Darius - Murmuration (Making of)
Darius at Nox Orae 2024 by Mehdi Benkler
Darius is definitely up there as one of my favourite discoveries over the past year. It’s hard to describe the Bulle-based instrumental quintet’s music but I am a fan of the description provided by Louis Jucker for their most latest album:
“Murmuration is an impressive watchtower of orchestral noise-rock crafted by raucous, almost mineral guitar slabs, heavily shaken by anxious drumbeats. The floor is trembling yet the fortress holds still”.
I was also fortunate to see the band live earlier this year at Bad Bonn in Düdingen with Nostalgie Plage (interview with the band here) and Mouche-Miel to create an unmissable line-up and a memorable evening.
(Darius at Bad Bonn - 05.04.2025 - photo copyrights: Patrick Principe)
To celebrate the release of their latest album, Murmuration, which turned one at the beginning of May, the band released a documentary showing the making of the album. It’s a fascinating insight to the creation of the album and their work with Amaury Sauvé at the Apiary Studio. The pre-prod process was definitely one of my highlights.
The documentary is in French and if your French isn’t too strong then I’ve posted some clips of the band performing some of the songs live including two with Foucoupe (interview with the association here).
For the documentary, I thought it would make sense to ask a few questions about their time in the studio and I would like to thank the band for their replies (and Sylvain for helping coordinate the interview).
(Photo copyrights: Julien Chavaillaz)
Introduce yourselves (history of Darius, who is in the band)
It started as a band of friends in the early 2000's in Bulle. Yannick was the founder with our previous drummer Sam (Andrade) and they were quickly joined by Dan, our previous bassist.
A couple of years later, since they wanted to try with a second guitar, they asked Sylvain and started to play more gigs and composed some of the songs for the first album. Dan, Yannick and Sylvain all met at an Applied Arts School in Fribourg where Dan was a teacher, and Sam was a friend from Bulle. In 2012, Sylvain went abroad for 6 months and Alan was supposed to replace him temporarily but in the end he stayed because we thought it was quite exciting to continue with three guitars. Alan was a nice guy from the Bulle area, playing in different bands and going to the same gigs as we were.
Photo copyright: Michel Bertholet
We recorded Grain (2xLP) in 2014 and released it with Humus Records in 2015. We have a couple of beautiful stories to tell about that period, and particularly of Jona’s (Nido, Coilguns) 30th birthday party but it would take a specific interview. Later that year our drummer Sam decided to stop and Julien replaced him. Welcoming Julien into the band was easy, first because he is a good guy that we already knew for a long time, and also because his drum skills are sick. We wrote a few new songs with him which we recorded with Louis Jucker and released on the EP Clôture.
In 2019, we worked for the first time with Amaury Sauvé to record Voir. The intention was to push everything a bit further, and play more. But since we released it in April 2020, things didn't work as planned… Luckily, we just started working with Martina from Glad We Met (cheers) and she managed to book us some nice shows in Switzerland between 2021-2022.
In 2023, our bassist Dan decided to take a well-deserved retirement at the venerable age of 55. That’s when Sam (Riedo) joined Darius. Sylvain and Sam worked together at Nouveau Monde and Sam was getting more and more famous with Jean-Michel. And that's the actual line-up: Julien - Drums, Sam - Bass, Alan, Sylvain & Yannick - guitars
Photo copyright: Julien Chavaillaz
Tell us about the documentary
The documentary captures the moment after all those stories. As we really liked the first time we really wanted to capture the experience there. We asked a crew from Laval (who are friends with Amaury) if they were interested and they said yes. Bonus: we had a good laugh and they became friends and came back one year later for our release party in fri-son (they also captured some stuff soon available).
What were your expectations going into the studio?
Well to be honest we didn't know what to expect the first time we went to the Apiary Studio, we had to learn about the work method. The second time we arrived prepared and ready to do the best we could, knowing how to do it with Amaury. But of course he found ways to challenge us, challenge our music, our sound, and in the end it's also for this reason that we chose to work with him!
(Photo copyrights: Jodie Roszak)
How do you feel about the album today?
It's a very honest rendition of what we tried to do. Given the fact that we mainly make music to perform it live on stage, we feel that the recorded version of it is pretty good!
Let’s ask Sam who wasn’t in the band yet when we made the album:
“As the newest member I kind of got introduced to the latest album as the new status quo (not the band) and it feels like an energetic cocktail with a lot of genre-blending influences. I couldn’t name a fitting genre, but I’d say it’s mostly heavy and noisy music. I’m a huge fan of the 6 tracks and grateful to play them live with the lines Dan (the former bassist) laid down in the studio.”
What are your memories of recording the album
There are a few millions, I guess you can feel most of them on the album, and witness just a few by watching the documentary. But we all agree on the fact that the time we spend in the studio is like being out of the real world for a while. It's really a blessed moment where we can focus solely on our music and our love for each other.
The documentary (plus the live studio version of Norbert and the Foucoupe session - Raccoon and Ail Huile):
(links and related articles are after the embedded videos)