Maraudeur on Their New Album Flaschenträger: "I Think Our Implicit Goal Was To Catch the Energy That We Have on Stage All Together"

When we last caught up with Maraudeur, they'd just dropped Puissance 4, a jagged, kitchen-sink post-punk record that proved the Swiss-French group had no interest in playing it straight. Three years later, they're back with its follow-up Flaschenträger (Feel It Records), a live-wired batch of tunes tracked in a Geneva basement and played with the precision that still goes against the current. What started as a solo 4-track experiment has morphed into a six-piece collective spread across France, Germany, and Switzerland — Lise Sutter (bass, lead vox), Charlotte Mermoud (guitar, percussions, vox), Isumi Grichting (guitar, percussions, vox), Morgane Adrien (bass, vox), Bob Siegrist (synth), and Camille Barth (drums). If Puissance 4 drew comparisons to Kleenex/LiLiPUT and Crash Course in Science, Flaschenträger pushes the art school-damaged punk intensity further with its surrealist pop melodies, razor-sharp gang girl vocals, and charmingly cool and primitive grooves — think Pink Plastic & Panties, Stare Kits, and Pink Champagne. Below, the group fills you in on the last few years (mostly touring), the making of Flaschenträger, and why their bottle carrier means more than you'd think.

Hot Sounds: Last time we were in touch, it was the week Puissance 4 had just come out [May '22] and I did coverage for the "Le Couloir du Soir" video you put together. I know some years have passed, but what's been happening with Maraudeur since? I think you were a quintet when we last spoke but now there's one more!

Charlotte Mermoud: Oh la la, time passes too fast and we are so slow [laughs]. We've been mostly touring Europe, and we also got together to write new songs. But yeah, the main event was the arrival of our friend Isumi into the band :-)) ! Touring was starting to be too much for me, so we decided to ask Isumi to join us, as a part-time (punk) guitar player to share the shows with me, but a 100% member for the writing, and all the rest. This past year, Isumi took over the shows to give me a rest, but we also met the six of us three times in nice places in France and Switzerland to have some writing residencies, which I think was a nice way to give space and welcome Isumi, and still feeling on board. This summer, we even played some shows with the six of us, as we were together to write anyway. It was powerful to be the whole crew on stage and exciting to add new little things to the set.

HS: For readers unfamiliar, how exactly did Maraudeur form, how'd you come up with the name (what other ones were floating around?) and what exactly was the vision for the group when coming together in 2015?

Lise Sutter: It's been a journey! It started as a solo-4-track-recording project and evolved into a six piece. About 14 people have been playing in the band, and it's been since 2018 that members are sticking around and that we started to write together and really de-construct the dynamic that these types of band (one person writing the music) can generate. It was already a pretty strong vision from the beginning that everything I was doing was so intensely permeable with the people/places/ideas (which art is not permeable ??) around me that it didn't feel like a solo effort. It's also definitively been a strong wish to play in this project only with non cis male persons, which happened over time. The name comes from Midnight Marauders, an album by A Tribe Called Quest, but also from the Mallard and Massicot, two bands which also start with MA, makes sense no? Maraudeur, in french, is an old word — it feels almost medieval — for "thief" (shortly said) which fits us, as we're constantly stealing ideas.

HS: Do you all live in Leipzig now or are you still spread around?

Isumi Grichting: Actually since Charlotte went back to Geneva and Lise moved to Berlin for her studies, nobody lives in Leipzig anymore [laughs]. Morgane and Camille live in France, in Saint-Etienne and Lyon. And Bob and I live in Switzerland, in Geneva (like Charlotte) and in Biel. So yes we are still spread around, even more I would say! It's complicated in terms of organizing rehearsals, shows etc., but when we get together, it adds to that little feeling of being on vacation with friends.

HS: What are some fun super statistics about each member of Maraudeur for the die-hard fans?

IG: Some of us have tape on their guitar necks to number the frets and find the notes in case of a fret hole. Some of us hate having to adjust their drumheads and always rely on Lise. Some of us have a father who sings in the French cold wave band Opéra de Nuit. Two of us have trouble sleeping in possibly haunted places on tour, but love hot sauces and one even has a dog collection. Some of us think they look a bit like Lars Finberg. I don't give names, die-hard fans know it.  

