Genuine Curiosity with Devonté Hynes & Thomas Bangalter

23:38Thomas Bangalter:But, yeah. Something about the stillness. I thought about that a lot too in the film because in the film, I mean, the characters are very not still. You know, they are agitated and always kind of talking and stuff. And so I, yeah, towards the end, I liked, it was funny, even as me, just the person writing music felt like a excitement or calmness to be able to, you know, land and breathe. I wanted to ask for this, for this new score, was it music first?

24:21Devonté Hynes:The ballet? No, no. No, music second. Damien, the choreographer, and Koei were workshopping in Kyoto. It's really interesting because it really reminded me of those special effects shops in the valley, in L.A. where we used to do the robot helmets and with all those special effects, you know, and rules and latex and parotechnics. And here they were really in his artist studio with the dancers working on different techniques. A lot of the ballet works with this kind of oil on the body and glitter and like transformation and super interesting visceral elements of haze and smoke and almost like creating clouds.

25:13Devonté Hynes:And so they were doing all these techniques as in almost in the lab and sending me like snippets, pictures of videos. And I was in France. And it's funny because, you know, there's this moment in the ballet where those are like there's glitter rains, you know, like colors. And it's all in silent. and a lot of those harmonic and like textural exploration on the record was just me trying to say, okay, what, almost like folly artist, but like harmonic folly. As a musician, I'm doing the folly. This is like a silent film. And what can be the sound of those like, you know, colorful glitter rings and how can you turn?

25:59Devonté Hynes:And almost as if, you know, we're going back to, we were saying, now when I listen to it disconnected, I'm like, okay, I can envision like a musician performing on a weird instrument. But at the time I was actually trying to find the sound of almost the sound of what they could emit, this glitter, as if they were the instrument on the contact of the, when it goes on the bodies of the dancer. So I don't think I would have had most of these ideas if it was not for the evocative power of the ballet that I was watching.

26:44Thomas Bangalter:Was mythologies the same?

26:46Devonté Hynes:No, mythology was music first. So mythology was different because it was, I mean I'm not good enough I think incapable of being able to do score symphony score to picture like oh yeah yeah semiquaver between that dialogue line and do it so with mythology the fun thing I was totally tripping I didn't know how to orchestrate and I wanted to orchestrate so So for two years, I stopped, you know, this was pretty much around lockdown. And I read all these orchestration treaties, Rimsky-Korsakov and Berlioz. And like, actually, my favorite orchestration treaty is not an orchestration treaty. It's probably the Ravel orchestration of pictures at the exhibition of Mussorgsky.

27:43Devonté Hynes:Because basically, you have the original piano line. line and then you have this orchestration under and you can just see the genius of just how Ravel is just like turning what is just a simple piano and the choices that he makes and it it's works better than a thousand a thousand words but yeah for mythology I basically wrote this entire ballet in my head it was a commission but the choreographer Angelin had asked me to do it and so I scored to this ballet that did not exist and then I handed him the music and then he choreographed a completely different ballet which was his own and this was a great surprise.

28:30Devonté Hynes:But it's funny how it's the opposite where one is you do it with a picture and then after you discover a new thing in your head like in the second phase and here it was like, okay, it was a total fantasy and then it was different. But for your scores, is it one or the other in the same way? How does that work?

28:53Thomas Bangalter:Sometimes, I mean, I find, maybe you agree with this, it's almost like, I mean, there's been many different ways it's happened. Sometimes it's, you know, things, the film's half finished and there's a lot of temp or maybe I've sent things, But I think I prefer either or, because I think you can then fully commit to, you know, either commit into the fact that it's music first. You know, you can kind of go in with almost in this free way. But also when it exists already, I also find that quite freeing in a weird.

