"What the fucked do we all do now? | - Lights"

torpedo is a noise rock trio you should all listen to. In musical and philosophical terms. I talked to singer, guitarist, and composer Carro Loubère about their current album, "What the fucked do we all do now? | - Lights". The record wraps the band's motto in music perfectly: "Sans un chant pour dire ce qui est, rien n'est vraiment" – "Without a song to say what is, nothing truly exists."

torpedo consists of Carro, Jay Liseron (bass), and Drew Hammer (drums). The three of them see the world as it is: Loud and dark and also cruel-some these days. Their understanding of what drives us humans in doing what we do led them to create their very personal songs. The three of them have been based in Lausanne, Switzerland, since the band's founding in 2016. They see the world as it is: loud and dark and also cruel-some these days. Their understanding of what drives us humans in doing what we do led them to create their very personal songs.

Their story began as a psychedelic, alternative post-punk duo, with Carro on vocals and guitar and Jay on bass (and drum machines as the only rhythmic companion at the time). Drew Hammer joined on drums just before the release of their debut LP "Sphynx" in 2019. For their second album, "Orpheo_ Nebula," the newly formed trio recorded everything live in their rehearsal space during lockdown in early 2020, building a work of layers, collages, and experiments around six poems. Released in 2022, the record received a warm reception from the media, and the band completed two West Coast tours in the US.

Now torpedo are back with their third and most ambitious record to date. "What the fucked do we all do now? | - Lights" was recorded in Renens and Lausanne, mixed and mastered by Jack Shirley at The Atomic Garden in Oakland, California, and released via Broken Clover Records in San Francisco. The album arrives in two parts: the first on 12" vinyl on June 27, 2025, accompanied by a fanzine and a poster; the second on 10" vinyl following in September.

At its core, the record is a musical and political manifesto. It is a celebration of beauty, a plea for empathy, and a challenge to the status quo, echoing voices that are feminist, non-binary, ecological, and anti-capitalist. Doomed-nation. It is a furious and living noise rock that refuses to accept the way we are made to live in a society destroying its own habitat, its own representatives, and all living beings around it.

Anne: How are you? Thanks for taking the time! How is your day so far?

Carro: Thank you, my day has been good so far. I hope yours is as well! It is almost sunny here. I did many things for my art and read very interesting stuff. Got inspirations for new songs and worked on some visuals.

We took some time to reply to your very interesting interview. We needed to let some time pass since the release of this living and non-consumable album, and we feel that now is the right time. Thank you so much for having us.

Anne: Your new album's title, "What the fucked do we all do now? | - Lights", feels like a rallying cry for our times. What was the spark that ignited this particular sonic rebellion?

"Can we not make light out of it?"

torpedo – "What the fucked do we all do now? | - Lights"

Yeah, a rallying cry for understanding together what is happening in our world right now, it's about the need to act by all the ways we can to create beauty and kindness in a world that sink in horror, to keep a loving posture in a world filling up with hate and power, to be honest where there is masks and hypocrisy, to cultivate a clear mind and understanding in a world being destabilised by the abusers who are in "power" (which they win by destabilisation) and are lying and manipulating unscrupulously. We are not what these abusers, sociopaths, and psychopaths in power are doing. What is happening right now is the real face of capitalism.

What it has always been about, but didn't show that clearly, at least in Western culture. This system is dysfunctional, and it has to change because it is not sustainable. In a functional society, people who reach these posts of governance would put peace, life, and the common good first and would be totally dedicated to their community and to the global balance of the Earth's ecosystem. But as long as our societies are sick because of capitalism, we need, for sure, rallying cries to hold on, carry on to our deepest humanity, its beauty, to empathy, and to poetry.

Among many other things, the title evokes as well the idea of what we all do now from what is fucked in us, in our world, in others, in human society? Can we not make light out of it?

The spark that ignited the creation dwells in our innocence and our love for life that resides in our hearts. The hope, the dream, and the possibility—we see—that human life is part of the global ecosystem, dancing with this entity with grace, and certainly happiness.

It resides as well in the need we feel to hold on and to carry on in front of the fascization of our society, the normalisation of violence, the standardisation and homogenisation of the ways of thinking (like a narrative monoculture), and finally, in the disaster of waste the whole human society has become.

But it is also the very intense need to create new paths to escape from this, some ways out. Someone said that this album is strange. Well, it is totally correct, this music is imagining, creating the possibility, and describing unknown places, unknown forms of human life vibrating freely and harmoniously.

And finally, what lit all these different sparks was the urge we felt to tell and share with you all what we saw!

Anne: You blend elements from noise rock, punk, psychedelia, and post-rock into something truly ritualistic. If you could paint a surreal landscape that captures the spirit of your sound, what would it look like, and who or what might wander through it?

Carro: Thank you! Yes, saying what is allows one to free oneself from it. So that in putting words on what is now, this album is definitely a ritualistic ride to a cathartic state of mind, restoring the consciousness harmony.

