficult to live, for you and the two others?
Belinda is mainly the one who's looking after Toby. Today he's boarded in a very special school, with an experimental teaching skill, a kind of community. The children are the ones who are driving the school, every morning they are voting for the program of the day. They can do exactly what they want, what they feel they need. They can yell, swear, as much as they want. They even have the right to play with guns. So, when they grow old, they're not interested anymore in the violence, it's just a memory of their childhood. .. If these kind of things are not allowed when you're a kid, you become frustrated, you join up the army. Belinda visits him every week-end, and, every three months, he's got one month vacation. He's eight, and he adores this, he swears all the time, "Fucking this, fucking that" (laugh)... The kids are all going the same way: they begin to be mad and then become very polite, very kind. Nobody force them to follow the classic curses, but they all end up coming to it of their own free will. After a while, they've got enough of having fun all day long, they want to learn. They're leaving their toys and they're studying all the way. The results of the school are incredibly good, even if totally crazy things are happening. Toby adores studying, he even finds the curses are too easy for him... But don't print the name of the school, it could create big problems. Belinda would die of anguish.
Concerning our relationship, we are not really a couple. Especially when we're in the band. Then, there's no couple anymore.
Is the frontier between the band and your private life so sharp?
I must admit the situation is not very easy to live. All that we have is common. In a normal couple, everyone lives his life in the day, meets people. Not us (silence) ... But even if the band takes my whole life, it gives me in exchange a total freedom. Nobody tells me what I should do. That's a good thing, because i'm totally influenced by the opinion of the others. If a member of the band tells me he doesn't like the melody I've just found, it's enough for me to not like it anymore. Especially Colm ... he knows me better than anyone, for a very long time. He knows where I come from, I listen to him. If I forget who I am, he knows how to put me in the right way again. Every one of the others has rubbed off on me, that's what make us a band. That's why i forbid anyone outside My Bloody Valentine coming to see us in the studio. Because I know I would take his opinion into account, or I would act in reaction, which is worse. That's a thing i don't want to do, i don't want to be a reactionary. That's a really bad way to do music.
Are you possessive towards the band?
You have to be realistic, I'm the one who's leading the band. I, more than the others, am doing the driving. But the others are more concrete than me, they allow me to move forward. They're more sturdy, more realistic, my ideas need them. Besides I'm a millstone for them when we have to be concrete, on stage particulary. There, I'm the weak point. Me, my domain is the studio, the spirit itself of the band.
You've put a lot into this album. Aren't you afraid of becoming totally empty one day ?
That happened a long time ago. My game's up, I'm run down. I lost what was doing my strength years ago. Totally scatterbrained. There's nothing left but vacuum, failure... I go thoroughly into my brain, but there's nothing left. So I've got to search somewhere else, something has broken. Today I'm unable to go into a studio and turn out an album. The spring simply dried up... And there, after a year in the studio, nothing really mattered anymore. When I was watching The Gulf War on TV, I was no more interested in releasing a record. I felt like i was losing my time, all this seemed so futile to me.
Are you naturally depressive?
It's impossible to be rational on such a subject. Around me, everyone has been shacked by deep depressions. I don't know if it's related to the age, to the approach of the thirty years old, but we all lived the same thing.
Do we have to see a declaration of intention in titles such as Isn't anything or Loveless ?
I know (silence) ... I hate titles, i'm so afraid they become the symbols of our records. I watch out for the professions of faith, i'd like our titles to be as transparent as possible.
Even your lyrics are becoming more and more transparent, drowned in the mass of the sound.
My lyrics are totally incoherent but Belinda's are more precise, more emotionnal. Me, i'm only writing broken sentences, vague, words without any links. If you were reading my lyrics, you would find them stupid. I repeat the same word again and again, I don't even think to change on the way. If I could find words as precise as my music, I would be pleased. I would like people to find a sense in them, but I can't write as easily as I compose.
Most of the big bands owned their credibility thanks to their lyrics. Isn't it a problem for you?
