Arnaud Roy: Interview

Angouleme based jazz harpist Arnaud Roy is another artist who is spurring my love for net-labels. Roy’s latest collection of compositions, Another Delayed Action Snowball, is out on Vaatican Records, a small net-label specialising in free ambient and abstract works. Another Delayed… is playful and provocative, sounding like a Bonobo album stripped down to just harp, and Roy’s arrangements comes accompanied with percussive clicks and bumps.

I spoke to him briefly online, and what follows is the transcript of our interview.

MS: How long have you been playing / making music for?

AR: I plays the harp for 20 years now (I’m 27). I compose music since 1999

MS: So were you schooled in harp-playing as a child?

AR: I’ve been studying in a special school named CHAM (classe à horaires aménagée musique) so we have 2 afternoon per week for studying music… from 10 to 15 years old, then I go to college and study music as other people

MS: You’ve just released the album “Another delayed action snowball”… what does the title mean?

AR: It’s a private joke, I work as a sound editor on cartoon movies and last year I worked on a cartoon named “Santapprentice” and it’s a replica of one of the character…santa playing video game. It’s the story of Nicolas, the Santa new apprentice… quite funny but not so good.

MS: Why did you choose Vaatican, an internet label who give most of their music away for free?

AR: Andreas is a friend of mine, we live in the same city, and he decided to publish my work, I was very happy. I’ve already make three disc as autoproducts with my band and i have my own label too.

MS: Right.. what’s the name of the band and label?

AR: Collectif Terra Incognita.

MS: You have a fairly unique style of jazz-harp composition- are you inspired by the obvious jazz-harp artists like Dorothy Ashby, or do you take your influences from elsewhere?

AR: my master is Park Stickney, I’ve met him on a masterclass in Poitiers, he’s the best harp player in my point of view. Doesn’t know Dorothy Ashby. She looks great.

MS: You use some pretty unconventional techniques for the harp, like pitch-bending and stuff

AR: Yes , the harp can be a very noisy instrument, with lots of sound effects with the pedals. I use also a RC50 Boss LoopStation, some reverb and delays…

MS: Right, so what type of harp do you use? your website links to a pretty cool harp website

AR: I have a 47 strings CAMAC harp (old Athéna model), with electroacoustic microphones in the body, I also have a Valiha (from Madagascar) and a Kora (from Mali).

MS: What’s the local music scene like where you stay?

AR: We have a good rock scene (I saw Muse last Saturday ) called “La Nef”, we have a famous african music festival called “Musiques Metisses”, but very few jazz concerts. It’s a quite little town (about 100000 hab).

MS: French radio stations are obligated to play a certain amount of French music– are the effects of this visible, does the music scene flourish more from it?

AR: Certainly not !!! Commercial French radios are awful, they brodcast only 30 differents songs per days, so we have lots of shit music but we have some local radios and Radio France which are more “intellectual” and they play original music.

MS: What French artists would you reccommend, that we might not have heard of in Britain?

AR: We have a very good association named “Les Allumés du Jazz” which regroup about 40 label of jazz and expérimental music in France, my favourite artists here are Louis Sclavis (saxophone), Henri Texier (Double bass), Hélène Breschand (harp), Didier Petit (Cello), we have also some great hip hop artists like Oxmo Puccino, I Am, La Rumeur…

MS: Brilliant, I will check that out.. Last question– what’s next for your music career? and what’s your message to the world?

AR: All the songs in “another delayed action snowball” are currently arranged for harp, drums, double bass and violin with my band, we have about 10 new songs so we need to go to a studio for a recording session, for next step, i’m working on a music for a video game named “Fan Attack” for Nintendo DS which will be released on November. My message for the world is “listen to everyone and everything !

Posted in Music

Tags: arnaud roy, france, harp, jazz, vaatican

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