La Fin Absolute du Monde- The Dream, the Struggle and the Journey by:
Dawn Wood
I met the electronic-metal duo: Jason and Cynthia in 2013 playing at a club in Seattle I have played many times. My band had actually been asked to play on the bill with La Fin Absolute du Monde. It was a weeknight and my band mates and I couldn’t pull our motivation together to play on a Thursday night, but a friend encouraged me to just go to the show and watch this “great band (he) had heard of called: La Fin Absolute du Monde”. I agreed and arrived to the usual handful of people attending a show in Seattle on a Thursday night. That particular night was something quite different though. As I listened, annoyed at the other music playing that night, I feared the worst. I thought this band was going to be like all the typical, unknown metal/garage bands that roll through town “on tour”. The minute La Fin Absolute du Monde started to play, I was pleasingly surprised. Jason’s guitar skills are a delightful, obvious influence from metal and jazz roots. Cynthia has such a soothing voice, smooth as honey, but the ability to belt out emotion and angst like nobody’s business. Cynthia also is a classical trained pianist and the combination of this soulful, metal, angsty, yet….smoothness and sincerity…set to luscious back tracked dance beats is truly magical.
Jason and Cynthia (his wife, whom he affectionately calls “Chickie”) have LIVED angst, disappointment and gained great wisdom on this journey towards their dream of living their lives sharing their music for the world to hear. Jason and Cynthia met in their thirties and Jason says: “They had given up on music. It was hard to start playing live and we didn’t think people wanted to see two aging minorities who make dark music on stage.” Jason and Cynthia have lived this life as professional musicians with bravery, facing problems, of which most of us might have just called it a day. Not only are they facing this journey as fellow musicians, but as a married couple in a business full of egos, apathy, falseness and rejection. It takes great strength to commit, not only to the dream, to the music and to the journey, but protecting their cherished marriage from the challenges of being on the road together. They have faced everything on the road from: gigs disappearing in thin air (the day they arrive in town); mysterious hit and run of their vehicle whilst playing a gig; club owners trying to renegotiate just before the gig;ignorant prejudice; playing shows that were billed as “acoustic”; to more than their fair share of tour vans dying a terrible death on the road. Yet, all of these struggles have brought them closer together, gave them tenacity in their desire to carry on and have helped produce two of the most humble, talented musicians I have ever known. If you haven’t picked up their latest release entitled: “Clarity Amongst the Rubble”, I highly recommend you rush to bandcamp to get that now.” In the meantime, for your reading pleasure: an interview I did with Jason during their last trip to the Seattle/Bellingham, WA area.
I asked Jason to retell the beautiful love story and band inception of La Fin Absolute du Monde?
[Jason] “2010 officially. But I would say, pretty much since the day we met
November 17th, 2009. I was tour managing a band from the SF Bay area, where I live and the tour took us to Las Vegas. We were staying at the same hotel that Chickie was a Promotions Manager for. I saw her in the lobby handing out those two for one drink cards. She tried to give one to me as I walked by. I told her I would take one if she came to the band’s show that night. For whatever reason, she started to talk to me about music and how she was a musician. I was kinda blown away. I told her she should just quit her job and Jason shares how La Fin Absolute du Monde’s latest album came to be:
November 17th, 2009. I was tour managing a band from the SF Bay area, where I live and the tour took us to Las Vegas. We were staying at the same hotel that Chickie was a Promotions Manager for. I saw her in the lobby handing out those two for one drink cards. She tried to give one to me as I walked by. I told her I would take one if she came to the band’s show that night. For whatever reason, she started to talk to me about music and how she was a musician. I was kinda blown away. I told her she should just quit her job and Jason shares how La Fin Absolute du Monde’s latest album came to be: [Jason] “Like any full length, it took a lifetime to make these ideas turn into songs. When we started years ago, we were with a very small label out of the UK. We would submit heavier st uff and they didn’t want to put it out. The more we toured, the heavier the sound would get, but we didn’t feel the recordings matched the live show. So with this record, we wanted people to feel the intensity of what they see live. We also went with a different tuning on this record to add to the dark tone of the songs. All the other releases the guitar was in drop C# this release we lowered it to A# and a couple songs in G# on this record. It gave the new record an even darker sound. We tour ALOT in support of these releases. We had the privilege of touring with Godflesh, which helps out our profile QUITE A BIT. But, we were gone for about 9 months, playing shows all over that year. Some were great. Some were not so great. And, the not-so-great was starting to take it’s toll on us. The remix album we released that year was great, but it still didn’t capture the heaviness of the show. We promised each other we would do one more record and that would showcase how intense La Fin Absolute du Monde can be. The tidal wave of emotion, that we, as people, go through, I felt was really well expressed on this record. We wanted to tackle topics that people don’t talk about too much. For example: songs like ‘Kill Yourself’ and ‘Dreams and Disappointments in a Cloud of Hope’ were born from having these conversations with loved ones and how our career path is “foolish”. Art is one industry where your success is measured by what your pop-culture contemporaries are doing and not you and your peers on your level. We tour. We make enough money to pay rent when we are on the road. We live a simple life, but that isn’t enough for most people when they think of a ‘successful artist’. People think tour busses, arena shows and fame=success. It’s not that simple. It’s relative.” Check out La Fin Absolute du Monde now and look for them touring in a town near you!
Twitter: @lafinabsolute
Look for La Fin Absolute du Monde on tour again in 2016!
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