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On the occasion of the release of their 6th album, the rock band 7 Weeks took the time to answer a few questions for us!
Photo: © Jérémie Noël
Hi 7 Weeks, thanks for taking the time to answer our questions! To start this interview, we'll let you introduce yourselves in a few words.
7 WEEKS released their first album in 2009, and are now releasing their 6th. The band has toured extensively in France, Europe and the UK. We are self-produced, self-financed and booked by our label F2m Planet.
You mentioned it above. Your 6th album 'Fade Into Blurred Lines' has just been released after, I quote, '20 months of questioning and letting go'. Tell us about the composition process of this album.
We wanted to push the composition and interpretation further than usual, so we invested a lot in the writing and the raw, live aspect of the trio (we used to be 4) to extract what seemed most personal to us, even if it meant going off the beaten track of the band. There are as many heavy tracks as we know how to make as there are more intimate things.
Artwork: Gilles Estines
This album contains '9 tracks that are among the most personal of the band'. How have your personal experiences influenced your new songs?
Mainly through the lyrics, we worked a lot on that, more than on other albums, and it gives an undeniable strength to the interpretation. When a text is well written and in harmony with the music and vice versa, everything falls into place. We talked about things or people we know, which also contributes to the personal, introspective aspect.
After 15 years of existence, how have you managed to maintain your artistic identity while progressing in a constantly evolving musical landscape?
By not setting artistic limits, we knew we weren't going to revolutionise a genre from the start, so we sought to explore all the possibilities available to us: the cine-concert format in 2011 which fundamentally opened the band to other sounds, acoustics, etc. The studio also changed our perception of sound and therefore how things are done, where we were rather gibson/marshall at the beginning of the band, we were able to listen to outside production opinions showing us that other things are possible without losing power ;)
You are currently on tour to promote this new album on stage. How has your audience received 'Fade Into Blurred Lines' live?
Very well, people are touched by the new songs, I think it speaks to them, and I hope we manage to convey something. We just had our release in Limoges and the evening was magnificent, even though we know everyone, we touched them. We can't wait to do the next one, especially La Maroquinerie in March in Paris!
Do you have any advice for an independent band looking to get into booking?
Courage!! More seriously, tenacity and organisation, it's quite hard, you have to find your place and it's very changeable from one environment to another, the media are different, social network communication is different, the streaming diktat is different, programmers too, etc. In short, you need to know how to analyse where you are and where you want to go. However, one thing is certain and common, you must always have music that is as sincere as possible, you can stick to a movement and take off very quickly but you will also fall back just as quickly ;)
Overall, as musicians but also as music fans, what are your favourite merch items and why?
If I like what I've just heard, I'm going to buy the record to listen to at home, it remains a benchmark in merch, if you do a good concert, people buy your record. But I belong to a generation that grew up with physical formats, I also see plenty of bands that don't have a record on the stand (often for contractual reasons with the label, we don't have that problem ;) Otherwise, the T-shirt comes directly in 2nd place, especially if the visual is cool.
