A short item on the gigs in Paris by Les Inrocks.

If dEUS was English or American, they would have the same status as R.E.M. and Radiohead.

Interview with Tom on the website of French magazine Les Inrocks. Again, I'll only summarize any information not published in another interview.

• First, the interviewer writes that Slow is a dark diamond that would make Radiohead jealous.
• Tom feels that his "creative virus" is back. The idea now is to explore how far the current dEUS line-up can go, music-wise. He however still finds it hard to write new songs, and wonders about that "intervention", when you've been stuck for days and suddenly you write a whole song in just five minutes (like Eternal Woman, written right after seeing a Pixies documentary).
• Prince's Parade album was his main influence for Vantage Point. He likes that album because it's short, pop, rock, it's got ballads and it's fun.
• After the autumn 2005 concert in Lille (F), Tom wanted to call it quits for dEUS, but the Paris concert a few days after made him feel that "they were back". He quotes John Lennon to say that he just adapted to the new situation and decided to go on.
• The at times "spoken word" aspect of Tom's singing comes from his love for the 90's "white man rap", à la Beastie Boys, Massive Attack & Tricky. Back then he also enjoyed A Tribe Called Quest, Public Enemy & Wu-Tang Clan.
• He doesn't mind that dEUS has been labelled as "arty rock", because the brain is the sexiest body part. He also thinks that serious-looking artists are often actually the funniest and dirtiest people -- and the opposite is also true.

Another track of Vantage Point has leaked out. A podcast from Les Inrocks features Oh Your God. Click here to download the entire podcast. Oh Your God starts at 0:51.
The podcast-host also announces a gig in the Zénith (Paris) at the end of november.


(thx to Denis)

There's an interview with Tom and Stéphane in French rockmagazine Les Inrocks. Here's a short round-up:

• Tom says he thinks Vantage Point is more open than Pocket Revolution due to the problems they had while recording Pocket Revolution
• The album is called Vantage Point because they have so good memories of the recordings in their own studio (which is called Vantage Point too)
• Most of the songs were written by Tom, but a couple of tracks are the result of jam-sessions
• He always writes song with the live-aspect in the back of his head
• They've played bigger halls during the last tour and they liked it, so he wrote more songs that would fit better in those rooms, although he hopes they will not be labeled as stadium-rock
• His reference as a live-act is Queens Of The Stone Age since they manage to play well both in smaller rooms as in bigger halls or festivals
• Nick Cave was a big influence writing Vantage Point
• He and Mauro are learning to play piano