Interview With Lost In Kiev

Something happened that I have always dreamed of: Lost in Kiev have agreed to an interview! The post-rock band from Paris was very open to my questions.

The current album "Persona" which was released in December 2019, is playing on rotation. Time for some insider information!

Anne: Thank you very much for this interview! I'm so excited about getting to know one of my favourite bands! How are you doing today? Are you staying in Paris right now? How is the atmosphere there?

"Everything's coming back to normal except live music"

LIK: Hello Anne, Thanks a lot for having us in this interview. Despite the current situation, we are doing really well. We took this special time as a way to work differently together. Sharing more ideas remote than usual. This creative process is very interesting in some ways and allows us to work more on the details of our pre-production stuff. We are all in the Parisian area right now and everything's slowly coming back to normal except what we do, live music.

Anne: Like many other bands you would have been on tour right now. Besides working on new stuff: What else are you doing instead now that the whole music scene is supposed to take a break?

LIK: Yes we were very excited about this spring tour with our US friends from Pray For Sound, but that's a no for this year I guess. This is a perfect time to share ideas about our next album - concept, tracks ideas, sound textures. Also, we are very frequently talking with our tour manager about what's next. And well, all is still very unsure. Fall or 2021 but not before for sure.

Anne: Unfortunately our beloved DUNK!festival was also postponed due to the Corona crisis. You'd planned to play a gig there, too. Will I meet you at DUNK! 2021? In 2017 you played a fabulous show there!

"DUNK! 2017 was magic"

LIK: Thanks for your kind words on our show of 2017. We had a stunning experience on stage this day and we cannot wait to come back on this amazing stage and above all magic fest. For now, nothing is really sure for us for the next DUNK!fest. We hope so any way to play with a lot of friends and meet amazing people.

Anne: Your current album "Persona" (which I like a lot) is from 2019. Thank you for this true piece of art. What's the story behind it?

"We are telling stories"

LIK: We are all big fans of Sci-Fi, Cyberpunk stuff and dystopian futures and of course big fans of the TV show "Black Mirror". So making an album of these themes was something that came naturally for us. As we like to tell our own stories in our albums by writing our lyrics and samples, the concept and the limits of AI was the perfect theme to express our opinions on this and how it is linked with mankind. All tracks have their background and there has been a lot of conversations between us.

On the other hand, some of us do love synths and machines and it has been a long time since we wanted to do a more electronic album. This time the theme was perfect for that and we tried to find the right balance between massive rock energy and machines to bring a powerful but rich in textures sound.

Anne: What is the song "Pygmalion" about?

"AI is an extremely touchy theme"

LIK: Pygmalion is dealing with the extremely touchy theme of AI becoming more sensitive and closer to people than us, humans. We have imagined these voicing notes of a woman to her husband to illustrate this.

Anne: I like the name of your band a lot. Sounds some kind of mysterious to me, though. Do you want to tell me about its meaning and why you've decided to call your band "Lost in Kiev"?

LIK: Thanks! There is a real story about this name. Our former guitarist was dating a girl who is now his wife. This girl is from Kiev, and he was travelling there often to have weekends with her. And one day he did not go to our rehearsal session and we did not get any news from him for a couple of days. So we joked about the fact that he was Lost in Kiev. And he was due to a huge snowstorm.

Above the joke, we kept this name because travel is important for us especially at the time of our first album Motions.

Anne: The internet says, that you like bands like Red Sparrowes, Explosions In The Sky, Russian Circles, Mogwai and Maybeshewill. I think we have a lot in common at this point. Would you say that these artists influenced you and your music? And are there any other influences you want to name?

"We are big fans of 65daysofstatic"

LIK: Red Sparrowes and Mogwai clearly for their amazing sense of telling musical landscapes. Early Russian Circles for the power and melody. Also, we are big fans of 65daysofstatic, all the Vangelis work too. pg.lost are also important to us in the way they build their tracks.

Anne: What do you think: Should more people listen to post-rock?

LIK: We have to ask to the DUNK! team if they are ready to build a massive festival if post-rock becomes famous haha!

But yes in the way that post-rock dive into your soul to make you feel powerful things and for this everyone should be a post-rocker!

Anne: Besides what you just said: What makes post-rock so special?

LIK: Well above the music, we think that the post-rock scene, in general, is very special and great. We have never met such great people in other musical scenes.

Anne: Speaking of other music scenes: What are your favourite music genres?

"We love electronic music"

LIK: We do love electronic music such as Jon Hopkins, Rone, Apparat, Rival Consoles, and neo-classical such as Nils Frahm, Ben Lukas Boysen.

Anne: When writing new music: What puts you into a state of creativity and productivity?

LIK: Before the COVID pandemic, we worked a lot together in studio session for one week to play music and doing sound experiences. It was and still is important to us to start a creative process like that. But now we do that by sharing Logic Audio session and sharing a lot. We definitely need a band state of mind to be creative for Lost in Kiev.

Anne: Your music is very multifaceted. You are combining electronic sounds with heavy post-metal elements and deep and slow pieces. And lots of melodic parts of course. Where do you get your inspiration from?

"Every record has a theme"

LIK: Each of our records starts with an idea, a theme. We need to know what story we will tell through our music before writing it. And stories have a lot of different emotions that we try to show through these combining sounds and power textures.

Anne: The vocal parts in your songs are very special. On "Narcosis" for example and also on "Pygmalion" you can hear two people in a dialogue. In other songs it's more like someone is whispering in the background. This is very characteristic of your music. You also use to integrate this into your live shows very artfully. When did you come up with this and when did you decide that it has to be part of your art and makes it complete?

LIK: Thank you! This concept of having our own dialogues is there since "Motions", since the beginning. A lot of post-rock bands are using samples from movies, video games, or tv shows. We wanted to have our own because it is the only way to tell our stories. Yonan our drummer managed to include these perfectly into our show visuals.

Anne: Whose voices are those? In some of your videos, I have seen the face of a woman. "Insomnia" for example. And in the piece, you did with Ef at the Le Batofar in Paris you were hosting her on stage. I read, that she is called Nizza? Is she a member of Lost in Kiev?

"We are working together with actors"

LIK: On "Motions", the voices have been recorded with friends of ours (including Nizza), but for "Nuit Noire" and "Persona" we wanted to have something more pro. We are now working with actors to record our voices samples.

Anne: The worldwide situation is currently quite tense. Despite the pandemic, many people are joining protests to vent their anger - with good reason! There is violence everywhere and whenever you turn on the TV you will see despots demonstrating their power. If you had the opportunity to tell a certain politician your opinion: Who would it be and what would you tell them?

LIK: Even if we avoid political aspects in our music, Persona includes a lot of warnings of the current world and its danger. So we will tell him to be more human and to keep in mind that without respect of humanity everything can collapse faster than they think it will (or never will).

Anne: What's up next for Lost in Kiev?

"There's new music coming up soon"

LIK: We are working on our fourth album currently. So yeah: Expect new tracks soon! Maybe some of them will be played in 2021 on tour!

Anne: Once again: Thank you very much for your time! It was a great pleasure getting to know you better!

LIK: Thanks a lot Anne for these very great questions. See you soon at Dunk!

Lost in Kiev were founded in 2007. The post-rock band has been performing in the current line-up (Guitar: Dimitri Denat, guitar & synth: Maxime Ingrand, bass & synth: Jean Christophe Condette, drums: Yonan Vermeulen) since 2011. "Persona" is the third album after "Motions" (2012) and "Nuit Noire" (2016).