Black Devil Disco Club’s Bernard Fevre is ready and waiting for a go on the quick-fire question machine
Hello Bernard, where are you right now and what can you see?
“I see a huge, green forest and a squirrel running by, does he have a mask?”
Can we clear up the name. Black Devil or Black Devil Disco Club?
“Black Devil Disco Club! Black Devil are a brand of cigarettes, not good as I quit smoking seven years ago.”
So new album, ‘Lucifer Is A Flower’, is the last-ever BDDC record?
“Yes, Bernard Fevre will always make music if he wants, Black Devil will do concerts. Maybe they will meet from time to time.”
The album sounds like the beginning of something rather than end…
“I wanted to show that other doors could open on the way to BDDC. I have known it for a long time, and time knew it too. But time is short, it’s late.”
BDDC started back in the 1970s, why hang up your boots now?
“I’d like to look for other horizons outside of hell where this damn black devil takes me with every note I play on a keyboard. I am at odds with the idea that everything has to be considered, I only consider my taste and my visions. I put my hands on a keyboard and the first sound that seduces me leads to a succession of sounds and rhythms that my ears are waiting for. Maybe it’s also because I’m tired of working alone and watching my mouth grow old.”
Can you tell us a little about your work as a library music composer?
“I found this vein a long time ago, it’s very cool. You can work freely, it’s your music and nobody, no advisor, can shit on it with their ideas. You suggest something, you are signed up or not, it is used or not. I work the same with Lo Recordings. I make music, they like it or not, and we move on. As my grandmother used to say, “Each to his job, and the cows will be well kept”
Why do you think 1977’s ‘Black Devil Disco Club’ was so forward looking?
“It was only time that told me that I was very early. I just made music that emanated from the culture of that time. In the end I was wrong, so I’ve always been missing the boat! I’m happy to see people dancing today to my music of yesterday, which is perhaps still the music of tomorrow!”
Can you tell us about the inspiration behind ‘Black Devil Disco Club’?
“At the time, everyone was doing disco, it was naive and festive, but where I was going dancing I saw the darker side of human relationships – sex, drugs, alcohol, envy, jealousy… I thought that the devil had his share in this disco movement, so I gave him a role of dark humour in my music.”
The story goes that Rephlex’s PP Roy found a copy for 20p at a car boot sale, which prompted his label’s 2004 reissue. Ever been to a car boot sale?
“Personally, I just stole a bit from the trunks of cars when I was a teenager, but I didn’t find any interesting music.”
How did you feel about that renewed interest in your work?
“I discovered the interest on the internet in 1999 thanks to the library sample that The Chemical Brothers used in ‘Got Glint’ on the ‘Surrender’ album, and then there was Aphex Twin. Because of this, I understood that I had to pick up where I left off 28 years before and the world of music followed me.”
Do people still think you’re not real?
“Sometimes they think so, but when I leave the stage and they hug me they see that I don’t evaporate.”
How do you know you are real?
“When a girl takes me by the hand.”
