“The more it is dirty, the more I love”: Mark Daumail reinvents Cocoon | EUROtoday

It is true that the massive cocoon tubes are these the place I used to be making an attempt to place pleasure, gentle. But the one distinction with the opposite information is that this one, I informed myself that I wished no compromise on this. Suddenly, we find yourself with an album “Monocolore”. Grayish, even blackish.

Your earlier albums usually offered a distinction between joyful melodies and darker phrases. How do you strategy this dichotomy in your work?

What I all the time appreciated was this dichotomy between textual content and music. What amused me quite a bit up to now is to take a really joyful music and sing horrors on it. It makes me consider Miyazaki, who’s certainly one of my heroes. In every of his movies, particularly Totorowhich continues to be a movie for kids, in filigree, there’s a mom within the hospital which will die.

Read too Miyazaki, our good geniusIt’s a bit cocoon … It has been a make-up for a very long time that as we speak I do not wish to put on. I’ve extra usually made up my ache utilizing metaphors or songs that finally, on the time, work. But after some time, make-up, it all the time falls a bit of. I really like these songs, however … I put my clown masks someplace.

Despite the evolution of your music, we all the time acknowledge your creative signature. Why did you retain the identify Cocoon if you end up now solo?

This is admittedly the identify I selected on the time. I began alone then I made a casting the place I met a number of singers. There is one, Morgane Imbeaud, who was there on the primary and the second album. And that is the place there was large media protection. The duo with Morgane is already twenty years previous, however he was fairly placing. The proof, we’re nonetheless speaking about this era when there’s this error that Cocoon is a duo.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMDOEMDCGS

Many individuals nonetheless affiliate cocoon with a duo, particularly due to the success of “” Whispered »». How do you reside this notion?

I arrived within the studio, precisely like as we speak with my songs, after which we organized. At that point, I discovered that the combination of feminine and male voice was working nicely … After some time, herself, Morgane felt a bit of an excessive amount of. In addition I used to be happening the third album, an album on my son … She actually wished to make her personal songs, that is what she all the time stated. We have been publicized for an actual tube, I do not thoughts, however every time I’ve to place the church again to the middle of the village.

On this album, your sound strategy may be very particular. You use broken cassettes and extinct devices. What pushed you in direction of this aesthetic?

The extinct devices is a superb sound. In explicit an electrical piano that I really like. But whenever you flip it off … it is as much as a music on a terrific pianist buddy, who died. And I stated to myself, “Here, I’m going to put out the electricity, as if the piano itself was dead. “I recorded that with my telephone and I stated to myself:” It’s a dirty, I love it. It gave all the artistic direction of this album. The more crade, the more I love it. It is also a reaction to the albums that we made before, the sound was a little too clean.

Read too Kids Return: the French heirs of Oasis and Phoenix reinvent popHow was your creative process for this album? You seem to have changed your approach to your previous projects.

My computer has just become what should be its main function, that is to say a recorder, a place where I put my ideas. I open the sessions, they don’t really have a plug-in on it. Just a compression sometimes. The whole arrangement flowed from source. The whole album was recorded in a month, it was over. I accumulated a lot of equipment. When I get started, I totally lose the notion of the day and the night. I felt like I was a kind of mountaineer, a little cut in the world, not to answer any phone, to be just in creation.

When I started this album, I brought in all my usual musicians. I showed them the models, we started playing, doing cocoon. At one point, I said to them, “We are pissing off, proper? We have been like in a sort of large slipper. I despatched every thing to a producer with whom I dreamed of creating the file, Renaud Letang. A dimension. It was clear: “You are doing big shit. »»

So there, I put my guitar. I started everything again alone, without group, without anything and saying to myself: “What did he imply?” What is bad in each of my projects, in each of my demos? I quickly understood that it was a sound problem and that I had to solve it alone.

Your album has been very well received and you are now playing in prestigious rooms like Pleyel in Paris. How do you adapt your intimate music to these large spaces?

Pleyel and the Lyon auditorium are rooms built for pure listening. I am delighted to pass now in this category of listening, acoustics. I worked a lot with bands and cassettes and all that. I redeemed these objects because I realized that I have been working with my computer all the time for twenty years and that I now hear the slightest plug-in. And so I said to myself that from now on, I will create my own destroyed sounds, cassettes, bands. It gave sounds impossible to reproduce, so I want to do it on stage too.

How do you see the evolution of musical formats in the face of the influence of social networks?

The evolution is structural. When I started, a radio song lasted three minutes, with a chorus arriving around the thirtieth second, after an intro and a verse. Today, the format is reduced to two minutes twenty – we have lost more than a minute of music. This acceleration is found everywhere. A few years ago, the “Sped-up” trend emerged: tubes like those of Frank Ocean were re-recorded in accelerated version, giving this mouse voice that we prefer to the original deemed too slow. The creation of these acceleration features is a disaster for artistic appreciation. The most ironic is when I am congratulated for the intimacy and honesty of my album, as if it was exceptional.

What are your projects after this very personal album?

To uncover



The kangaroo of the day

I’m presently engaged on two tasks. First, Cocoon’s first best-of that will probably be launched earlier than the top of the year-a explicit undertaking the place I reinterpret all my songs in a particular means. Then I finalize a brand new album deliberate for early 2026. For What We Leave BehindI intentionally dismissed all of the brighter songs that I had composed throughout this era. I wished a resolutely darkish album. I stored these sunny songs for this subsequent album deliberate for 2026.

Cocoon, “What We Leave Behind”, Yum Yum Records, May 2025.