Behind the Retinal Mythology and the Music: Meet Masomenos
Walking into the world of Masomenos, expect bright colors, expect flashing lights, expect childlike wonder, expect good music, but most of all—expect the unexpected. The creative powerhouse couple otherwise known as Joan Costes and Adrien de Maublanc have been drawing, producing, printing, sewing, sticking, painting, touring, building and engineering for a decade, churning out nearly countless albums, EPs, clothing lines, stickers, furniture, accessories, and most recently, musical art experiences. In an effort to help their onlookers literally “see music,” as they say, they bring the worlds of light and sound together in their signature cartoony palate, hinging each experience on psychedelic shapes and colors, all to the subterranean beats produced by de Maublanc himself. Costes, on the other hand, stands behind the project’s visual art.
“My uncle had always told me something that managed to stay with me for years,” said de Maublanc from their temporary studio perched above Hôtel Costes along Paris’ rue St-Honoré. “He looked at me one day and said, ‘Adrien, you know you are a duck raised in a family of chickens.’ I don’t know why, but I thought about it for years. And then one day I thought, well… at least ducks can fly!”
It was perhaps the perfect polarity between two strange, classy birds of a feather that brought Costes and de Maublanc together. What began with a simple dream to tour the world DJing—and a catchy sticker of a cartoon chicken named “Le Poulet”—has managed to snowball in imaginatively limitless proportions, more recently manifested as a self-powered, traveling wooden hut that also exists digitally in app form. Furthermore, they have collaborated extensively with friends, recently performing at London’s Britten Theater with Kate Simko and the London Electronic Orchestra at the Royal College of Music.
Greeted by their bubbly representative (whose name literally translates to “Almond” in English), we receive a whirlwind tour of their sleek, minimal offices, including a rapid-fire display of their visually intense creations, from stationery and Mr. Potato-Head-like sticker books to sweatshirts, beautiful leather gloves and a gift of Easter chocolates in the form of their signature characters. From there, we shuffle across the street to a construction zone and up a stairwell. Stumbling across cartoon beanbags, a video-game-like dance music display, and clothing emblazoned with their masks, we take a sharp turn up another flight and into their studio.
“Welcome to our playground,” smiles Costes, who is casually draped across a chair. I look over at de Maublanc, who stares out the window while a friend plays with a South American instrument by the stairs. A Peruvian pan flute sits next to the keyboards, and a giant smile of light-up, white teeth hangs on the wall. It’s clear from the start that this ride will at least be wild.
When did you start working together?
Adrien: Ten years ago.
Joan: We each had our own relationship with music; then we met, and we started a relationship. He was producing, and I was a crate-digger, then a DJ. That’s how it started for us with music, but we had also both had our background in [visual arts]. He was a director, and I was a graphic designer.
J: We started having fun, and I had a couple years of experience DJing at cocktail and fashion parties, at bars—things that were more disco and funk. At that point, we came together, named ourselves Masomenos (which means “more or less” in Spanish but is also a South American term which means getting away with something), and started having fun in there. We were making music and images.
A: In fact, we were asked to make the soundtrack to a fashion show together. It ended up being a bit of a mega minimix of Joan’s work. In the end, it never came to be, but it did serve as the premise for the Bon Voyage project we did a few months after. Bon Voyage was our first real project.
Playground/universe—Masomenos is many different things.
J: “Playground” is a good word to describe what happens. Most of our experience before coming together was about exploring in different media that neither of us found totally satisfying. Even though it left us a bit at the beginner level, we still managed to stay fresh with what we did, and it gave us experience. At the end, all the different media make for a universe.
A: Especially for our generation, we began to have computers that gave us tools to do things we hadn’t been able to do previously without the access to huge studios. Music was suddenly accessible to everybody through the gear. The same went for the arts and graphic design; the bridge was just easier.
There is a child’s appeal to the art you make. What is the chicken or the egg?
J: We make stuff for kids now, because kids like our stuff. We never had it in our mind to create art for kids specifically, though we enjoy that now and would like to do more.
A: Le Poulet and the cartoon characters all got their start with Bon Voyage. Around that title, an entire world of animals and characters were articulated.
J: The original piece of art itself is quite tiny… there was a pixelated effect that came with the scanning on the CD cover for the music. The first characters we used were just in and around the tiny words. Adrien said that he wanted a T-shirt with Le Poulet early on. I kept making different versions, and he kept telling me he didn’t like them. I had to vectorize the images each time I made a new attempt to make him a T-shirt that would make him happy. And naturally from there, I would just vectorize all the images we made. Le Poulet became a graphic icon organically. Once he was perfected, people started asking us for T-shirts, and we began traveling for music at the time and would give out stickers and stuff as we traveled. Le Poulet himself made his debut during a trip to Romania. He became our best ambassador. People have a childlike, visceral reaction to him, and they like it. He provokes a smile.
