Voir #28, Vol. 8, July 15th, 1999

Those who assisted the last Front 242 tour will assure you that the techno pioneers are in great form. The old successful songs have been lifted and now transcend fashion and sound as up to date as ever. Interview with Patrick Codenys, programmer and keyboard player of the Belgian group.

When you started, in the early Eighties, techno simply didn't exist. You belong to the ones who really created this genre by exploring the various opportunities of electronic tools. How do you consider this music today?

There's a democratisation of techno from the bottom. Considering all the productions and easyness of this technology to enter every house, it's harder and harder to localise skilled artists. This is the problem of all the computer generation: tools go beyond ideas, all existing programs deliver an incredible collection of sounds, so people only recycle, and don't try to search for new sounds; they use what exists and get fast results. So there's a disappearing human dimension.

This human dimension seems very important for Front 242; for example, you've always preferred a drummer instead of a rhythm box...

Live shows are our favourite domain, and I believe that one of the main forces of our band is that we managed to develop this kind of music on stage; and electronic music hasn't totally proved yet its connection with the human, especially during live performances. Even with DJs, if the all the crowd move, the connection is different since the audience is in a way its own spectacle, and the DJ a kind of big priest. The audience needs leaders, musical or philosophical, especially for the imagery; and Front 242 are a very physical band, whose dancing and singing are a very present answer to this need in this musical genre.

After a four years hiatus, you came back playing your old material in a modern way. Is it to prepare your public for something new?

This is exactly the paradox of the band who's doing a lot of research and who's at a time caught by its history. I think that what's important when you're making music is to consider yourself as an artist and a human being instead of being enclosed in an image of yourself or in a system. The reason why Front 242 hasn't released any new albums is that we haven't managed to get rid of the image we have carried during the last fifteen years. We are all dreaming in our own bands about releasing an unknown album, under another name so as to develop more artistic material instead of maintaining a big machine.

So you're saying that success is now an obstacle to the group?

There are two negative points in our career: first, electronic music has become very popular, so we're in the mass whereas at the beginning we wanted to play an underground music. On the other hand, it is both negative and positive, this new electronic music has generated a bunch of skilled bands; so we met with challengers, even bands far better than us in the very same genre, which warned us and brought a new kind of pressure: so if Front 242 wants to kick the anthill again, that's something that has to be prepared for. That's not the kind of thing you do in one year... but I'm hopeful.

For the moment, from what Patrick Codenys says, Front 242 has stacked miles of tracks, full of new material. If we have to wait to find out what they are to become we can still dance to their old renovated success.

Nicolas Houle

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