The whole album sounds like a mix between—in the field of surréalisme—maybe La tentación de San Antonio by Dalí with the same topic triptych paint from 1501 by Hieronymus Bosch, allied with the cave paintings from Balho, Tadjourah in Djibouti, the Unicorn from Tamgaly, Kazakhstan, those from Chauvet's cave in France, the Oonts of Bactrian from Kapova cave, Bachkirie, Bachkortostan, and the lioness of Gobedra. I'll add some Bacon, Twombly, surely Tinguely, Rothko, and Redon, for sure some Monet; plus Claudel & Richier for the sculpture, and I guess we would get a clear surrealist picture of this album!

And for | NOISE, I'd say the first movement would be a place drawn into a deep fog, where you can barely see. Where the vocals would hover in the mist, like drags of material howls. Where, at the same time, a bright and clear place exists, and some vocals are floating on the very blue sky, where everything is filled with light. Like this, the possibility exists already. So that, in the Elevation, the point of view allows us to grab what is happening below, in rage and worries.

There are many images, for me, in this particular song that are coming together and contrasting to form an accurate sonic picture of our world, transcending our actual understanding of the reality we can grasp.

The movements 2, 3, and 4 of | NOISE would be more like beautiful pieces of nature shining bright and alive, vibrating strongly. There might be some Corot and Waterhouse, probably some Van Gogh (I think particularly at the Almond blossoms and the starry nights) in there too. And if you look back from there into the first movement, you'll probably see something like the Spring of Millet. And so movements 2, 3, and 4 of | NOISE look like a preserved zone now, some tender landscape of beautiful kindness, full of grace, where humans can exist freely among living beings as a harmonious part of life.

Anne: "What the fucked do we all do now? | - Lights" has been described as both a protest and a poem. How do you balance fury and tenderness in your songwriting process?

"Writing poetry is a radical act of life and honesty."

Carro: It is mainly both yes. Writing poetry is a radical act of life and honesty, which I feel and live as essential at every moment of life. In this, it is a practice of resistance and consciousness: to see and to say what is. As a first breath of thoughts. Someone said: an expression, by human tongue, of the essential rhythm of the mysterious aspects of existence.

I guess it is natural, when it sounds and feels ready, then it is balanced and ready to go.

Anne: You open the album with the 8-minute journey "Some Wolves". What's the story behind this track? I'd love to know whether it set the tone for the rest of the record or if it emerged during the composing process.

Carro: SOME WOLVES was for a long time called "New Cool", as the new cool song we had, but not only. This first title set the tone for the album and its message. Songs are always miracles, and they always have something to say, even when we don't understand them fully at first. They are surpassing us! They are living! And SOME WOLVES has been a panoramic view over capitalism, like from the mountain top where wolves observe the plain.

This song came out during the recording process of Orpheo_ Nebula (our previous album, released in 2022, and recorded in 2020), as we were enjoying jams with Jay and Drew, to relax between recordings.

This was soon after we listened to this radio show that reviewed the scientific knowledge at that time about the ecological health of our planet. Listening to this show completely struck us, affected us, and overwhelmed us. We composed several tunes directly inspired by it, including SOME WOLVES. Originally, this track and ONW came out at the same time.

And then, we recorded them, along with HOPE |. Together, we lived in our premises in 2022, just before we released Orpheo_ Nebula. We made our first West Coast trip the following spring.

Upon our return, we went back to the recording of HOPE |, which we accompanied by | DREAM for a Broken Clover Records compilation. It was | DREAM that gave birth to the basis of the first movement (the first 8 minutes) of | NOISE. As a wonderful piece of feedback loops intertwined into a liberating, dreamy, and angry symphony. Instrumental at first.

Shortly afterwards, the radio show was rebroadcast, and we naturally stumbled upon it by chance. The reminder was followed by a sharp pain, and the tears once again sprang from our eyes, as if to water the deserts that mark out ‘human' life, and once again it hit us full force.

And so we got back to the realisation of this album! So yeah, in showing up, SOME WOLVES definitely set the tone of something in there.

Anne: You mention ecological grief and hope as sources of inspiration. How does nature and the omnipresent climate crisis find its way into your music, both lyrically and sonically?

Carro: Naturally, our music is infused by what we feel, see, and hear from our lives and our perceptions. So that by living in a human society that is murdering its own inhabitants and is mass killing animals, insects, biodiversity, as well as killing other human beings. Yet, we are only a tiny part of what is living on earth since 3.8 billion years (now 83 per cent of the biomass is plants, 13 per cent are bacteria, and animals—including humans—are only 0.4% of the biomass). Knowing all this, brought us naturally to write about it, to create sound that embodies these thoughts to help birth something new, a functioning and more accurate society for the living.

We have only been listening to what the world is singing, crying, screaming, or saying. There is nothing else really that decides what we are composing in this project. And so the ecological question—as a larger explanation of what is happening in our world and what needs our attention—came to us lyrically and sonically naturally and very clearly. Clearly, because all signs around us have aligned, everything has been arranged around us with harmony to lead to these songs and finally to this album. Specifically in terms of music and lyrics. How sounds and words have come to us. How this album was composed naturally. We did it like foragers!

