Breton and Other People’s Problems

By Brodie Lancaster / September 9th, 2011 in Music / London / 925 views

Before they’ve even released an album, art-pop band Breton have taken the UK music scene by storm, and are set to do the same in the rest of the world, very soon. You can hold us to that.

A soaring and overwhelming beat pulsates through The Commission, their latest release from their forthcoming debut album ‘Other People’s Problems’. Experts behind the mixing desk, the band have a string of successful remixes under their collective belt under the moniker BretonLABS, including tracks for Local Natives, Temper Trap and Tom Vek (whose sold-out UK comeback tour they recently supported). As BretonLABS, the band—particularly frontman Roman Rappak—directed the accompanying video for The Commission. With motion graphics work by Stuart Sinclair, the video is a tense and emotional look into the insular and painful journey undertaken by an astronaut, played to perfection by Boston beat poet Patrick Lyons.

Eager to learn more about the band and their work on the video, we spoke with Roman about what it was like to work with Lyons and what we can expect from ‘Other People’s Problems’.

PORTABLE: What films or TV shows influenced the video’s style and story?
The main influence for me was the a video by Jeff Desom for Hauschka’s Morgenrot. I have always been amazed by its elegance. Also, it was the first time I heard about Hauschka—he is an incredibly important artist to me, and is also recording and arranging all the brass and strings for our album in Germany next week, so it has kind of come full circle.

To what extent did the mood of the track influence your direction of the video?
I think the one thing that was really heavily affected was the editing, and the overall timing of the video. The track has these really long sections where synths and other atomspheric sounds keep building up, and the beat has a kind of weight to it. The idea of a massive, heavy object moving silently through space seemed to fit with the way the track has these minimal stripped-back sections, with a kind of threatening beat hidden in the background. That pulsing synth has a really hypnotic quality—it’s a technique that’s used a lot in house music, so it was interesting to see what would happen when it was slowed right down to an “un-danceable” speed.

You’re both a member of Breton and the director of this video: which title do you write on your census form?
I live, write and record in a warehouse where there is no heating and you can never get any mail, so I am starting to wonder if I officially exsist on those kind of records.

This is the first single from your debut album. Can we expect and similar brooding sound on the rest of the record?
It’s definitely one of the elements that will be on the record. This particular track started off life as a really simple pop song that got ripped apart and then put together again. Most of the songs we chose on the album were tracks that had gone through a similar process. There are really minimal, electronic moments, but also tracks with guitars, a huge room full of people singing and drumming, playing trombones and cellos. Another track on the album is The Commission’s mirror opposite—it started off as this difficult and abstract piece of electronic music, and ended up the most accessible track on the album, full of guitars and bright synths and a massive chorus. I’m really excited to hear people’s reactions.

How did you come to work with Patrick Lyons? Did he offer any poetic words of advice?
Patrick Lyons is the kind of person you think you will never meet in real life. He’s like Jack Nicholson and Burroughs all rolled into one…the kind of classic American charisma that makes you believe everything he says. As an actor he is amazing to work with, for instance, the shots where he is looking at the stock footage of the kid he has left behind, we filmed him for about 10 minutes—just him sitting in total silence watching the footage. Somehow he managed to turn this simple thing into something really moving. He takes this stuff very seriously and is very easy to direct.

He also has the most incredible stories i have ever heard—we are hoping to include a sample of him talking on the album. When he was at the Cannes Film Festival a few months ago, people were literally following him in the street, recording him talking and taking pictures of him.

If there was one person you’d want to see your work in the video, who would that be?
Jonathan Glazer. He has got the most amazing range, in terms of style and techniques. He can literally do anything.
I have followed his work since I was at art school and his stuff still surprises me.