It's true, but there are exceptions, the Beatles for example. For most of my favorite bands, the lyrics are less important than the general impact, the final effect. Look at the Ramones, the Beatles... When you think about them, you don't think only about their lyrics. They're not Dylan. Most of his songs are only famous thanks to his texts, the music almost doesn't matter. Sometimes that's the case too for Neil Young. Me, it's not his most known songs that i like, I prefer the ones where the melody is more important than the words. Look at the Cocteau Twins: they would be far more popular if their lyrics were more accessible.
But that's a little bit your case: as soon as the melody becomes obvious, you bury it into white noise, uproar.
Melody comes naturally. I never had to think about it. But it would be boring to be a simple pop-band. Because all the magic that surrounded pop-music, that made us dream, that maked us wanna play in a band, all that is dead. Most of the people of this background are vile. All the part that generate money - promotion, marketing - is controlled by the bads, flabby and blasé. For them, you're just another band, the routine ... " Shut up! Bands, we have seen plenty of others and bigger than you". It's them who are killing the pleasure... And so there's only three reasons doing music: either you adore what you do, or you wanna earn a lot of money, or you have to feed your ego with permanent compliments. The last case is the saddest, because you know that the fans would like you more if you were dead. Which is very rewarding for an human being (he sighs)... It's never you, as a person, who the fans love, but the kind of screen on which they are projecting themselves. So I really don't want to be famous as part of a pop-band. I like my everyday life, to meet the people, the subway.... We have the chance to do music we like, we take pleasure putting our ideas in form. Yet, we almost played the money game, we almost becoame a totally different band. Silvertone wanted to sign us instead of the Stone Roses, giving us a more charismatic singer than me. They had it all planned, the hair cut, the image, the producer, the career ... They were just waiting for the band. They were just asking us to write a few good songs. The rest was in the hands of the producers and the singer. But we didn't want to play the game, we had to involve too much. Happy Mondays? Their case is different. I don't really understand them, i don't know to which point they don't give a shit about anything... We toured with them in France, two gigs very rich in events. I had the feeling i was playing with the Sex Pistols (laughs) ... We get on good with them, they're the most honest band i've ever met. Apart from The Manic Street Preachers maybe. Everyone hates them, but me, i've got tenderness for them. They're so ridiculous that i want to comfort them, to take them into my arms like a teddy bear. When i hear them saying "Many of us are still virgin. I prefer to masturbate, it's easier.", i can't help to admire their frankness. As when the Mondays admit they're in it just for the money, that it's easier to earn your living making records than being a criminal.
Is it during this French mini-tour that you realized that the rock and the dance-music could get on well?
We grew up without losing sight of each other, with the Mondays. Their first gig in London, they were at the bottom of the bill, we were second, and Loop were at the top. It was in a tiny hall. At the time, i found them untrendy, i thought they sound like a Factory band of the early eighties. And then i began to get into dance-music, thanks to the hip-hop. Before, i hated dance-music. For me it was an horror played by little whites, totally fake and false. The hip-hop was far away from this image, it was a real new music, very experimental, powerful and honest. And when i saw the Mondays in Paris, i understood they had this power, that i was wrong about them. Their music seemed so new ... I think that sometimes they recognize their groove in our music. One of the guys in their gang has come to meet us on stage. He danced until we play You made me realize. Then he found himself stupid, he woke up and i could hear him thinking "Oh no, they become a rock-band again". In a sense, we broke the ambiance. But it allowed me to realize that the Mondays would never do that, that they were prisoners of their style, of their groove. Me i don't want to limit myself like that, i wanna try everything, mix all i want.
Do you feel something so physical when you listen to noisy rock, like the Butthole surfers or Dinosaur Jr?
Yes. But the hip-hop is really a music that i can listen to at home, sitting comfortably, contrary to House. You can listen to it totally motionless and this music keeps its strength. Besides, it is made to be listened to in such a way. The same for Dinosaur Jr. You can content yourself with just listening to their records. If you listen to House at home, the music is floating, it doesn't cling to anything. But it takes all of its substance as soon as you're dancing, as soon as you're taking the good substances. Anyway, i don't see any difference between rock and hip-hop. Today i can't any longer listen to music with the amp all the way up. I adored that, yet, i felt very strong things in the uproar. When i went seeing a band, i wanted to feel its music with all of my body, i wanted everything to vibrate. But i became deaf, my ears have been blown. As soon as the sound becomes too loud, i don't distinguish anything. Tomorrow i go on holiday, i don't want to hear any music, i'm not interested anymore in taking a lot in the ears. I don't want to become deaf as a post. The spectrum of what i hear is smaller and smaller. I have to find the exact volume, or everything is blurred.
