Interview with Syndrome 81 (EN-FRA)
Chat with French band Syndrome 81
This band from Brest in Brittany recently released “Prisons Imaginaires”, a new album on Destructure Records in CD and LP format, after having released several singles, ep and splits. Their style is quite unique and particular and combines punk, post-punk and various influences ranging from oi! to hardcore rants. But enough chatter… We’re pumped up and can’t wait to start the interview!
Click here to read the interview in French
Radio Punk: Hi guys and welcome to our ‘zine. Tell us a little bit about yourselves: when, where and how was your project born?
FAB Syndrome 81: It’s a project that we started unpretentiously Jacky (bass and composition) and me, Fab (vocals), at a distance, and that wasn’t destined to become a real band. At the time, I was living in Nice and Jacky in Brest, and I contacted him to set up a project via the Internet. Finally, we released the 5-song demo in October 2013. In the meantime, I approached Brest, and the demo got a good response and we decided to make it a real band, asking some long-standing friends from the Brest punk/hardcore scene to join us, and so we did our first gig in January 2014. At first, we wanted to start a fast hxc project, a la Tear It Up or something, thinking we had a drummer available. In the end we weren’t sure if we had a drummer available, so we went for something completely different, something more mid-tempo, thinking Jacky would take care of the drums, and even though it meant experimenting Jacky wanted us to try singing in French, which was a first for me.
Radio Punk: When and how did you approach the punk and DIY world? What other bands, collectives, labels or various projects have you been a part of?
FAB Syndrome 81: As for me, I got into it in the late 90s/early 2000s. There were a lot of local bands and activists in Brest, there was a lot of movement in the punk/hardcore scene and I recognised myself in that world. I wasn’t interested in going to nightclubs back then, in high school I preferred swapping records and copying them onto cassettes rather than discussing football results or tuning up my scooter. So the move to local gigs was quite natural, but if it wasn’t for the people who were doing something in my town I don’t think Syndrome would exist… We’ve all organized gigs, run a webzine, and a distro, and played together or separately in different bands since the 2000s, when I have time I’ll open a YouTube channel: Police Truck, Thrashington DC, Night Stalkers, Grayhound, Shooting the Duck, The Wedge, Patrick Cruel, Litovsk, Le Mamooth, Attaque Souple, Coupe-Gorge, Kaps, Jeanne et Les Calamités, Marée Noire, Black Spirals, Grancheval, CRS Must Die, Jodie Banks, Cross Division, Cynical Bastards, Secteur Pavé, Prisonnier du Temps, and also others still active, Double Peine, Camaret Silens and Les Lopécrêtes, among others…
Radio Punk: I’ve often heard you mentioned in connection with oi!, and it’s no coincidence that I discovered you when talking to some people in the skinhead scene. But apart from a few influences, I wouldn’t call you an oi! band at all. Am I wrong? What are your biggest influences, which bands bring you all together?
FAB Syndrome 81: You’re absolutely right, if you do punk and sing in French they classify you as oi! In the beginning, we listened more to American punk and hardcore. When we launched Syndrome the idea was to be halfway between Blitz, Negative Approach, and Criminal Damage. Obviously, we have some touches of oi! but we haven’t quite mastered the codes to call ourselves that, I think! Swedish bands have influenced Jacky a lot for Syndrome 81’s more recent compositions, this Regulations style sound, Masshysteri, Hurula, Vicious, Terrible Feelings, Ebba Grön… Anyway, we have quite wide tastes, if it’s punk and we like it, well, we listen to it! We are mostly into music, ranging from Career Suicide to Government Warning, from Poison Idea to Lebanon Hannover, Drab Majesty via Infest, Diat, Low Life and so on…
Radio Punk: Tell us, how are the punk and DIY scene in Brest? What about your city and territory, are there squats, social centers, clubs where you hang out among the various subcultures? Is there unity between the various subcultures (punk, skins, hardcore, etc.)?
FAB Syndrome 81: Brest is a rock city in the broadest sense of the term, with great diversity in its sub-genres, and there is a punk tradition that endures, with ups and downs, in terms of groups and concert organizations. There were the pioneers in the 80s with Les Collabos, Al Kapott, Barykad, Criminals Damage, the wave of melodic hardcore in the late 90s/early 2000s, a more hardcore era, and there are still quite a few bands active today. I could name dozens and dozens of punk bands that existed in Brest. Brest is a medium-sized city, but it’s a small town in terms of music, so yes, the city is not big enough to allow itself to divide sub-genres, everyone is in contact with everyone, and there are bridges between punk and rap, between punk and rock bands in the broadest sense… As for places, the younger people created social centers but the authorities did not let them flourish. Today there is a place created by a group of inhabitants of a neighborhood in Brest, whose main vocation is not to organize punk concerts, but to create a real social link by proposing different events, and punk concerts are part of that. In the same neighborhood, there is also a bar run by friends who allow punks to organize concerts there. These are kind of the two solutions. But a current collective is trying to create a place that can last, which is very nice and requires a lot of energy.
