by Francois Hubert

Nicolas (guitar): I started playing guitar when I was 14. I learned by myself. I like Delta blues and electric blues (Skip James, Robert Johnson, Elmore James, Hound Dog Taylor, Hendrix) rock (Mudhoney, Velvet Underground, Nirvana, Sonic Youth, Melvins, Die My Will, Don Vito...), jazz and free jazz (Billie Holiday, Coltrane, Albert Ayler, Sun Ra...), free music (Urabe Masayoshi, Chie Mukai, Keiji Haino, Rinji Fukuoka). I like every kind of music with a rough sound, feeling, imperfections.

Guillaume (drums): What I like in music is playing lots of different things, many styles, many ways. With Lena Circus, I can play in the way which is the best for me, every style at the same time. It's like my interest in music, I like jazz, rock, reggae, latin music, folk, every style, every way to express myself through music. My favorite artists/bands may go from early jazz orchestras to the latest hardcore band or pop artist of today.

Antoine (guitar, sax): What I like in music is to feel some atmosphere. Music doesn't need words or explanation, everybody is different and everyone can feel their own emotion, listening to the same music. So I don't need rhythm or melody so much. I prefer to have some images or atmosphere and I can find this in every kind of music. But at the beginning, I started playing music with punk rock.

Nicolas (guitar): Antoine and I met at school. We were both in rock bands which split up at the same time, so we decided to play together. Our music became more and more abstract and far from our rock base, maybe because of our interest in recording, experimenting with new sounds, effects, open tunings, etc...

We recorded four EPs together (EXP#1-4) that were like sketches to fix our ideas. Then we started to look for a drummer. We first played a few with Greg (who now plays in the band Marvin!). It sounded more like "instrumental space rock" at the time. Then we met Guillaume. With his jazz background, it opened new spaces for our music that fit better with our sound.

We come from rock and we turned into abstract guitar sounds. We were not aware of the improvisation/experimental scene when we began to play like this. It was very naive, that's why our music is like you say, maybe. If we had known all these artists before we had started to play this kind of things, we could not have been so "free" in our approach. Unlearning can be good sometimes! Other artforms like movies, painting, influenced us a lot too... If you like Munch, David Lynch, the Brothers Quay and electric guitar feedback... It really started from the sound and the mood: a detuned electric guitar plugged with effects played in a strange way. When we began to play as a trio, we wanted to mix our guitars with drums sounds, but without standard uses of rhythm: some waves of drums in a way...

When we do a piece, it's often a mix between composition and improvisation. We know which different atmospheres each instrument will create, how they cross each other, but the way we precisely play is free.

But there are some exceptions: for example, every note of "Upstairs Downstars" on our first CD as a trio ("Frozen Journey") is fixed.

On "Toki No Arika", it was not prepared before we went in the studio...; but we know each other very well, and we have got some sort of common vocabulary. So we can build some sense of direction, but it's not really about notes, it's about sound, intensity, mood, etc...

For our live performances, it's the same thing: we decide of the different atmosphere we will play, but it's completely free inside of it.

But we like to play completely improvised pieces too, it depends on the mood.

We discovered Butoh in a place called La Guillotine: there was a performance of the band Documents with Butoh dancer Gyohei Zaitsu. It was a big shock, the music and the dance together. Drummer Bruno Fernandes (aka Yasô) became a good friend and we have played with him a lot. His way of playing, his surrealistic approach to art, his knowledge of experimental music were all a big influence for us. Why do we play a lot with Butoh dancers? For us, dance was far from our rock background. But Butoh (when it's good!) is abstract and strongly physical at the same time. Butoh is for dance what we are searching for in music. There's something corrosive and subversive in it, there is no precise meaning, everybody can understand it in their own way. I guess that's what we like in art! For a musician, to play music with dancers gives a new meaning to silence.

We played a lot in the streets with performer Midoh Omura. It was really good fun. The feedback of the "street audience" is really fresh and natural. The idea of playing in front of people who are not usually involved in experimental art is something that interests us a lot. The street is a good place for improv’, because you really don't know what will happen!

The sound is very important in our music, and so is the choice of our equipment. We decide if we will play with electric guitars or with amplified acoustic guitars. Same thing for Guillaume: he can play on the floor with a small kit of percussions or on a big drum kit: so we have different settings.

