Bucharest based mathy post hardcore / screamo act BASTOS have already teamed up with us in the past, so it was tremendously exciting when we realized that they have a new co-release with another great European DIY punk band, Lille, France’s political, anarchist emotive screamo act CHAVIRÉ! Released in October 2018 on Smart & Confused (FR), Seitan Hell Bike Punk (SP), Moshed Potatoes (BE), and Missed Out Records (US), their split supports La Dérive, an alternative space opened in Nantes, France, and consist just 4 tracks that mark their most confident effort to date, elevating emotional post hardcore / screamo palette through blissful, impassioned multi-style vibes that truy deserve your attention. We have teamed up with both bands to tell you the stories behind their songs and engage you with this amazing record even more. Dive in!
Aske about the etymology of this release, CHAVIRÉ commented:
There was those two songs we just started to work on when BASTOS invited us to share a common record : we were excited about doing it and we thought it would make a good side on a 7″ split. During winter 2017-2018, we really worked on our side and as we were writing the two songs, we thought it could fit as a whole thing, mixed with this bridge: this instrumental part was the one we were beginning our shows with, and a perfect link between those two movements of our side.
CHAVIRÉ – EN FACE L’EMPIRE
We started to write this song quite a while ago, when we wrote the songs from Interstices in fact. But we didn’t have time to finish it and so we put it aside, until we rediscovered it months later. It sounded quite different from what we used to write so far, and we didn’t really know how to make it ours in the first times: it didn’t sound as our previous songs! In a way, this song was an electroschock for us, we all had this impression of going round in circles, did we found the magic formula for CHAVIRÉ, and were we condemned to repeat it forever? The lyrics were mainly influenced by those questions and the feeling that if punk has been so important for us at some point in our lives, it is mostly because it arrived insignificantly and made everything around it blowing up: identity, power relations, norms… And brought new ones by the force of habit, as odious as the previous ones in the end. So the lyrics of the song are mostly about looking for solutions against this statement, as propositions to wreck those toxic identities that always immobilize us somewhere, even in the rebel ones.
CHAVIRÉ – LÀ OÙ LES PUISSANCES
« Là Où Les Puissances » goes along with the previous song. It starts from the same point: how those identities we have to carry make us powerless? How to get rid of it? How to find strength? Maybe it’s a bit less practical as the first song but it offers a more theoretical approach of this struggle against the power of the structures. We obviously owe this idea of « puissance » (force) to Gilles Deleuze, as something giving us thickness, filling us with joy in exchange of losing this paralyzing security, this pacified comfort. Musically, the song is a kind of spoken word on some riffs played on a loop, getting more and more tense, probably influenced by songs like « Ultramort » from AMANDA WOODWARD or SELF DEFENSE FAMILY’s « Cottaging ». Well, probably we missed the attempt!
BASTOS – Bagneres de Bigorre
Last year in December we were on tour with Volta through the Southern part of Europe. The hole trip we expected to see the sun and to feel warmer than in Romania but on our way we hit an unexpected cold current of air sweeping the continent. Spain was the coldest. Keep in mind we had half of our van heating system broken. After playing some shows in Spain we had our second concert in France. The place was called Bagneres de Bigorre, a small thermal bath town in the south. We had to cross the border through the mountains, and we saw some really beautiful scenery, but it was getting colder and colder. The night mixed with tiredness and the fact that 8 people had spent the last 6 hours trapped in a metal cage, amplified a sort of tension in the atmosphere. It was simply taking too long to get there. With some minor fuck ups we got to the venue, which was an ex-gallery space. Our bookie shows up and he is the nicest guy, but everything everywhere smells like the winter. The gig place was a cave like room, very cold, but very cool in other ways. During our dinner with Volta and Laurent we said, ok this day was too much for everybody so let’s make ourselves a present and destroy this place, not literally, but in a way to make us enjoy life more again. We decided after our sets to play a set together, just mayhem, improv, chaos, and we did it until everybody left the room except Laurent. This story is related to the song because we played this song on this tour, it was the newest song, and I already had some lyrics on it. When we started recording we wrote new ones that I think are most influenced by this day we had with Volta and Laurent in Bagneres de Bigorre.
BASTOS – The Body
This song I think is mostly about depression but also about the power of the mind to interpret and make sense of what understands around. Having this privilege of playing music with friends and family at this point makes us want to talk about subjects that are hard to approach in general, specially in the eastern block where most of the people struggle with daily life and forget to talk about the self and personal experiences. it feels sometimes that people fabricate this strong defence wall around them that want others to see and we are like, hey it’s ok to feel vulnerable. embrace it. have the power to stay for one minute and look at yourself. be honest and brave about it.