29:39Devonté Hynes:It really depends how precise it needs to be. I feel that I agree, but I feel there's something a little bit intimidating about both. There's this level of intimidation where you have nothing. It's a bit intimidating. It's like, okay, where do I start? Actually, this is a good song. Oh, I could put it on this movie. And it's like, oh, no, why don't I keep it for myself? and then on the other hand when you have this finished cut and of people that I always think sometimes directors are approaching me and they've worked for years on a project and they have rewrites and there's like cinemarized teamwork like hundreds of people working on something so many times and they're like okay this is the cut and we need a score in like two months and to me that's probably the most intimidating even though but at the same time when you have like a great film and then you like you know put any kind of music and say okay I feel I'm already there in some way but I think I would have been very intimidated with the invite process probably because of such of the precise nature yeah

31:01Thomas Bangalter:there was definitely a moment where I thought what have I got myself into? I don't know. Yeah, scoring is an interesting thing. How long after the Tron process did you start making music again? Or was it not so detached? Was it continuous?

31:32Devonté Hynes:I think it was a weird commitment, the Tron thing because it was the first foray into orchestral music. We were lucky of not having any temp music because we're really in the process. But at the same time, it was almost a poison, you know, like a trap where you, you know, you're lucky. But basically, it's like Hotel California. You can check in anytime you want, but you can never leave. Right. because there was this thing where it's like, okay, so here we're coming. The film hasn't even started. We're big fans of the original Stephen Lisberger film. And we have this opportunity to really set the tone.

32:19Devonté Hynes:The director, Joe, already asked us for some music even before starting editing. And even we were, it was a big studio film and there's this legal editing window before the director shows it to the studio And we're completely in the process, you know, with the director doing all of these early things. But it almost felt, you know, I mean, we ended up, the picture was changing. We ended up working a year and a half on this project that became almost like a maze where you can, okay, how are we going to get out of being able to, you know, reach the end of this narrative maze? I mean, it was really from a narrative and emotional perspective.

33:06Devonté Hynes:And it's funny you mentioned opera for the invite because that was really maybe Olivia's operatic face, you know, that inspires that. But looking at Jeff Bridges, you know, in this kind of grand thing, there was this thing, okay, it's going to be like a Verdi kind of grand presentation. But the interesting thing is after this process, being really in charge of a project of that scale with so many musicians, somehow I felt confident enough and excited to work with other musicians for other projects after. So the benefit of the Tron score on a very personal creative level was how we got from Tron to Random Access Memories.

33:54Devonté Hynes:Because we're like, okay, you know, we've made before Tron, all the music we had made was just the two of us in my bedroom and in a very super intimate level. not letting anyone in the process even until it's mastered and even if it's mixed and mastered showing it to the record label or the people and friends and family and here because the Tron was already this kind of collaborative process like film work that's what Random Access Memory was I really consider that Random Access Memories was like a film without cameras basically the entire process of it and somehow at the same time Tron happened in the middle of this process so we had made demos and the studio you know in Paris at Gange in 2008 and 2009 after the pyramid and I was not happy with the sound of all these demos and I think there was some kind of cool grooves but so I was like saying to Kiman we need to trash everything in production wise and then we we say oh stop we Disney we can be part of our childhood fantasy of scoring Tron and then after the Tron thing there was all these demos which is like okay maybe we can go to or stay in LA and have these amazing session musicians and turn it into something with this discovery about what I was telling about the magic of human beings performing and how sometimes when you press a SIM key, it doesn't move easily and even less than on a laptop or a computer with that process.

35:48Devonté Hynes:But at the same time, there was not a pause there. To me, the pause was after Random Access Memories, which was a song like Touch with Paul Williams at 250 tracks on Pro Tools. It was a 70-channel board, Niamh, and we had to divide in three parts to be able to mix it. And so after that, I remember I was literally for two years, I had like one piano with like a GoPro that I'd like mounted on my piano. I didn't open, I didn't touch one synthesizer. I didn't open like any machines and I just like didn't want to write and just like press a record. And because I tend to have a hard time deciphering it.

