Rhythms seem to rise in a whirlwind of air, reverberations last and haunt for a long time like happy ghosts, surreptitious melodies that float in your mind, tunes coming from very different places, played since every corner of the planet. The new NLF3 album continues, while refining it, the story of this French group. A story that begins with a resurrection. After the end of Prohibition, their first band, in 1999, the Laureau brothers turned to a new music vein, they took a real disjointed and free path, while coming from the same roots as their previous band. Namely: music born from an idea of rock but with more flexible and airy frameworks, open to all possibilities, including a plurality of horizons. Their music, under the name NLF3, had to be open to other forms and aesthetics from the start, able to integrate a wide diversity of sounds, arising according to the very evolution of their tastes, their desires. 20 years ago, therefore, NLF3 was born, whose first recordings bear witness to both an era and a singularity. Drawing on the contemporary, the first records under this name sought something in the middle of a river, the edges of which were on one side pure abstraction and on the other the hypnosis of rhythm.
The music they recorded for the film Que Viva Mexico struck the sweet spot between these tendencies, creating a rich and haunting sound material. In doing so, they never gave in to the sirens of m either, continuing to build their music independently, but also like a crucible capable of mixing the most distant things. The strength of their rhythm? From their brotherhood? In their compositions, something catchy has a centrifugal and hypnotic effect, integrating the various possibilities.
In 2024, how do they look? How does the era look at them too? In their new album, they explore new ways and reinvented paths. Started during the Lockdowns of 2020, the album was initially a series of files exchanged, tinkered with at home. On these demos, we heard domestic noises, rhythms recorded according to the available home possibilities. Did these sounds stay on the final album? Yes, in the very material of the pieces which live like universes filled with sounds and paths. With each other, they form a pulsating cosmogony, but also, by the force of its repetition, almost meditative. Fans of the German Can or some Brazilians like Os Mutantes will recognize there a familiarity returned to the living, devoid of nostalgia, inhabited by a thirst to be in the world, and inscribed directly in the very matrix of reality, which makes you dream and dance at the same time.
What is NLF3 about today?
N: It’s all about freedom and experimentation, memories plus future.
F: it is still the name of this musical project started in 2000 which is an entity
almost alchemical and which now unconsciously is synonymous for us with a
ground for exploration and experimentation shared by three
complementary sensitivities. We never forbid ourselves anything while being in a relationship of trust.
How to place this album in your discographies, in group and solo?
F: It’s a particular album which is marked by its time: it was built during
departure during confinement very spontaneously from day to day hence the title (O
Days) by laying the foundations (2/3 tracks each) on ideas first sent by Nicolas.
Then we reworked, re-recorded a lot of things. With this desire to evoke, to transport.
N: it’s the most accomplished album of the period 2008 – 2024, a sort of crucible-
assembly of the three of us, in the DNA of the group.
What musical future does this album announce?
F: We never really know where we are going. Complicity, energy and
the opening are characteristic of the moments we spend together, and
create and bounce back on our ideas. These are absolutely unique moments in the
life of a musician. We all have our solo projects which also allow us to bring
to NLF3 new ideas. It’s exciting every time. I like to think about the
palette of sounds and how we can enrich or simplify what we want
inject into our music. Instrumental music also allows a lot of
things. It is therefore an adventure that can continue for a long time.
N: The future is uncertain but like the phoenix, NLF3 is always reborn at some point.
F: 2024 and 2025 mark the 20th anniversary of Que viva Mexico! that we go
probably replay as well as the 30 years of our label Prohibited Records created in ’95.
This makes me think that our independence is probably one of the secrets
of our duration.
Biography by Joseph Ghosn / Picture © Terence Hassen.
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In the press
FR "The French space-rock-kraut outfit just nails it with every new album. They seem to be from a parallel universe anyway, so hopefully at least there NLF3 will lead the charts for weeks to come." 9/10 LOWNDOWN MUSIC