Is it why Loveless is less noisy, more precised, detailed?
I don't think we had any get-up-and-go when growing old. Me, i'm hearing today details that i never had noticed before. The more you play loud, the less the details are possible. So you have to lower the sound a little bit.
Have you too changed your habits in term of drugs, deserting the speed for more relaxing substances?
In a way, yes, this record has been influenced by a change of consumption. At a time, i took everything that felt in my hands. So, of course, i easily found the inspiration, i had a lot of ideas. But i was unable to put them into practice. I stored a lot, but nothing was getting out. I was far more receptive, but unable to use what i was seeing. So i stop taking all these drugs that were playing with my brain, all the hard stuff... heroin? I was never interested in that. Particulary after having been living with a bunch of junkies. They totally put me off, they were horrible to see. They couldn't do anything... Look at what the drugs has made to me, i'm shaking, i'm awkward (laughs) ... I really had to stop with all these things, the speed, the coke, the acid. I forbid myself to touch it until the album is over. I didn't like the way these drugs affected me. They could have helped me at small doses but then, i was taking too much, it wasn't any use. I began to take all this stuff around 88, like everybody else. It was trendy, you could find these things everywhere and it was easy. Everyone was taking ecstasy. Some have never stopped anyway. Me i only took it when i was going out, to be more active. Today, i just smoke, it makes me soft in the head. Months ago, Alan McGee began to worry, he thought we were really smoking too much. He knows that the bands who are taking coke, speed, or ecstasy are working faster in the studio than the ones who are smoking like a chimney. So he thought "Here is the problem with My Bloody Valentine, they're smoking way too much, it's really serious". (laugh) ...He was sure that the drug was slowing our work, that it maked us get flabby. And God knows he was right (laugh) ... But for me it was necessary, it was my safety valve. I need to smoke to get to sleep, every night. It's the only way to disconnest my brain. For sure that's where our reputation of lazy person come from. But i need it, these are my tranquilizers. And at the same time i regret to have to smoke so much, it's a bad habit.
So lazyness is not a value, a way of life?
It makes me crazy of rage. For example, i feel stupid that we are here, to my sister's, whereas we could be calmly at my home. The only reason why we're not at my home is that it's a complete mess, everything is scattered, broken, in every corners. And it makes me mad. My appartment looks cold and uncomfortable. But still i prefer being upset by this disorder than to arrange it. I prefer to smoke a pot in front of TV than to arrange it, forget this shit. It's an horrible lack of motivation. I want a lot of things, i don't want them sufficiently... If i really want them i obtain them. For example, i really want to eat everyday, and i do it. At the contrary i would like to shave everyday, but i'm not sufficiently motivated and it really makes me sad. But i prefer being sad than shaving myself. From the oustide, i know it looks like pure laziness. But i rather think it's a consequence of my perfectionism. The only way to concentrate myself totally on the music is to leave the rest in a complete shambles. If i really want to be so manic on every subject, i'd become totally mad. I can only be obsessed by one subject at a time, because it takes all my time, all my energy and my concentration.
Your album has been awaited for two years with a lot of impatience. Do you deserve such an attention?
In a way, we have been overestimated. The english press overestimates everybody, we know it, we had grown up with it. Reading the reviews on us, taking them out of this permanent exaggeration context, then, yes, we're incredibly overestimated. But as soon as you put it back in the rock scene context, i think we're estimated to our real value. Maybe the people are awaiting too much from Loveless, they are prepared for a masterpiece, a declaration of faith ... Pet sounds, that was a declaration. Loveless does not play in this category, it does not deserve such an attention. Maybe one day we will make an album which wil deserve it, but today we're still to the point making an album without any precise reason. We are still living in the ordinary world. But we gave ourselves a reason to live, we're making a music which the presence on earth is justified. At the contrary of many bands, we deserved and won the right to live.