NEPTUNIAN MAXIMALISM - Interview

ETHEREAL.PRESS

Tell us about NEPTUNIAN MAXIMALISM.

NEPTUNIAN MAXIMALISM

NEPTUNIAN MAXIMALISM (NNMM) is my main band, more like a flexible collective. We do kind of heavy tribal music, a mix of spiritual free jazz and occult psychic drone/doom with a lot of foreign influences. We try to create a feeling of acceptance of the end of the "Anthropocene" era through a musical and soteriological experience. Currently, we are working on 2 ragas of Indian classical music, Raga Marwa and Raga Bairagi, which we are trying to express through our music.

ETHEREAL.PRESS

Expect to elaborate on your Bandcamp bio, which states, "trying to create a sense of acceptance of the end of the 'Anthropocene' era through musical and soteriological experience.”

NEPTUNIAN MAXIMALISM

The idea is, by observing and embodying distant pasts, to turn towards the music of the future.

This music includes a part of shamanic medicine in a way and must be the open door on ancestral practices which fail our post-industrial society dying and causing the death of the living on Earth. It also includes in its cosmology the idea that the stage reached by homo-sapiens is not first of all an end in itself, but above all that any living species is a candidate for the state of consciousness and advanced intelligence.

One only needs to consider larger time scales, and consider opportunism in this process. The end of humanity then becomes a potential necessity in that it prevents the living from expressing itself. One would have to withdraw from the scene of the living to leave room, in other words.

It would be the ultimate gesture that would allow us to accomplish the overcoming of our condition of homo-sapiens to go towards homo-sensibilis, the man who knows that he does not know. Because we are more animal than we think with homo-sapiens, and animals are more "human" than we think.

ETHEREAL.PRESS

Tell us about your 2020 release called "Éons".

NEPTUNIAN MAXIMALISM

Éons is the catalyst of these ideas in an all-powerful musical experience. A strong desire for specic transmutation and to exist within a biocenosis. It is the anarchy of the living that is contained in this work.

ETHEREAL.PRESS

Does Éons follow a narrative?

NEPTUNIAN MAXIMALISM

Yes, it begins with To The Earth which recounts the emergence of the Earth and of life on Earth in an unprecedented violence specific to the birth of worlds. Then with To The Moon, which refers to the emergence of the human species and the Antropocene drama.

To end with an open utopia that evokes an animal world with a higher consciousness, where the elephant occupies an important place and determines a new era of life: the probocene.

ETHEREAL.PRESS

Why do you choose to mix different languages in your song titles?

NEPTUNIAN MAXIMALISM

Because I consider us in this project as a planetary species, and not as civilizations of localities.

The languages are all beautiful and their writing too. I also wanted the cultures from which I draw inspiration to be put in the spotlight, that their peoples could feel at home when they read the title of a piece of music, and that we Westerners see that they exist and thus open the door on that. And thank them too, because without them Western music degenerates and me with it.

ETHEREAL.PRESS

Much of your imagery is inspired by Eastern religious traditions. Do you plan to detail some of your choices of album covers?

NEPTUNIAN MAXIMALISM

It is above all a thunderbolt for the works of Kaneko Tomiyuki. But also of a desire to turn to a non-Western art. In addition, certain themes find echoes with our esoteric culture, such as the killing of the bull by Vajrabairava in echo with the cult of Mithrasfor example. But obviously, it's because his image seemed to me to evoke the content of our albums wonderfully.

ETHEREAL.PRESS

Is mysticism and art linked for you?

NEPTUNIAN MAXIMALISM

Yes.

We must never forget that originally, art, medicine and spirituality remained linked, and this since the most ancient times of humanity. It is difficult to speak of mysticism, as the term is decked out in so many interpretations. But I would simply say paraphrasing Alejandro Jodorowsky that art is medicine for being and for society.

Can we talk about art if it is not about health? And the degenerated dominant art of our sick post-industrial society is the convincing testimony to this. A release of emptiness subject to the economic market.

A link has broken. Yet, for many civilizations still living on Earth, art is a supreme means of communicating with the divine.

It's a prayer.

ETHEREAL.PRESS

The sounds you mix therefore vary on the Eons and include drone metal, spiritual free jazz and psychedelic sounds. The difficulty cannot be underestimated in combining all of these opposing sounds to create a cohesive project/narrative.

Have you found issues incorporating so many different influences?

NEPTUNIAN MAXIMALISM

Clearly.

It's really difficult, especially for concerts. Even today we encounter heaps of difficulty and conflicts between heavy amplified distorted guitars, martial drums and acoustic instruments like the saxophone, certainly powerful, but whose amplification technique has its limits compared to the rest.

The variation of timbres is also a challenge to manage, but the recording studio allows more control. At the beginning there were 4 of us and free improvisation allowed us to achieve this feat, but now we are 8 and it's not always easy, but the rules of Indian classical music help us for the moment.

ETHEREAL.PRESS

Do you want your music to evoke spiritual experiences in your listeners?

NEPTUNIAN MAXIMALISM

With pleasure.

This is already the case, to tell the truth, according to spontaneous feedback from listeners in different parts of the globe. We count them on the fingertips of course, but they have had a strong and transforming inner experience, as I have experienced myself through the work of other artists, and so on.

So that's the goal. Medicine operates.

ETHEREAL.PRESS

What is the next step for Neptunian Maximalism?

NEPTUNIAN MAXIMALISM

Record Indian classical music made by the megalomaniacs that we are. And play it live. It's music that heals the soul like no other. So we plan to draw tears and piss off the dictates of entertainment.

Nasatanada Zazas!

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LINKS: BANDCAMP