Radio Punk: How much do the political/social and DIY aspects count for you? In Italy, for example, there is a strong link between the hardcore punk scene oi! and social spaces and anti-fascism, how is it with you? Since you come from Brittany, do you have an interest in the independence movement or do you feel very attached to Breton culture and traditions?
FAB Syndrome 81: We assume that the DIY scene must be clearly anti-discriminatory, we are all fundamentally left-wing, but it is possible that we take this too much for granted and lower our guard, forgetting to be more vigilant. It is the same here with regard to the links between anti-fascism, social center culture and punk-hxc, although we are not the most personally involved, we support the initiatives. I’m conflicted on the issue of Breton culture, my daughter did her first years of schooling in a bilingual school, and she learned some Breton, I think it’s important that this language doesn’t disappear… the French state has done everything to make regional identities disappear… however, in certain independence circles, there can also be sickening hints of identity. It is important to know the history of Brittany and its relationship with the centralizing state.
Radio Punk: We are incurable curiosity seekers, what do you do in life? What hobbies, jobs, and passions are behind your members?
Syndrome 81: Jacky is a technology teacher, Timmy is a primary school teacher, Damien works in HVAC, Fab works in public accounting, and Toma does video editing and IT.
Jacky has his own home studio and records various projects, takes care of his cats and has just started boxing.
Fab is a bookworm with a passion for literature and board games, follows a bit of football for fun.
Timmy lives on an island, is a member of the lifeboat association and loves to do puzzles in winter, and when the weather is good, he goes fishing with his boat.
Damien loves skateboarding, surfing and testing vegan recipes.
Toma is a big fan of computers, he likes to party and these days he is outfitting his van, which was originally a hearse.
Radio Punk: Regarding your lyrics, being in French I tried to guess them, but I’d say I’d rather ask you and not launch into interpretations for the sake of the readers… What are the themes you deal with the most?
FAB Syndrome 81: The city, the city and the city! In this album, we talk about returning to live in one’s hometown, the disappearance of people one loves, the social state of France that doesn’t seem to be improving, seeing one’s city change and seeing oneself change as well, a kind of fatalism, the resignation one can feel in the face of the current world, even if one doesn’t have to resign oneself, and then physical or moral loneliness… It is all in the title of the album PRISONS IMAGINAIRES, a title inspired by the works of Piranesi, an Italian artist, and it was a French writer who explained it best, Marguerite Yourcenar: “The true horror of the Prisons more than in some mysterious scenes of torture, is in the indifference of those human ants wandering in immense spaces, and in which different groups hardly seem to communicate with each other, or even notice their respective presence, and even not notice at all that in a dark corner a condemned man is being tortured”.
It is a record about the prisons we create or accept for ourselves, moral, social, psychological, familial, and sentimental prisons…
Radio Punk: I can already imagine this record being played live and I’m already ready to jump off the stage singing at the top of my lungs in broken French… So the question is simple, are you planning a gigantic tour in which you will visit various countries and continents and maybe even Italy, or will you stay in France for now?
FAB Syndrome 81: It’s complicated to line up all the planets in order to do a tour, given everyone’s personal or family obligations. We are considering any proposal, we have been invited to play in Athens by Chain Cult and so we will go. After that, yes, we’re not the most available in the world and we’re far from everything in Brest, but yes, we want to play…
Radio Punk: We say goodbye, thank you very much, and to conclude we ask you what you think of the current DIY punk scene. Lately, between the lack of generational change, fewer and fewer spaces to express ourselves and play music, and constant repression, we are not doing so well. What can be done to make punk return to its former glory?
FAB Syndrome 81: Is punk still of interest to the younger generation? Forming a band? I have the impression that not many people are interested anymore. But there are other genres or other forms of protest expression… you can’t force things, if it has to come back, it will come back, it’s cyclical… Nevertheless, there is still a need to gather around this kind of music, in alternative venues, I have the impression that in all these punk venues around the world there are still great nights.
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