VICTOR SIERRA 🇫🇷 FRANCE
WRITTEN INTERVIEW
Interview by Gordon Lawrence Taylor
Voice In The Void / Infectious Unease Radio / Subterranean Zone Radio
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Paris-based Victor Sierra occupy a distinctive space where music, theatre, speculative fiction, retrofuturism and visual performance overlap. The band describe their sound through terms including Gothic, Industrial, Steampunk and SteamGoth, while the continuing mythology of the airship Hydrogen Queen provides a world in which those ideas can collide, mutate and travel in unexpected directions.
In this written interview, Victor Sierra look back across the project’s long history: the creative partnership between Commander Bob and the Legendary Converted Princess, the influence of Big Machine, the arrival of Piløt X-Ray, the changing role of Steampunk and Gothic culture, multilingual songwriting, alternative history, war and technology, international performance, artificial intelligence and the continuing evolution of the Hydrogen Queen. What emerges is not simply a discussion of genre, but a portrait of a band that has spent decades constructing its own artistic universe while continuing to question the real one surrounding it.
Infectious Unease Radio: VICTOR SIERRA BEGAN AROUND THE END OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY, LONG BEFORE MUCH OF THE BAND’S RECORDED CATALOGUE BECAME PUBLICLY VISIBLE. BOB AND ANOUK, CAN YOU TAKE US BACK TO THAT ORIGINAL MEETING AND EXPLAIN WHAT EACH OF YOU RECOGNISED IN THE OTHER THAT MADE YOU BELIEVE A LONG-TERM CREATIVE PARTNERSHIP WAS POSSIBLE?
Bob: As you know I started with Anouk (The Legendary Princess) and I (Commander Bob) coming from very different backgrounds. We decided to mix them and form Victor Sierra. Partnership came very naturally with not many questions asked. Longevity speaks for us.
Infectious Unease Radio: BOB, YOU HAD ALREADY PASSED THROUGH SEVERAL MUSICAL STYLES AND BANDS BEFORE VICTOR SIERRA, WHILE ANOUK HAS DESCRIBED HER BACKGROUND AS PRINCIPALLY THEATRICAL RATHER THAN MUSICAL. HOW DID THOSE VERY DIFFERENT HISTORIES SHAPE VICTOR SIERRA’S ORIGINAL MUSICAL AND VISUAL LANGUAGE?
Bob: I’ve got multiple backgrounds from several culture. I was born in Paris but it was kind of an accident because my parents as youngsters – before they met – was to leave France but finally didn’t. My family comes on both side from Eastern Europe. About making music, as I mentioned before, it was all of a sudden a necessity, an urge, even before having touched a guitar. There was a piano at my grandparents’ place and, as a child, I used to ‘play’, disturbing them during their afternoon nap. Once my grandad told me it was not bad at all. It was kind of him to say that!
Infectious Unease Radio: ANOUK, YOU HAVE PREVIOUSLY DISCUSSED THE IMPORTANCE OF FRENCH CHANSON, ÉDITH PIAF, NEW WAVE AND MUSIC FROM EASTERN AND CENTRAL EUROPE. LOOKING BACK NOW, WHERE CAN YOU STILL HEAR THOSE EARLY CULTURAL INFLUENCES WITHIN YOUR VOCAL APPROACH AND THE EMOTIONAL CHARACTER OF VICTOR SIERRA?
Anouk: I think all those influences are still noticeable but definitely mixed in my vocal style. Please tell me if you hear anything when you listen to our songs!
Infectious Unease Radio: ONE FASCINATING ASPECT OF VICTOR SIERRA’S HISTORY IS THAT THE BAND’S RETROFUTURIST WORLD EXISTED BEFORE YOU WERE FAMILIAR WITH THE CONTEMPORARY STEAMPUNK MOVEMENT. WHEN BIG MACHINE INTRODUCED YOU TO STEAMPUNK AND YOU DISCOVERED A WIDER COMMUNITY EXPLORING SIMILAR IDEAS, DID IT SIMPLY GIVE A NAME TO SOMETHING YOU HAD ALREADY CREATED, OR DID THAT DISCOVERY ACTUALLY CHANGE VICTOR SIERRA?