36:42Devonté Hynes:I mean, it's actually a good advice for people to, if you play and improvise and stuff and to be able to, I find as almost like a voice note, you know, ideas on the piano. But then after you're like, okay, what was this chord? it's like a seven it's like okay there's like nine fingers

37:01Thomas Bangalter:this happens a lot

37:02Devonté Hynes:and then and then with this you add all these like clips of you know like quick time clips yeah yeah just looking down just looking down and your fingers and actually you can open them and then cut and paste oh that's brilliant you should

37:16Thomas Bangalter:that's really good probably you can do it with many different instruments but yeah oh that's great just going back to when you said about touch how many tracks? 250 wow and that was mixed in at the day.

37:31Devonté Hynes:They're not playing at the same time. Obviously, around the same time, there's around seven, at the same time, there's probably around 70 tracks, you know, because the, I mean, and you got to understand that, you know, homework and discovery were mixed on these eight channels,

37:53Devonté Hynes:small Mackie desk like that. So four mono, four stereo, like 12 channels. And that's as much as I can handle in terms of mixing myself. But here, I mean, at that point, it's all this thing about this record where I was like, okay, I'm never going to do a record in that process again because it's almost like you lose half of your brain cells in the process. So that's why there's really this admiration that I have for going back to minimalism. And when I see a score that you did like that for the invite, which is just one instrument and not a polyphonic one, basically, with monophonic, I'm like, wow, that's actually a really minimal and radical approach that I find.

38:52And at the same time, as you were explaining earlier, I think, you know, where you're like, oh, there's a lot of time where I was like, okay, I'm going to be able to get there.

39:03Devonté Hynes:But there's one thing that's obviously obvious. It's easier when the film is good as well. It's not as big. Because you feel with music sometimes, I feel music is here to help to that process. but I feel here that there's there's when I watched the film a couple of days ago I was like okay that's probably one reason why you were able to succeed with so little elements is the fact that it works

39:35Thomas Bangalter:yeah that's true that reminds me of I remember I remember like 7 years ago so I was scoring a film and I was relatively new to scoring and there was a scene, you know, there's always that one scene where I had to score over and over again, you know, a million, million times.

40:00Devonté Hynes:Was it because you didn't like it or because it was not working for filmmakers?

40:05Thomas Bangalter:Yeah, it wasn't working for the filmmakers and a friend of mine that is a producer that works in film, I was speaking to them about it and I was like, you know, I was like losing my mind at this point. And they told me that it's because the scene doesn't work. So it's like, you're never going to do it.

40:26Devonté Hynes:But that's the thing that I find really hard about that. It's almost like using music as a patch, as a band-aid. You're going to make that work. It's really complicated sometimes.

40:40Thomas Bangalter:So you just screened the 20th anniversary of Electroma?

40:45Devonté Hynes:Yes, for Tribeca Film Festival. So we did Electronma in 2006 that I co-directed, and I was the cinematographer and operator. Thank you. We had like film prints, 35mm film prints, but we never had a restoration process or a DCP to really be able to show it 20 years later. And so there was these online copies there, but just bad telecine and not something proper. So the whole process was really to go back at photochem in the lab and to get as close as possible to the color of the emulsion of the 35mm print. Going back and forth to really match every shot. Like you would see where there was the Kodak Vision Premiere print.

41:31And we screened it yesterday.

41:34Devonté Hynes:And the film obviously resonated in such a different way. for Electroma. At some point, I stopped making music for two years and wanted to study cinematography and to try to develop a relationship in the same way I had done with drum machines and synthesizer and doing it with a 35mm camera and saying, oh, you know, an experiment. And so, that era for me and that movie is really linked to a very deep connection with my love of cinematography.

42:09Thomas Bangalter:Amazing. How long did it take to shoot? 11 days.

42:12Devonté Hynes:So the first shoot was five days for what was supposed to be music video. We were shooting in the desert and we had runners going to LA for the dailies. So it was not like, oh, here's the memory card. Three days in, we received the first dailies. We looked at it and was like, wow, let's make a midnight feature. Let's just like, okay. It was supposed to be a human after all music video. And somehow we got to turn a three minute music video into an hour and 20 minutes.

42:42Thomas Bangalter:That's probably why people think it's so long and boring because nothing happens.

42:46Devonté Hynes:Because we were already like experimenting with stretching time to the max, you know.

