Harmonious bonds in music can be a rarity and must be explored to their full potential once found. Ben & Slane, a French duo, certainly think so as they share a path in both career and life. The two are about to release their latest EP, Made Of Gold which features their powerful and sensitive voices. Proudly, we are able to premiere the title track for their EP, along with an exclusive interview with the two unique individuals. Find it all below:
Take us through your songwriting process. Are there any particular steps you take when putting music together?
We write together, it starts with the guitar, and we put voices to find melodies. Then comes the lyrics and the construction of the song.
What gets your creative juices flowing?
Everything that touches us directly like love, pleasure, life’s difficulties and indirectly like the social context, politics, ecology.
As a musician, it becomes apparent that there is a huge difference between the art and the business. Is there anything about the music scene that you would personally change?
Indeed, there is a big difference between the art world and the art business. We think that changing the business world is illusory, change must come first among artists who must have complete freedom over their art and find their audience directly with social networks and by performing on stage as much as possible. As well as have a sufficient fan base and allow them to negotiate their advantages of possible deals with record companies.
Studio work and music creation or performing and interacting with a live audience, which do you prefer?
We don’t necessarily have preferences, we like both for different reasons. The stage is something strong – it’s a direct emotion. While recording in the studio is more introspective, day after day, trying to get there to what we had imagined when the title was only a draft.
What is the most memorable response you have had to your music?
What we are most often told is that our voices work well together, and we feel in our music that something binds us. The most memorable is also when people tell us that despite the darkness of our songs, it does them good.
What’s on your current playlist?
Tool, Andrew Bird, Joan Shelley, Joan as a police woman, White Denim, Piers Faccini
Radiohead, Nickel Creek, Pearl Jam, NIN, The Beatles….
Breakdown the news for us: what can we expect from you in the near future?
We will first release our first EP in digital in early June, and a physical release later .We should be making a video of our first single this summer and of course start a tour if the health context changes.
Famous last words?
“Life without music is simply a mistake, a fatigue, an exile”
F. Nietzsche
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