AltVenger had an exclusive interview with Saigon Blue Rain. This French dark wave band just released its second album Noire Psyché and we were quite curious to know some facts about ’em!
Hello, introduce Saigon Blue Rain.
Saigon Blue 
Rain is an ethereal wave band from Paris (even if it will be based in South East of France in a few months), and consists of Franck and Ophelia, plus our bassist Gilles on stage.
I’m surely not the only one who thinks so, but Saigon Blue Rain surely has that old 4-AD sound (in particular Cocteau Twins). Do you agree and are you never bored of it as after all Saigon Blue Rain has a very own sound too.
We are flattered by the comparison, but Cocteau Twins has not really been a source of inspiration for us, given that we discovered them quite recently. Of course there we have some points in common, the drum machine, female vo
cals, ethereal sounds. Saigon Blue Rain feeds itself from different sources of inspirations trying to create a timeless sound.
You recently released Noire Psyché, your newest album. In which way does it differ from your first one What I Don’t See?
Noire Psyché has been more intensive, we’ve been more critical with it. It was a real challenge for us to make it as good as the previous or even better. That’s why we’ve put more time to finish it and make it sound as we wanted. Otherwise, it’s more introspective. What I don’t see was an ode to the immaterial things that surround us, but Noire Psyché is kind of its opposite, an exposure of our feelings, souls and bodies.
The new album is again self-released. A forced choice or do you 
really want to be completely independent?
It is a forced choice since we had no interesting proposition from a label. Being independent has its advantages and his drawbacks. The difficulty resides especially in the promotion.
You will soon start a tour with The Beauty Of Gemina. I guess this is the ideal opportunity to show the dark wave fans what Saigon Blue Rain is all about as, after all, they’re quite a big band. In fact, tell us how that happened!
We’re really excited about making this tour and expect a lot from it. We were brought to Michael Sele’s ears by a wonderful English promoter who made us play in London last November. It seems that The Beauty Of Gemina frontman appreciates our music and that’s why he wanted to
invite us on tour.
You are a French band, do you think in some way that you fit in the French underground scene?
We don’t really know bands the French underground scene, beside Soror Dolorosa, Jessica 93 or Hante for example but they sound very different from us, so we don’t know if we can say that we fit to this same scene.
In fact, the
origin of the band was that you wrote a song for your deceased grand parents. Please tell us about, and how did this evolves in Saigon Blue Rain?
Franck and I have had our own musical projects when we were younger , we weren’t involved in the same kinds of music. But when my grand parents died, we wanted to put our musical skills in common. An ethereal dream pop song was born and a few weeks later, we’ve composed about ten other tracks, some of them are on our first EP Stupid Bitch Reject and that’s the beginning of Saigon Blue Rain.
Agree that Saigon Blue Rain takes its roots from the 80s, but that it doesn’t sound as the 80’s?
We’ve been mainly inspired by the 80’s when we created the band. As we often say it, we are big fans of bands like Depeche Mode, The Cure or The Chameleons. Naturally, they used to inspire us a lot in the process of creation but as we refuse to get stuck in an area or a style, we are just trying to create things that we like, no matter if it sounds cold wave, shoegaze, pop, folk. We just want to be us and make good music.
A very important part of Saigon Blue Rain is the use of images. You make very great videos, I guess in some way you can say that Marie-Line Pochet
who creates it all, is a part of Saigon Blue Rain, not?
Marie-Line has followed us since the beginning, she has a deep artistic sensibility and she’s also a real friend, each time she works with us, the result is in perfect cohesion with our music and the feelings we wanted to express through it. Of course, she’s a part of Saigon Blue Rain.
I am Tinkerbell for one minute and you may make
one wish, so tell!
A lot of gigs for the year 2017 ’cause that’s what we are made for!
