VOIVOD Drummer's KOSMOS Gets Experimental With Prog-Rock

VOIVOD drummer Michel "Away" Langevin recently spoke to the Great Falls Tribune about his new project KOSMOS, which was born from a Thursday night ritual of listening to old prog-rock pioneers.

"It's a scene that's more related to avant-garde music," explained Langevin in a recent phone interview from his home in Montreal. "A friend of mine, who is the guitar player in (KOSMOS),Jetphil, I got him into prog-rock and stuff that's not really available on CD. He started buying very obscure prog-rock vinyl on the net."

"Every Thursday night we'd meet and listen to these (albums). Eventually, we thought, 'Why not try to write music like that?' And we did."

Everything from an organ to a sitar is used on the album, which is primarily instrumental. Only two tracks feature any type of vocals.

A song like "Indu Kush" stands out from the rest as it features a highly Middle Eastern flavor, which fits into the diversity that Langevin was hoping for on this record.

"We had a friend who studies that type of music in India and he happened to be in town during that time that we were recording, so the song is improvised in the studio," Langevin said. "The guy plays this weird sitar type of thing with a strange flute. He does these chants in Hindu, so I was not going to put double bass drums behind that. I immediately thought 'OK, I should grab the mallets instead of the sticks and do something more PINK FLOYD-ish'."

VOIVOD was known for its early thrash music, which eventually evolved into a more experimental metal style. The freedom that comes with KOSMOS has enabled Langevin to explore more aspects to his songwriting and drumming he couldn't do with VOIVOD.

"The main concept of this project is that there are no limits," he said. "I can fool around with samplers and do little avant-garde interludes. I already did that with VOIVOD, but I can go further with KOSMOS because we can build songs that are longer or I can experiment with sounds. We can stretch it for a little longer with KOSMOS."

According to Langevin, KOSMOS pays homage to the German prog-rock bands of the '70s, often referred to as Kraut-rock.

"They just experimented so much with a newer way of recording and a newer way of writing music. I don't know how relevant it is to write a Kraut-rock record nowadays. It's just music that I've been obsessed with since the '70s," he said.

Read the entire interview at the Great Falls Tribune.