What we choose to use is about our mood, about the place, and the possibilities! For example, a live set with Hiroko Komiya takes a long time to prepare: we mix very small acoustic sounds with electric and drums, so we need some time for a good soundcheck. If there are a lot of noise bands in the same event, we'd better play as a trio with electric equipment. Even if we don’t do a soundcheck, we know that the audience will be able to hear us!

We discovered Hiroko Komiya because she plays with Atsushi Takenouchi (butoh dance). We became really big fans of hers, and we went to see her a lot of time when she was playing in Paris! She was interested in our music too, and came to some concerts. We began to speak about playing together one day. She's very busy because she's always traveling, so we decided to go in a recording studio directly! The recording session was the first time we all played together. It was really a good idea, because it was "fresh" and at the same time, we knew her music very well, and for her it was the same, so we could imagine how it could work, in a way.

"Toki No Arika" was made the 20th November [2007], and "Jazz Headed" was recorded the 21st! There are three guests on this record: Sfumatto Di Barj(o) (amplified voice, FR) is a really good friend, we play a lot with him, he's part of the family! Nicolas plays blues songs in the subway to get money, and that's how he met Duende Main Noire (amplified baryton sax, USA). There was a good feeling with him, so we made one or two rehearsals, and that's it! He naturally has this crazy feeling that you can find in Sun Ra's music! Kentaro Suzuki (JP) is a really good double bass player, we played once or twice with him in an improvisation festival, we wanted to play together and it was a good opportunity. Now Kentaro plays in the Riko Goto Trio with Guillaume.

Oki Itaru (trumpet), Hiroko Komiya, Keiji Haino, Makoto Kawabata, Rinji Fukuoka, Chie Mukai, Don Vito, The Melvins, Urabe Masayoshi, Zu, Bruno Fernandes, Philippe Simon!

Yes, it's the way we're doing it. For us "experimental" only means to go off the tracks and do something we really like. We didn't study music history in high school. We don't really like conceptual ways of thinking.

Art is interesting if it's a need, something directly connected with the unconscious, something bigger than words. Sometimes it feels like talking about art is more important than what you're really doing. It sucks! We're only looking for a sound that moves us.

When I was 7 or 8, I joined a music band as an elementary school child in Japan. It was an orchestra which performed Western classical music. I was playing snare drum, mostly. This is where I learned how to read notes. Still, one of my earliest music memories comes from the time my family lived in the countryside. My father always used to play a lot of music in his car – popular stuff, some jazz, maybe, or even Kitaro! It was natural for me to listen to music in the car. Around the same time, I joined a marching band. I really enjoyed making music with movements even if they were very fixed. It was very interesting for me to make figures with sound and body.

One day, my tabla teacher invited me to see him perform in a temple in Kyoto. And this is where I first met Takenouchi who, at that time, was involved in a very extensive project, traveling all over Japan and giving performances in workshops, hospitals, visiting disabled people and children. I became gradually involved in this project. This is when I started using natural material such as bamboo, stones, etc. - very simple instruments that you could play with these children. There were no fixed compositions, no fixed melodies. We just shared and used touch. Actually, some children could only shake their bodies as they were laying upon the floor. Just shaking... This really moved me. These children could do so many subtle things with their movements. Not only was Takenouchi acting as a guide, but he was also discovering how body and sound could be used.

This was actually a collective decision. It literally means “the place where time is hiding”. This is related to the way recorded the album. Normally, I always work with dancers. I'm used to performing with people moving around me. When we recorded TNA, there were no dancers. We sat in a sort of circle, all four of us, in the dark – with one candle in the middle of the room. We could only see the light and our faces. It was a very warm and relaxed environment. Basically, we played, using very simple words or images as sources of inspiration – words like “deep river” for 15 minutes or “silent forest” for another amount of time. We extended from that, using various combinations. Nothing was fixed, really. And as we played, I felt there was no more ordinary perception of time – either we could make time disappear or make it last as long as we wished. It was all the more interesting for us as I feel we all have very distinct “sonic” identities. Antoine is more “air which has plasma” - he can use many different instruments at the same time, like a muted trumpet, a clarinet or a ukulele and he transforms them into unknown sounds. He has his own way to take the moment, whereas Nicolas is more linear, like a sound coming from far away and suddenly disappearing or vibrating till eternity or infinity. As for Guillaume, it was great to have these conversations between the drums and the small percussions/ stones that I use as if it was a dialog of primal animals. The sound Antoine, Nicolas and Guillaume make is harmony, dissonance... everything exists. We experienced some amazing transformations together and I was very happy to collaborate with them.