Bob: About the name: Victor Sierra could have come from the cryptic aviators’ code alphabet but some say it’s something else but they won’t tell because they enjoy being the happy few. Amongst them different solutions to this enigma coexist. I find this controversy enjoyable.
About Steampunk: When Big Machine joined the band, he told us about Steampunk. We had never heard of it before. So we googled it and everything seemed so familiar to us… The dystopia, the “uchronical” visions, the outfits and contraptions, the mix of genres… The encounter of romance and technology. Victor Sierra has been a steampunk band from the beginning without us being actually aware. But I would like to mention that Dieselpunk does attract me, as well. That’s how we came to create the Airship Hydrogen Queen of which I’m the Commander! It’s yesterday’s tomorrow. But you’ve probably noticed our gothic roots have reappeared recently.
Infectious Unease Radio: BOB, YOU HAVE OFTEN PREFERRED THE BROADER CONCEPT OF RETROFUTURISM RATHER THAN TREATING STEAMPUNK AS A NARROWLY DEFINED MUSICAL GENRE. AFTER MORE THAN TWO DECADES OF VICTOR SIERRA, WHAT DOES RETROFUTURISM ALLOW YOU TO EXPRESS THAT THE WORDS GOTHIC, INDUSTRIAL OR STEAMPUNK CANNOT ADEQUATELY DESCRIBE?
Bob: We combine everything you mentioned knowingly or unconsciously. I always have issues to describe our music with simple words. At the moment I use ‘SteamGoth’. Tomorrow I might use something else. ‘Retrofuturism’ often loses people not aware of what it really is, even if it’s quite central in our work. Then it’s even more complicated.
Infectious Unease Radio: BIG MACHINE BECAME AN IMPORTANT PART OF VICTOR SIERRA’S EARLIER DEVELOPMENT, INTRODUCING ADDITIONAL INDUSTRIAL, ELECTRONIC AND TECHNOLOGICAL ELEMENTS INTO THE PROJECT. WHAT DID HIS ARRIVAL CHANGE MUSICALLY, AND WHAT ASPECTS OF THAT PERIOD REMAIN EMBEDDED IN THE VICTOR SIERRA SOUND TODAY?
Bob: He brought the idea of steampunk and played synths lines. Perhaps we would have totally missed the concept without him. But I’ve always composed 99% of each of our songs. Electronic and industrial sounds were already here before he joined the band.
Infectious Unease Radio: AT WHAT POINT DID THE HYDROGEN QUEEN CEASE TO BE SIMPLY AN IMAGE OR CONCEPT AND BECOME THE CENTRAL VESSEL THROUGH WHICH VICTOR SIERRA COULD CONSTRUCT AN ENTIRE ALTERNATIVE HISTORY? WAS ITS MYTHOLOGY PLANNED, OR DID THE WORLD GRADUALLY REVEAL ITSELF FROM SONG TO SONG?
Bob: It depends on which new or old chapter we are living in. Sometimes she’s here at full speed in this or that song and at other times she’s more in the background. We’re free, she’s free and our interactions vary. Perhaps Piløt X-Ray knows more but he doesn’t talk much about it.
Infectious Unease Radio: COMMANDER BOB, THE LEGENDARY CONVERTED PRINCESS AND, LATER, PILØT X-RAY FUNCTION SIMULTANEOUSLY AS STAGE IDENTITIES, FICTIONAL CHARACTERS AND MEMBERS OF AN ONGOING NARRATIVE. WHERE IS THE BOUNDARY BETWEEN THE REAL INDIVIDUALS WITHIN VICTOR SIERRA AND THE CHARACTERS WHO INHABIT THE HYDROGEN QUEEN — AND IS MAINTAINING THAT BOUNDARY IMPORTANT TO YOU?
Bob: Our fictional characters come from our real life personalities. So boundaries are quite tight. We are them, they are us. And it’s fun!