42:53Thomas Bangalter:It must feel very different looking at it now.

42:55Devonté Hynes:It's funny because I've been doing interviews these last few days or weeks. and people ask me about the eclectic, you know, diversity of projects, you know, from Daft Punk to symphonic stuff to abstract electronic. And actually, I must say how much I love your music and I actually love the range of what you do in so many, you know, from the score stuff to your songs to vocal. I was I was still I mean I was still this morning listening to the Essex House MP3 that I found is so cool and this kind of ravey thing but what I love because it feels like it's it's really speaking to me on almost as the approach is you know where sometimes it feels like you're doing a song or a piece of music and that defines you, you know, like, okay, this is what I am.

44:06Devonté Hynes:And I think sometimes it's a bit limiting, you know, but what I love is that in fact, and I think it's the same for me, but when I listen to music, I can obviously, you know, listen to Essex House or then listen to The Fields And then it's the range and the space between those two pieces of music that I find are defining yourself more than the music itself. Almost because it's just an ability to kind of like take the walls and just like spread them more than being almost defined by just a work.

44:51Thomas Bangalter:Yeah. Thank you. I appreciate that I think yeah it's very yeah it feels like it's very similar I feel like that's cool how you operate

45:02Devonté Hynes:yeah because I feel it's I like contrast and I like the idea of you take a rolling and scratching or a rave track or like a techno music and then you know touch we're speaking about touch it can get like more different than that and and And it's that range almost, I don't know if it's almost like provocative or just like being in a way of saying that I love this coexistence of avant-garde and more traditional forms and modern things and ancient things and retrofuturism. And somehow I think in your music, I can, I mean, it's a really good example here, the fact of speaking. Again, I was mentioning Essex House MP3, which is this super free form kind of demo-ish array thing.

45:53Devonté Hynes:And then you're doing this cello score, like very pure for this film, you know. So it feels really inspiring to not stay as artists in the box that either the outside puts you in or that sometimes you deliberately go and say, okay, this is, I started to do that. And this is how people see me. And then I'm going to continue because I'm encouraged to do so. Yeah, you know, because I always feel that, I always think about this thing, which is like the human filter.

46:34Thomas Bangalter:And I think that a genuine curiosity that, not to call other people's curiosities disingenuous, But I feel like a curiosity that is almost like, has, how can I explain? Has gone to someone almost like, almost like by accident or by just living in various tastes, not necessarily through maybe a dominant aesthetics and culture or something, but a curiosity. I always feel like that is the thing that ties people's work together. Like when I'm a fan of people who have, if you were to, you know, yeah, like lay down all the things they did in a row and maybe they look extreme when they're put together.

47:40Thomas Bangalter:It's like the thread is this curiosity.

47:43Devonté Hynes:I completely agree. I think not only, I mean, I think we're on the same page. Yeah. So I feel, you know, there's something else also in this very highly algorithmic world right now, which is based on recommendations and predictability. I feel that curiosity level is really bringing this sense of unpredictability. So I think it's vital right now as human beings to focus, and especially nowadays on the unpredictable nature of ourselves

48:18Thomas Bangalter:from a very genuine and spontaneous level,

48:20Devonté Hynes:not just like to be unpredictable for unpredictable. So that's the first thing. And then the second thing I really realized, this was maybe one of the last reasons to hack the system in some way, this algorithmic system. For Mythology, when Mythology was released on streaming platforms, I started to see when you're listening to the song and then after it says, oh, you just listened to that song, you might want to listen to Justice or Prokofiev. and how it's like creating those links, you know, which do not exist anymore in some level. Obviously, I really believe that the eclectism is in every audience but that it's almost a need to classify things and to put them in boxes.

49:16And so it feels like there's a benefit to surprise yourself as an artist and to get out of your comfort zone because

49:31Devonté Hynes:at least it's creating those new connections in some way.

49:38Thomas Bangalter:Well, Dave, it was great speaking to you. Yeah, same.

49:40Devonté Hynes:I'm really excited to see where your curiosity takes you next. Thank you, likewise.