Tripes, from left to right: Julien Chamla, Julien Pontvianne and Quares.

Tripes is a French project with Julien Chamla (drums, voice), Julien Pontvianne (clarinet, harmonium, voice), Marco “Quares” Quaresimin (bass, voice). This trio was born in the first half of the 10s, on the sight of an imaginative music, such a psychic journey on behalf of monotonal vibrations and timbric plasticity, where the meditative sound by Body Can (a solo project by Chamla) is entangled with the melodic and estemporaneous lyrical approach by Abhra, led by the same Pontvianne.

In January 2026, Tripes released the fourth album Tendresse by COAX Records, whose music was composed by Julien Chamla. We talk about these more recent developments and previous contributions by him in the following interview.

Julien, in your projects like Bodies Can and the trio Hippie Diktat, there appears an empathic and theatrical component in a sonic viewpoint, in addition to a dynamical modus operandi and incisive fashion. In Hippie Diktat, a fellowship with Richard Comte (guitar) and Antoine Viard (sax), your proposal is characterized by a totalizing acoustic shapeness and variety, where pivotal is certainly your executive playing in real time. Bodies Can, which consists of a series of solo performances, it’s possible to observe the usage of percussion, electronics, and a slide guitar (played unorthodoxly), where the sound reveals its monotone and materic form, benefiting an ecstatic experience (which should be matched from the audio recordings, in this case at least). How have these choices happened in your poetics?

“The idea behind these researches is to get the listener’s body involved, to talk to the body directly by skipping the mental and the analytic aspects of the listening experience. As for the projects Bodies Can, Hippie Diktat or Tripes, we tried to remove all the easily identified elements such as melodies, harmonies, and to consider the rhythms as a pulse, not a groove nor an idiomatic beat. The loudness and the use of spectral elements, again, has to do with the physical reception of the sound. In my different projects, I try to make a link between the experience of meditation and the impact of specific ranges of frequencies on our bodies. Meditation deals with the observation of all sensations within the body – whether pleasant or unpleasant. Keeping this in mind has been a very powerful tool to build sonic structures, by focusing on the sensations released by the very much repeated use of certain frequencies and pulses.”

Can you talk about how the Tripes project is born, and what are the intentions behind it until the releasing of Tendresse?

“Tripes was formed with the aim of bringing together a more intellectual and a more immediate approach to music (Tripes = Guts). We found our direction in 2015 by recording our first album “Suicide Jazz” (COAX Records), in witch we began exploring the idea of playing insistent patterns, sometimes to the point of exhaustion, to provoke states of altered consciousness in our audience. We continued our explorations by working in this way with the In Vitro theatre company’s laboratory and collaborating with dancers and choreographers. The subsequent albums “Solfège Suicide” (Sonorus Records) and “descendre, inventrer” (COAX/Gigantonium) are the result of our determination to follow our own path, whilst allowing ourselves to venture into more or less radical territory. Into moments increasingly close to pop forms, and collaborations with musician friends whose worlds are so rich and varied (Poulainjars, Noémie Boutin, Julien Gasc, Tuukka Haapakorpi, Lauri Hyvärinen). This has led us to play a music that is so full of contrasts, made up as much of chaos and rage as of gentleness and radiant moments.”

Giving an overview throughout the tracklist, in the first eponymous track, it’s clear a distinction between the cuspidal sound in the percussions part and the elastic dilation of reeds, with an expressionist character which is ideal as a prologue. It seems that poles from this duality elide themselves into a psychoacoustic balance of a pink-noised pattern, metaphorically speaking at least. How was this idea recalled with a metaphorical sense?

“We do not conceive of our music in terms of metaphors, but in terms of textures and states of mind that listening to our compositions might evoke in our listeners. The idea behind “Tendresse” is to create a wall of sound. Within this wall there are monolithic, immutable elements, such as the drums, which are clearly inspired by the “blast” of grindcore and extreme music. But there are also bass chords that create chaotic sub-rhythms and a clarinet that pierces the soundscape and invades it from the high register, radiating it with its harmonics. It is within this soundscape that the screams emerge, intertwining with the sound of the clarinet. All these elements interact with one another in a manner that is both completely random and a play of subtle micro-variations. We regard “Tendresse” as a preparatory piece for listening to the following track. We wanted to create a prologue which, rather than gradually entering the sound, would be like a sudden introduction, when the sound is already at its peak. Except that even at this level there is room to push things further.”

Sulle Labbra is characterized by a style that can be described as yogic, with whispers that constantly preserve and revitalize the listening. In the following Sara Grido, the relative consistency appears as physical, with a monotone and rhythmically wavering periodicity. As a comparison with titles, lips (that is “labbra” in Italian) as a music device is recalled as a balance with the main sonic stasis, which is followed by the opposite element of timbric sanding (“Sarà Grido” means “there will be a scream”). How did this contrapposition happen in your art?

“Tripes’ music deals with extremes, but always with the most minimal material. Whether it sounds massive and chaotic, or stripped down to whispers and almost silence, the minimalistic and repetitive approach remains the same. This allows us to play with huge dynamics, which enhance the extremes. In the exemples you mentioned, the sense is very important. The lyrics say : “words that can’t dance on the lips will be screamed in the depths of the soul.” Sulle Labbra and Sara Grido are in fact one same piece that talks about the extreme violence of invisibility and silencing. Silence doesn’t mean calmness and serenity, it can also mean violence and rage.”

Tant dressé, that could be seen as a hiatus on behalf of the sonic consistency and tracklist epiphany, is developed as a dilated movement with a rarified harmonical variability. The being as an outlier and its texture converges the listening in an ultimate final dimension, which could be a no-time-and-space-ly physical state. At its conclusion, it exacerbates on a climax made of hypnotic percussions, with Arianna’s wire with the flute and voice parts. How this idea is born, and what do you want to donate to the listener?

“Again, it’s an example of two extremes that co-exist in a same time-space. A subtle fragile melody is being submerged by a devastating wave. The whole record has been built on a mirror structure. The ending melody of “Tant dressé” is the same as “vers l’enfer consenti”, “Come Stai?” is the same harmonic structure that “comment vas-tu?”, but in reverse. Sulle Labbra and Sara Grido are the breaking point of the mirror. During the mixing process, Quares had the idea to re-use the matter of track “Tendresse”, in reverse, overdubbed on the ending song. This was a way to close the mirroring process, as well as giving an idea of an infinite structure and a movement that will never end.”