When in Miami: Q+A with Marlon Magnée/La Femme
La Femme is sexy, synthetic, and sometimes ironic. Paris’s hottest psych-punk rock band is in town for the weekend, showing us exactly how the french party. Their set is liberating, always surprising their audience with the unexpected.
It’s the final night of III Points, and the crowd is bumping. Backstage, Marlon Magnée skates around on his Penny Board (before you ask, yes, the wheels light up) in a chic quilt tracksuit. I meet Magnée over at the hair studio where Cristina Ferrera, the coolest barber on the block, is giving him a fresh cut for the evening.
Melania Zilo: “You’re originally from Biarritz, which is known for its iconic surf spots. How does surf culture influence your creative process? Do you think it influenced your sound at all?
Marlon Magnée: Maybe not the sound specifically because nobody is really out there listening to surf music anymore, but the culture has given us a link to that California spirit.
Melania Zilo: La Femme has a special gift for capturing moments and places and translating that into sound. What was the creative process for your new album, Teatro Lucido?
Marlon Magnée: In the new album, you see a lot of classic Spanish influence, like flamenco, and influence from Latin America and Reggaeton. We get inspiration from everywhere, but we love tradition and progress and often mix the two together.
Melania Zilo: I know you use language as this moving mechanism in your music.
Marlon Magnée: It was really interesting for us to sing in Spanish, but you will see that there are also other songs on the album that have a more new wave and cold wave influence. Sometimes the language can make the music, and sometimes it doesn’t have to.
Are there any artists who inspired the tracks we’ll hear in the new album?
Marlon Magnée: Ennio Morricone, which is funny because he’s Italian.
Melania Zilo: If you had to describe Teatro Lucido in one word, what would it be?
Marlon Magnée: Loco. This album is for everyone.
What has changed since your last album, Paradigmes?
Marlon Magnée: Nothing has changed, except now we spend more time trying to release music more frequently.
What was the most surprising part of creating this album?
Marlon Magnée: Sometimes you have a vision and don’t know what you’ll get in the end. There’s one song on the album that was a very crazy process because we were waiting to feature one of our friends on the track, but that didn’t end up happening, and we needed to improvise. We ended up recording the voice of Google Translate in Spanish.
Melania Zilo: My favorite thing about this album is the music video for Sacatela.
Marlon Magnée: “Oh yeah, for us, we wanted to do something simple and funny, nothing too crazy.
Melania Zilo: “It’s just so ironic in the best way ever, and it has such a cinematic feel to it
Marlon Magnée: Yes, ironic, exactly. We were really inspired by the movie, The Mask. Like a tropical 60’s hotel kind of vibe. Sometimes you want a really pretty-looking video, but for Sacatela, we just wanted to joke around and have a good time acting like we were boujee running around in this super fancy hotel, you know?
Strike out,
Melania Zilo
Boca Raton
Melania Zilo is the Editor-in-Chief of Strike Magazine Boca. She is a fourth-year political science student with a minor in business law and entrepreneurship management. In between Strike meetings, Melania can be found on a beach somewhere with a silly little beverage in her hand. You can reach her at melaniaszilo@gmail.com.
