James Kent, the mastermind behind the successful project Perturbator, has linked his name to the darkest and most cinematic sounds of modern electronic music. In the following interview, the French synthwave artist discusses his creative process following the completion of his recent musical trilogy. Through his answers, he unfolds his approach to composition, building his own dystopian world that draws inspiration from sci-fi movies, cyberpunk aesthetics, and retro video games. The discussion with him follows below.
Even though your album is named after "The Age of Aquarius" it sounds quite ominous. Could that be interpreted as a sarcastically nihilistic comment on nowadays geopolitical climate?
Absolutely yes. It was also a wordplay on the fact that I am myself Aquarius. I wanted to make an album inspired by a non-fictitious dystopia for a change and realized that our current reality already has all the markings of such a world heading to its own slow destruction.
Your albums are often characterized by a synesthetic use of colours. When you begin working on an album do you begin by imagining its colour palette and then work on images? Or does the visual part follow the sonic one?
It’s usually both at the same time. I often have a sort of picture in my head of what I’d like the artwork to look like while I make the music for it. I also save a bunch of art I love and find fitting in a file which I use as a mood board while composing. I’m very specific about everything artwork related and have sometimes re-colored them or worked on the layout on my own to make it as close as possible to what I envisioned.
If you were to live in a cyberpunk setting of a movie what would that be? Neo-Tokyo? Blade Runner’s world? Or even the apocalyptic deadlands of Hardware?
Tough question. I feel they’d all kinda suck to live in to be honest! But I think I’d have to go with Blade Runner’s version of Los Angeles since at least there’s a certain sad beauty and elegance to its hopelessness.
Synthwave seems to owe so much to 80s sci-fi soundtracks yet it sounds futuristic. In a way we turn to the past to create a future. Why is that? Does it mean that we can’t imagine a future anymore due to worldwide pessimism?
It is paradoxical in a way indeed, although I try in my own music not to indulge too much in nostalgia or recreating the music of the past. I think this all stems mostly from the fact that this music is, well, very synth based. And depending on who you are and what generation you’re from: a synthesizer can sound very outdated and cheesy, or it can sound like the most out-there, futuristic alien instrument ever.
It can absolutely be both, and more, which is what makes this kind of music very flexible and the reason why I love experimenting while making the stuff I do. I don’t know on a large scale if and how worldwide pessimism has an impact on music, so I can only speak for myself when I say that pretty much 90% of my stuff has always had somber, pessimistic and dystopian themes anyways.
If you were to artistically direct a videogame setting and its gameplay, would that be a 2D beat-em-up, a point-and-click sci-fi adventure or a first-person shooter in the vein of Doom? And how do you imagine it?
Oh, I love all of these genres but I have a huge soft spot for FPSs (especially old ones, Blood and Doom being all time favorites). I think I’d make it in a gothic sci-fi setting: a sort of dreary city in the style of Metropolis, Gotham or something you’d see in Hugh Ferriss artworks. Very monolithic, decadent and uninviting. As for the gameplay I’d imagine it to be more survival based rather than all guns blazing, with some resource management akin to “Resident Evil” for example.
One of my absolute favorite FPS of the past decade is a one-man project called “Cultic” and I think it strikes that perfect balance of “down to the last bullet” action mixed with very tense horror parts, especially when played on the extreme difficulty. Another great example is a total conversion mod for Doom named “Ashes 2063” which oozes with post-apocalyptic John Carpenter-esque vibes and is pretty brutal.
I’d imagine that sort of survival FPS gameplay but set in a futuristic film-noir setting. Maybe the city is falling apart and its inhabitants are all out for themselves and you gotta escape or something. Tension and atmosphere would be key to it all.
What comes into mind when you reminisce your past gigs in Athens?
The city’s beautiful, people are super nice and I’m a huge fan of Aphrodite’s Child so all that comes to mind are cool things!
Have you already started working on your next projects or is it a tad too early to be thinking about that?
I’m working on some music as always, but I’ve put Perturbator on pause for the moment considering I finished what I consider to be my latest trilogy (“New Model”, “Lustful Sacraments” and “Age of Aquarius”) and will need to experiment and find new inspiration in other places before launching a new Perturbator record!
James, thank you for your time. The closing words are yours.
Thanks to you!
