Country: France Genre: rock Questions: H., Atreides Answers: Wil Castle Number of questions: 10 ČESKÁ VERZE TADY Links: web / facebook / twitter / bandcamp

Hello to France! Let’s start right away with a question – this one won’t be much original but how would you introduce the band to someone who has never heard about you before? Let’s say someone like this reads this interview… how would you convince him that Duck Explosion is the band he should listen to?

Thanks to you and thanks for the great review! We really like it! My name is Wil and I’m the cofounder of the band and I play guitar. Duck Explosion was created by me and my friends and roommates Jey Bridge. A common passion leads us: ROCK!! 70’s rock for one for one and more alternative rock for the other. We create the alchemy, which gives its foundations to the band. Charly Poppins, a singer with heavy metal influences who marks the songs by his hoarse and energetic voice, then joined us. Later we were joined on the bass by Saraswati Inthesky, who is an arranger and a composer of harmonious tones, and finally by drummer Luca who quickly learned to hammer the rhythms of Duck Explosion.

Why listen Duck Explosion? Really hard question but with 5 members with 5 different influences Duck Explosion is a mixture of all these influences and i think you can ear on each song every influence.

I have to say that I really like the band’s name. Why did you decide to name yourself Duck Explosion? I’ve noticed you even have an exploding rubber duck at your live shows… does it mean that there is something more behind the name?

Well, for my roommate’s birthday in August 2010, I bought a gift and it was a plastic duck that used to light up when you slapped it. He decided to put this duck in our rehearsal room, and when we played very loud the duck used to make some lighting and I think this thing then began to become our emblem so we want a name with duck! The ‘Explosion’ part of the name came from the band Jon Spencer Blues Explosion as all the members are huge fans of Jon Spencer so we decide to put ‘Duck’ and ‘Explosion’ together. And at the end of every show it’s true we explode a rubber duck! Just for the fun ;)

On the other hand, your first EP is called “Zebra Pilot”. Is there any connection between an exploding duck and a zebra which pilots a plane? Or do you just like animals?

We called our first EP “Zebra Pilot” for two reason. “Zebra” because we like Black and white really often we dressed like this in gigs, photo or video like “The Inside”.

“Pilot” because is our first record just like the series first episode it’s a Pilot.

And we like animals too except spider, snake …etc

I’ve noticed that the plane on the cover of “Zebra Pilot” EP has “DE-1” written on its side. What does this stand for? Is it “Duck Explosion 1”? If so, do you plan to have another plane (or any other machine) named “DE-2” on the cover of your next release? That would be a cool tradition to do this on every record (laughs)…

Yes it’s for “Duck Explosion 1″, the plane it’s a P51 Mustang famous plane of WW2 and if you looking some photos of world war two you can see the same kind of inscription on the plane. We start recording a second part of this EP because some of people think the first record it’s too short and the futur cover can reserve some surprise. ;)

You’re from France but the names of the band members don’t sound much French to me. Are they just nicknames, or some of the members really don’t come from France?

France is not a rock country, so we try more and more to play outside our own country like playing in Germany and all of the United Kingdom but it’s a big thing to organise. So it’s hard to do something with this type of music in France. Fortunately some people like Christophe Sousa from Dooweet help the band a lot. But we came from france and all members are french.

For me, your music seems to be full of energy and energetic music usually kicks ass pretty hard when played live. Do you see yourself more as a live band, or do you prefer recording in a studio?

For me it’s clearly two differents works, but for our type of music the live really sound better, and clearly more excited for me, because the atmosphere, the crowd, the noise make me feel music better.

I have to confess that I feel a lot of influences of oldschool rock’n’roll from 70’s and 80’s on “Zebra Pilot”… do you like that kind of music? If you had to name a few bands which influenced you (not necessarily from that era of course), which ones would it be?

For me it’s clearly The Strokes who are my influence for everything, my songs and the sound of my guitar! Charly is a huge metal fan, Jey is really more a 70’s rock fan like Kiss, Led Zeppelin, and Saraswati likes the alternative stuff like Sonic Youth, Dinosaur Jr etc. Our drummer Luca listens to Nine Inch Nails everywhere and all the time, I think at this point it’s actually a disease (just joking!).

I like that you have your own official website which is nice because most bands nowadays just make a profile on Facebook and that’s all. I like it because you have to put some effort in it, it’s not like you just do a few clicks and have profile. Do you think that official websites are still important when most of the people gain information just from their Facebook walls?

It’s a world of communication and i think everything is important Facebook, official website, twitter … But a website it(s more personnel so i think it’s better way to introduce the spirit of the band by a website, but it’s a lot work take lot of time but it’s clearly important.

The very first question wasn’t much original and this one won’t be as well… what are your plans for the nearest future?

We start recording six track EP for 2014 and certainly an full length album in 2015. We currently have 15 songs in the planning and quickly 20.

And a lot more gigs are coming quickly. We have our song ‘In the Inside’ on the “War Machine” compilation Dooweet since february, and we’re planning to shoot some videos, so stay tuned.

Okay, let’s do the very last question and I have to say that I’m very curious about this one… How can a zebra pilot a plane when it has hooves (laughs)? Thank you very much for the interview and good luck in your future endeavour!

Hmmm that thequestion on this interview (laughs). It’s half human half zebra so he have two hands and two legs, it’s just a head problem (laughs).

But it’s a really good driver you can discover that on the next cover.

Thanks for this interview and sorry for all my english mistake but never forget i’m just a duck ;)

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