Tribalism3, from left to right: Luca Ventimiglia, Yann Joussein, Olivia Scemama.
Tribalism3 is a French trio formed by Yann Joussein (drums), Luca Ventimiglia (synth), and Olivia Scemama (bass), a project which takes its origin from a performative and musical septet called Tribalism. They published two releases, トライバリズム (2019, which means in the Japanese language simply “tribalism”) and April On Mars (2020), both published by Coax Collective, a musicians’ cooperative managed by the same Joussein from 2008 (which have the certification as “Compagnie Nationale“, national company, from the French State). The music by Tribalism3 is periodic and spacely psychedelic, with a freezing touch that taps into the austere approach by John Coltrane and the cold climate evoked by Scandinavian free jazz artists like Moha and Ultralyd, with living and lysergic divagations in a mathematical sense.
To analyze the project Tribalism3 in-depth, we interviewed Yann Joussein about their music and other secondary aspects of their proposal.
The previous embryonic project before Tribalism3 is a septet with three dancers named simply Tribalism, with an urban concept of dynamicity in gestures and sonorities with a great potential of originality. Can you talk about the context behind this concept and the role of a prime mover?
“At the beginning, I had the opportunity to work and create in a big space dedicated to contemporary performances named “Le Générateur” near Paris. It is a big empty space where you can imagine anything which is quite rare for a musician like me. At this time I was experiencing collaborations with dance and digital art, then I was thinking and maybe still thinking that a choreographer is much more free to create without limits compared to a musician, I think about this piece I saw about ten years ago by the Spanish choreographer LA RIBOT called “El Triunfo de la Libertad” which is a collaboration between three artists where you can not see any performer on stage all along the piece, I thought, waw, what a freedom!
“Then I wanted to create like a choreographer, so I wrote and arranged music for seven musicians and sound artists and asked to the choreographer to write with me for dancers. This was the starting point. It is called “tribalism” because I’ve been influenced by many tribal music from everywhere and I wanted the audience to be in the same stage with the performers.”
So, can you explain how Tribalism3 was born and developed in making up these intensely mathematical sounds, which seem to have metaphorically speaking origins from another intelligent cosmos?
“After this experience with seven sound artist, one choreographer and three dancers, I wanted to keep the spirit of this and go on tour easily to go deeply in the music then I re-arranged the music in order to play it with Olivia Scemama on bass and Luca Ventimiglia on synths.”
トライバリズム by Tribalism3, cover by Hello This Is Kae.
Your first release, titled トライバリズ ム, which means “tribalism” in Japanese, is permeated by a more cold climate, where wavering beats permeate the entire music in different, mathematical ways. Can you talk about how these more minimalist ideas were born?
“As a drummer, composer and improviser, I’ve always been interested in polyrhythm and repetitive music. I basically used to play a lot of jazz music and get inspired by the trance of free jazz and like Albert Ayler or John Coltrane, also by Norwegian noise rock scene like Moha or Ultralyd, this is where I can mix the coldness of Scandinavian culture and the trance of free jazz.”
Lent et Sexuel has a mechanic, complex rhythm and ongoing more abstract dilated intuitions appear, in the sign of a cinematic/library music language, with a far heritage of elastic grown-up psychedelia. Can you talk about how this outlier happened?
“Lent et Sexuel is a melody I composed a long time ago for the Coax Orchestra, this track is a looped melody with a repetitive rhythm, actually not so difficult! I want this song to be like a dream feeling for the audience. I think this slow rhythm helps to feel in an abstract mood.”
Girl has soft, magmatic rhythmic drone patterns which recall the techno genre in addition to kraut craftsmanship. The odd-ish flow of the bass line intersects at ever-different times with the percussive structure of the synth and drums parts. A granular piece where the chaotic pattern of neat notes by all the instruments is the main element in this track. So, how did this interesting characteristic happen in this track?
“This is one of the characteristics of the group, the three of have quite a different story with the music: Luca studied classical percussions and jazz like me but he also played a lot of electronic music and has a big knowledge about that. Olivia played a lot of metal music and rock music before playing improvised music, that’s actually the way we met. Then we have interesting mix between electronic, electric and acoustic. We try to keep this reach heritage and everyone keeps his part in this track without necessarily listening to each other, but of course we have to keep the tempo together.”
The adventure with Tribalism3 continues with the second release April On Mars, where an iconic alien groove is the main character in this sunny kraut-ish sonic dispenser. So, how did this choice happen in your ever-austere context?
“The second album released in 2020 was necessary because our music is always evolving, one of the main direction in this group is to find the trance by the repetition, and there are many ways to get it. Alien is an exemple of kind of metal sound riff and repetitive patterns”
Bongos Excerpt in April On Mars has an arrhythmic development with an odd regularity in musical tempo, where music is a vivid krautish journey flowing between stochastic synth pitches and an autistic bass line. This track has similarities with the previous song Alien which has the same bass line (with variations), whereas this last is slower and less groovy, representing, for its suspended structure, an epilogue for the next part of the album. How did its dynamic beat happen in this work?
“In this track, there’s an automatic fake chemical bongo pattern playing all along, in my dreams, I’d like Tribalism3 to be with one or two percussionists, a guitar player, a sax player and a singer! Anyway, it’s also a good challenge to fit all my ideas in this trio shape. So, the bongo part is played by a machine, programmed by Luca, who is also a percussionist originally! Then it’s kind of same process than Girl or April on Mars we try to develop the sound with this really tiny bongo groove, a basic written bass pattern and drums pattern. Maybe this one can sound a bit like 70’s funk music with the mix of drums, bongos and electric bass…”
Peach is a distended and fuzzy doom metal monotonic flowing, where synth creates a claustrophobic wall of sound. This is the darkest track in the cited work, and also an outlier in your discography, which recalls a part of Olivia’s poetics for the metal character. So how did these elements happen in April On Mars?
“I love doom music, this slow feeling, with all the drones it can include is one of the ways to find the trance. This one is quite different from the other tracks because of the sound, this is the most noise and metal composition of our repertoire.”
Your artwork in the two albums, created by the graphic artist Hello This Is Kae (which collaborated with Populous and Clap!Clap!), is an added value in your production, not only for your intelligently joyful music. We could say it reminds a certain abstract poetics by Paul Klee or more broadly Vasilij Kandinskij, which recalls the spiritual power of a naturalistic landscape where rays of light reflect and refract with a peculiar spectral geometric game. Can you talk about how this interesting element happened?
“It’s not easy to agree together with a visual for a group, in my experience, this is one of the main difficulty! But I do love colors, abstraction, and originality, that’s what I think represents my music… Since I’m able to explain that to my colleagues, Luca presented This is Kae to us, and we directly found an agreement together!”