Hello, we’re here at Motocultor with Klone! How are you doing?
Morgan – Doing great.
Aldrick – Awesome, and you?

You’re playing in just a few hours. How are you feeling?
Morgan – Stressed today.
Aldrick – A little stress.
Morgan – Some days no, some days yes… today it’s yes. There are a lot of people, and we’re tired… from doing nothing.
Aldrick – Exactly. Can’t wait to play so we’ll be even more tired! [laughs] No, it’s fine, just the usual nerves.
Morgan – It’s cool to be here though, yeah!

Have you seen any bands, or are there some you’d like to see?
Morgan – We got here an hour ago, so we’ve seen nothing yet, straight into interviews.
Aldrick – Honestly I don’t even really know who’s playing… I think Dimmu Borgir, Kerry King… But I don’t know if we’ll have time before our show. After this it’s interviews, then food… so not much time to wander around. Maybe a little, but it’ll be quick. I think Carpenter Brut are playing too, they’re friends from Poitiers… maybe we’ll go see them for a bit, I’m not sure.

They’re closing the night!
Aldrick – Probably… the best for last.

The best for last!
[laughs]

I’d like to go back to your album The Unseen. What was the starting idea, especially thematically?
Morgan – You see the guy doing an interview on the other table ? He’s the one with the answers.
Aldrick – Yeah, Guillaume writes most of the music, so he usually has the answers to that. Basically, we found the cover art, and through that a concept, something bright and positive, with this figure that represents “the unseen,” the invisible. From there, we had the album title, and that gave us a clear direction for the creative process. Then, Yann is always quite secretive about his lyrics, so I can’t give you a precise concept. But we’re always influenced by our daily lives: there were births, happy events, so that brought a more positive energy over time. It wasn’t about building a strict concept, more about letting that energy shape the album.

How would you like fans to feel when listening to it?
Aldrick – We want them to feel good. Touched, moved, maybe drift away from daily life. Our songs are often long, airy, ethereal… We want people to take off with us, to trip out, feel lighter. Of course it depends on the song—sometimes it can be darker. But with this album, the goal was to transmit something more positive.
Morgan – I agree. Before I joined the band, what really attracted me to Klone was that depressive side, the sadness in the music. Some people look for that, others the opposite. For me it was that sadness that gripped me - but always with a glimmer of hope, of light. There’s always some light in it.
Aldrick – Exactly. Not necessarily nostalgia, but that kind of melancholy that still leads you to a tunnel with light at the end.

You released a track over 10 minutes long. Do you enjoy working with such long formats, or do you prefer shorter, straight-to-the-point songs?
Aldrick – As we often say, nothing is decided in advance. There’s no format, no fixed structure. Our lives influence the compositions. We try not to repeat ourselves, though sometimes, without meaning to, we fall back into our own codes. But there’s no recipe.
Morgan – We didn’t set out to write an 11-minute song. It just ended up being 11 minutes, and that’s fine.

So you let inspiration take its natural course.
Aldrick – Exactly. If the song still has something to say, we let it live. There’s no stopwatch, it’s free.

Were there some new things you experimented on this album that you had never tried before?
Aldrick – Not really in terms of sound.
Morgan – But a song like Magnetic is much less depressive, almost entirely bright from start to finish. We hadn’t really done that before.
Aldrick – True, not so much in sound but in emotion. That’s new. Magnetic is actually quite pop in a way, and very positive. That’s rare for Klone.
Morgan – Yeah, bright in the sense of “not at all depressive.”
Aldrick – Exactly. If there’s a real novelty here, it’s that: an energy that’s genuinely positive.

You also experimented with acoustic, unplugged versions. Did that influence your songwriting?
Aldrick – It’s true that many songs start on an acoustic guitar, even riffs. Doing unplugged is a return to the roots of songwriting. But it doesn’t really change much: whether it starts on acoustic or electric, the foundation is the same.
Morgan – But live, it’s different. It lets people experience the music differently. And it opened opportunities too: playing in places where electric shows would be hard, and maybe reaching another kind of audience.
Aldrick – Yeah, it broadens things. Acoustic is easier for people outside the metal world to get into.

Does today’s heavy rock scene influence your creativity?
Morgan – Not in Klone, I don’t think.
Aldrick – No. Guillaume keeps track of everything coming out, but we’re a bit more detached. We don’t try to sound modern, or technical. We just do our own thing.
Morgan – Exactly, we don’t look for anything in particular.
Aldrick – Klone has existed long enough to stand on its own without borrowing from current trends. Of course there are always little influences in arrangements, but not enough to define the style. Hopefully we have more depth than that.

Do you have a message for your fans?
Aldrick – Thank you so much for supporting us all these years. We hope you’ll come to the shows—we still have quite a few dates this year, about ten. A new album is in the works for next year, along with more touring. Thank you for making this life possible, and we hope to keep making you trip out for a long time!