La Pierre Soudée - The Rules, The Stories…

All started a few years back when my punk band fell apart. Being in a band is somehow feels like being in a relationship. When splitting up occurs, there is no way back. I felt hurt by the loss of something very dear to me.

I kept telling myself this is not a big deal, there is much worse happening in the world, stop whinging (being a sissy!) Then something clicked inside me. Instead of whining, I needed to concentrate on a bigger project to document women’s suffering in the world. I shared my thoughts with people close to me. They agreed it could me a good concept album.

Although I can qualify my brain as quite creative, I was also facing limitations. Indeed, I can have musical ideas but creating a whole coherent piece is a very different matter. (I am not a musician.) I needed help! To overcome these difficulties, I decided to set rules as following:

1. Each track would be telling a real life story (past or present) of a woman suffering in the world (therefore research would be compulsory!)
2. Each track would be a collaboration with a specific artist (various artists)
3. Artists would come from different backgrounds and locations in the world
4. I would be setting the themes, the tone and the direction this project would undertake while technical help and musical guidance would be allowed
5. I would be the main if not sole lyricist and singer on the whole album
6. No use of guitar would be permitted (ok, that was a silly rule but I felt the need to distance myself from my ex punk band Venom Seeds)

I started approaching artists whose work I could relate to for musical help (going through my personal contacts to seek some musical help) and embarked on a long road of educating myself through reading, watching videos as well as documentaries. Everyone was very kind. I was surprised I received a lot of encouragement and very few negative responses regarding the collaboration ideas.

Some of the tracks composed during 2009 and 20014 came out as other releases. “Who May I trust” was done with Millimetric and spoke about the subject of homelessness in the UK. “The Magma of War” was inspired by the movie Persepolis of the personal story of Marjane Satrapi and was released on Philipp Münch’s album “Mondo Obscura.” Some other collaborative work didn’t work out which did affect the whole geographical balance of the stories told. Much more could have been done to illustrate women’s suffering in the Western countries.

In retrospective, now that the album is finished, I am proud to say that no rule has been broken. I may have slightly bent one, as the intro and outro tracks are two different versions of the same theme with the same collaborator using different languages and a few different musical ideas. ;)