SPB was recently presented with the opportunity to talk with Marc Euvrie, the man behind the excellent album The Eye of Time. Unfortunately, your writer lives in Vermont, a glorified expressway between New York City and Montréal, and Euvrie happens to reside in France, which is apparently on an entirely different continent. Rather than letting this critical setback hamper us, we elected to email him a few questions in lieu of a face-to-face interview.
Scene Point Blank: Right up front, I'd like to thank you in advance for taking the time to answer some of these questions. Firstly, how do you feel about SPB's review for The Eye of Time? The album received one of our few perfect scores on the website.
Marc Euvrie: I've been doing this solo project for many years, and it has always been for a minimal audience. When I see good reviews like this, it makes feel proud and happy. I've never been thinking that my music would be able to have so good feedback.
Scene Point Blank: Why did you feel the need to work on The Eye of Time as a solo project? How did working with your previous bands motivate or influence your solo work?
Marc Euvrie: The more you are in a band, the less it's personal. It's interesting, but it's another form of art. Being alone makes you as close as possible to your personal feelings. I like both ways of creating music. It's just different experimentations. I started composing alone many years ago, even before having any serious band, but it became concrete in the same time as my band were getting serious. I can't separate my solo project from the other bands I made/have. It's music. I just like to experiment what's in my mind.
Scene Point Blank: How has dealing with depression affected your career in music? What would you recommend to musicians who may feel the same sense of despair?
Marc Euvrie: I don't see myself as a depressive guy. I enjoy a lot of things in life, and I love to laugh. But, the world around me can give me very bad feelings, and sometime no hope. It's paradoxical. I have almost no hope for us, but I love so much life that I'm fucking angry. So badly. But I don't know what to recommend...if you have a sense of despair, just make music or art to evacuate all your sad emotions, it's the best therapy. And by the way, we can still change the world. Quite impossible, but that's what dreams are, right? Don't just stay at home making music, fight for your thoughts. Resignation makes your enemies win faster.
Scene Point Blank: Your website states that you sought to write "critical music without using platitudes." How has writing (mostly) instrumental music allowed you to express your ideas more effectively?
Marc Euvrie: In every day of my life, I don't talk so much about my feelings to the people I love. It has always been like that. I’ve played music since I was 7 years old, and I was always thinking that people don't want to listen to me. I was talking with my music, but always frustrated that people didn't understand that I was talking to them! I think I try more and more to share my feelings as much as possible while playing. My work in The Eye of Time, when I'm composing, I don't think about arrangement or technical stuff, the main line is to express as much as possible the emotion I want to give. Emotion is what is guiding me.
Scene Point Blank: Based off reactions so far, was there any part of your message that you feel didn't get through?
Marc Euvrie: Maybe that I look like a depressive guy, which is false. I'm a dark person with a tortured mind, that's sure. I have hundreds of things to resolve for myself. But I love life so much. I love having fun. I try to enjoy each second of my life. And the world we're living in is working to kill the essence of life, managing any second of our existence, making choices for us. And that's killing me, every day. I can't understand, every single day, how we can all live like that. We're living in an absurd world. And this makes my hate grow so much inside me, and on the other way, gives me forces to have fun and to love my family and friends, as it would be the last day.
Scene Point Blank: You say each of your pieces is based off a specific story from your life. Can you share any of these events with us and how they motivated your music?
Marc Euvrie: OK, that's kind of hard for me but...the song called “With numbers,” the last one of the Jail album. It's talking about when I was child, and I felt from a 25 meter cliff. Everyone in the hospital said that I should be dead. But I had only few hits, nothing broken. The song is talking about my other me, who's dead down to this cliff.
Scene Point Blank: Your website also mentions growing up with punk and hardcore music, though there is clearly more at play in your album. What other art are you drawing influence from?
Marc Euvrie: I don't know so much other arts. I have many friends into painting, photos and stuff but, outside of music, I don't have a lot of general culture. I mean, I don't know precise artists that influenced me. I like art in general, and nature also is art. And I love books, so much.
Scene Point Blank: The physical album itself is unusual in that there is great detail and thought put into the accompanying art, not just the music. Do you feel the physical artwork itself is necessary to enjoy the content of the album to the fullest? What made you decide to put so much effort into directing a part of the album that many (musical) artists do not focus on as heavily?
Marc Euvrie: I think that now that I can express more into a song then into talking. But for that I need a support like pictures to help the listeners to know on which way I'm talking. I hate music just to be music. For me it's political, you can't separate a composer from his history and the world around him. That's why I need pictures, to be sure that people are listening to my music with a background done by me. Then you can imagine the movie you want, but I give you the background and the actors.
Scene Point Blank: On a related question, how did you come into collaboration with Thomas Hack? What about his artwork drew you to him for this project?
Marc Euvrie: That's easy. I said to Denovali that I would like a picture for each song. They said Thomas from the label can do it, and I looked to his works and really liked it. That's it. Then we worked together for four years, to have the good intention that I wanted to give.
Scene Point Blank: What can we expect from you in the future? Where are you planning to take your music from here?
Marc Euvrie: I'm composing some piano solo songs, that I hope I'll release at the end of this year. I'm recording them this summer, I hope. I have also a tour in October/November in Europe.
And I'm also thinking about a piano tour to play in intimate places like apartments and share emotions closer to the people. Don't know yet when, and if I'll do it…
Scene Point Blank: One last thing. What kind of a state is our society in, anyway?
Marc Euvrie: The reign of stupidity. War is peace, and 2+2=5. There's hundreds of examples every day. One that comes in my mind: on our French highways (which are the most expensive in Europe), you can buy a card, so you pay every month to not queue for paying, and pass through another faster way, when it's the paying point. This is called Liber-t (which means “freedom”). This is nonsense. You have to pay to move which means you're not free to travel but this is called freedom. This is one thing into the millions of them we can see every day.
Scene Point Blank: Thanks again for your time and such a wonderful album.
Marc Euvrie: Thanks to you for your interest.