Then we were, and still are, steeped with the singing, vibration, sight, understanding, and thoughts that led us to this album. This means that our perceptions are still getting even deeper now about these subjects and what we see about them: what is happening right now.

Anne: Your music feels defiantly alive, even in the face of planetary burnout. How do you keep your own creative fires burning, especially in turbulent times?

Carro: Thank you for your comment! We keep our creative fires burning, partly because we understand that planetary burnout is a political strategy used by abusing the reins of obsolete power (as dysfunctional and unable to protect life and create happiness for their populations). The system we are living in is not sustainable: only a senile society would continue on this dead-end. And it is what is happening: continuous overload, confusion, outrage, and chaos are ways to burn out our society, to try to distract and to keep people from organising (because signals are too chaotic), as well as overexploitation and pollution are burning out the planet. This is the real face of this system, which is unsustainable and so senile that it is using strategies of burnout to get a new concentration of the capitalistic cake, which needs expansion to be ruled by laws [and so, be ample enough not to show its real face]. Burnout strategy in order to destabilise and to use this destabilisation to increase their power… All this sounds pretty ridiculous and disconnected from life. Furthermore, when we put this on the argument, we are living in a finite world that we are sharing with the other 99.9% of the living beings.

This fact tells something terrible about humankind. We may need to learn something there: humility, maybe? One quote from James Baldwin, which especially brings me hope, comes to my mind here. He said, "The world will change, because it has to change." And so I guess we just need to continue to push the sky away!

"I keep my creative passion in cultivating my own resilience as a biodiverse ecosystem."

I keep my creative passion in cultivating my own resilience as a biodiverse ecosystem. And also in learning to master some of our very powerful energies and transcend them through art and action. Anger, for example, has been, of course, transcended in this album. That doesn't mean that it has all gone in doing so, but it has been a strength in facing these difficult and painful questions, and this process made the air breathable again.

Anne: "What the fucked do we all do now? | - Lights" moves from punk parts to dreamy ambient passages. Is there a track on the record that surprised you during its creation—something that took on a life of its own?

Carro: NOW popped out of the ground in the afternoon, as the album was almost done. Like nature wouldn't let any space go to waste, but would fill it with a beautiful plant! Totally surprising and furious.

This song wanted to be on this album, and everything from NOW has come together in a few hours—drums, fields, synth, and vocals. And it was done! It was NOW! The whole album came together by itself. We really just had to gather and harvest what was coming spontaneously to us. ONW and SOME WOLVES were supposed to go together. At first, we thought of a simple cassette tape, and suddenly everything fell into place. It just came out of the ground like a tree, easily and naturally! To come back to The One-Straw Revolution by Fukuoka and the wild agriculture… There are not only carrots and rice that the Earth grows.

Earth also grows albums too, and when all the ideas were there, the cassette turned into a vinyl. First, one vinyl and then two. Same, this was a natural process that has allowed us to emphasise even better the idea of the cut, the collapse or death as a passage to changes and metamorphosis.

Anne: If you could invite any artist, living or dead, to join you for a jam session on this album, who would it be—and what would you hope to create together?

Carro: I would probably invite Jimi Hendrix, Rimbaud, Baldwin, Nina Simone, Odilon Redon, and The Lady and the Unicorn from the tapestry and the band Cloud Rat, I guess. Mozart, Proust, and David Bowie, and someone able to amplify (and record) the sound that the cave paintings have captured in their matter. And as I would like it to be in Fake Italian, I'll probably ask Steve Albini to join us.

"That the human world be in peace, living harmoniously with the whole ecosystem of Earth."

I hope we will make a great contribution to the research of the vibration frequency that turns the sad and heavy human world we know into some great place where humans are light and loving and getting along with each other perfectly, making lots of fantastic things of beauty, amazing sound, art, food and drink, laughing, parting, people saying poetry everywhere, speaking in verses, playing music to accompany, each of us doing the thing we are gifted for with the most grace and participating positively to human community and getting what we need for a living. All this in a wonderfully beautiful sound harmony, like a dance.

Anne: You're planning to release the album on both 10" and 12" vinyl. I believe that the physical format alters the listener's experience of music. Do you think so, too?

Carro: Yes, for sure, the physical format changes the listening experience. It gives the music a physical body that our physical body responds better to, I feel.

It was very important to have an object created with this music. To have its vibration engraved into a physical support, especially on a vinyl. So that the vibration, the idea, the thought, the spell gets a physical body, an incarnation. And create new paths for our thoughts and conscience.

Very literally, the vinyl modifies the experience of listening. To put a record on your record player, get the natural sound that comes from the needle passing through the groove and producing a sound, the signal being amplified by the hi-fi system, and diffused into the space where you are standing, your ears ready to listen. The process allows for focus on one thing and on a more natural rhythm. Also, listening to a full record is like reading a book or looking at a painting. It takes its time. And allows for daydreaming.

Anne: If you could change one thing in the world. What would it be?

Carro: That the human world be in peace, living harmoniously with the whole ecosystem of Earth.

Anne: Thanks so much for answering my questions! It's been a pleasure!

Carro: Same! Thank you!

torpedo – "What the fucked do we all do now? | - Lights"