HS: Regarding your new record Flaschenträger, how did the ten tracks come together and what insight can you share about when and how it was recorded?

CM: I think the context in which Maraudeur happens has a lot to do in how this album took shapes: our time all together is pretty limited due to being spread in different cities and being all busy with our jobs, and it's important to us to be together in persons to write collectively all the songs. So we basically write whenever we can! For example, the song "58141" was written in Spring '19, a bit after Puissance 4 was recorded, then we wrote "Robot Machine" in February '21 in the French countryside, in Burgundy, at Myriam's place, our synth player before Bob joined us. And I think we finished the album's closing track, "Hollow" in early 2023, and the lyrics of that one were written during the recording session. Maraudeur also really loves playing shows, so we also simply like to write to have new stuff to play live. So, to me, Flaschenträger is like a compilation of diverse tracks that, all together, gives a sense of what was Maraudeur from 2019 till now. We recorded all of them in one session in the venue La Cave 12 in Geneva, Switzerland, in Summer '23. It was the first time that we recorded live and that an external person recorded us. Our friend Léo Marchand (previous bandmate of Lise and I in The Staches) was this person, so I felt pretty comfortable, especially for recording the vocals. Then Léo also mixed the album, which was also very cozy to me, as he knows Maraudeur's sound since the beginning (he even played drums in the band for a few shows a looong time ago).

HS: Collectively, what did you want to do differently on this record compared to your previous releases?

CM: For this one, I think our implicit goal was to catch the energy that we have on stage all together. We've been playing some of these songs for a while, so I guess we learned to "master" them, so it felt like the right time to capture them. But some of them were newbies that we finished writing a few months before recording, so the mixture of "feeling confident/I know you very well" vs. "still figuring it out/hey hey stranger" was nice to me.

HS: What is one of your fondest memories from recording this record?

Morgane Adrien: Unlimited croques-monsieurs with swiss gruyère and watching Camille fight for "no-delay" on her beloved snare, she won!

HS: Today your label and PR man shared with us the album's opening track, "EC Blah.Blah." What can you tell me about this one?

LS: We wrote this one in Leipzig. We played the parts longer and decided on a relatively simpler structure (than in other songs) so that we were able to explore what our parts can be, relying on a riff repeating (Morgane tells in my ear: she wanted to play the least notes possible). The title refers straightforwardly to Eddy Current Supression Ring, a favorite of ours, and the lyrics fool around the sonorities of talking, as a word but also as blahblah  "who's entitled?" , "who's a token?" ^^ hope this makes sense.

HS: Diving into a couple of my other favorite album tracks, what's the story or meaning behind  "Syncope"?

LS: Funny you ask, "Syncope" is actually an older song formerly with drum-machine, which we re-recorded on this session. The lyrics are playing with the words to sync / to cope / syncope (being a rhythmic musical notation but also a short moment of fainting). It was an attempt to channel some difficult emotions during a heart-ache time. Music helps! <::@)

HS: Where did the idea for "Ah" come from?

LS: It came from the famous giant silures (catfish) living in the Rhone in Geneva. They whispered "something is not right with the world". It's an urge to go against the current, to not turn the other cheek. The "Ah" can transpose so many intonations! Ah, as "what evz", "oh what happened?", "really?!", "that sucks!", "what the fuck is going on?".

HS: What can you tell me about the cover art and how it connects to the ten tracks?

CM: Actually, the cover art mostly connects to the six of us being a unit, than the tracks. Remember the Puissance 4 album? Puissance 4 is a game in which you have to align four chips to win, and it literally means "Power 4." So the idea was to express the power we feel when we play together. Here, the bottle carrier (Flaschenträger in German) expresses the same idea, but with the six of us :-). We also recently developed a passion for this object. While on tour, in the van, it is so practical to hold our bottles of natural wine or Prosecco together (yes, we are fine gourmettes ;-) !). Plus, some of them look so cool, like this one.

HS: What's next after Flaschenträger?

IG: We're going to do a few concerts in December and April. Then we'd like to do a bigger tour in the fall maybe in the US or elsewhere. As Charlotte said earlier, the six of us have written some new songs and we're looking forward to trying them out live and writing some more.

HS: Lastly, any advice or final words you'd like to share with fans and readers?

Maraudeur: FREE PALESTINE !

Flaschenträger is out November 14 on Feel It Records.