A: Yes, they’re clumsy/silly enough to be liked by anyone.
J: You don’t want to compete with [our characters]; you want to have fun and play with them.
Your last work revolved around a multi-experience hut called Totem & Tabou. Where did the idea for the masks come from?
A: The only thing we knew about that project was that we were not going to make a vinyl series. The masks themselves were very cool and could have been their own stories, but somehow I was more into exploring digital art and relation to music and LED lights. They were easily available and offered you the possibility to play with all the colors. You can literally make any color you want, and it was a nice starting point. We experimented at the mini shop that we had downstairs, putting a piano outside on the street. And when you played the piano, it lit up the teeth in a big smile in the window. The teeth you see on the wall were from that project. It was a whole field of experimentation. We also had a hole where you would look inside and see a snake projection. When you played the keyboard, the projection of the snake would change. It was an experiment, but not only sound in sound. We also played with light and images.
How did you manage to learn all the different technologies to support your different creative outlets?
A: That was also the first time that we worked with an intern, Aurelien. He was an engineer, and with him we took the design further. Much of what we did was available with software that already does bridges of this nature, like Modul8, Resolume, or Ableton Live.
But with him, we decided to match the 12 notes of the chromatic scale with 12 lights, and once you have 12 separate lights, you could play any partition. The light would light up when the note was played. If the same note was played higher, the color would just change. You began by assigning primary colors to all notes, and each scale would have different colors. As a result, you would see the music itself quite naturally, without really thinking about it. It was just a transcription of whatever partition was being played. Having all the experiments going on, then moving into a much bigger studio and workshop, we were able to take things to a much bigger scale.
When we branched out, we learned how to make 3D elements and were able to design the entire Totem & Tabou installation in 3D, more or less. The masks, the lights, we decided to put it in production from the workshop. We started with one mask and slowly added on more until we had five masks working with the music, and then an album that had been made a year previously, during the summer. That was all about music that was written and not at all sampled. The album was created with Ableton Push keyboard, which enables you to play in a very nice and easy way…
The last thing we needed to come up with was where to present it. It happened that we shared our workshop with a guy, Sebastien, who is a master woodcrafter, and one day he very casually suggested that we use a hut. We were like, “Sure! No problem!” The hut went through a few different versions, but now we’re working on an entirely new one where the roof can be outside. It’s probably going to also be self-powered.
It sounds like your ideas start off pretty simple but have a way of snowballing.
A: In a way, sure. But never did we ever have such an ambition of creating a traveling hardware hut. After just tinkering and experimenting, it was as if we looked down one day and the hut was just there.
J: The album gained momentum in the same way. The materials came to be, then the materials attracted the materials, and it all functioned a bit like a big magnet. Slowly, things just stuck.
A: Then it gets quite heavy! And funnily enough, instead of trying to make it lighter, we just decided to take it all to another level. We decided with this album that the music should be available in album form that would not be for sale. There were CDs that were available for the people who came to experience the hut, but that was all. They were all numbered as special items, not for commercial sale. But then, thanks to another connection, our friend Kevin—who has filmed and documented our work for years—happened to know someone from primary school who is this kickass developer. We ended up meeting Kevin’s friends, who work for major clients like nuclear centers who need 3D engineering, but they found us fun and decided to get on board with the hut. As a result, they made an app for the hut. It was hardly imaginable that everyone would see the hut, so we thought it could be cool to make it available digitally, too.
The hut is also digital?
J: Yes, it’s an app. You can find it on the iTunes or Google Play store. It has a whole timeline, and the timeline plays the entire album. You can see the hut around you, and you can also get out of the hut.
A: It’s like a video game, but contemplative. There isn’t much action to take, apart from walking around the hut and experiencing it.
With the many facets of the Masomenos experience, what is it that you hope your audiences get from the many different avenues of creativity you offer?
J: It’s about reconnection.
A: Yes, that’s a good word for it. There were plenty of people who came to the hut and thought it was cool and liked the fact that we had built this flickering, nice thing. But in the end, they didn’t really get it. Later on, the hut moved into the hotel for three weeks, and people came back with different feedback. We spent time in the hut, talking to people who entered. Each time, people had told me that when they were paying less attention to the hut itself while talking to us, that they had felt somehow changed by it. It’s an all-in-one feeling, as you are in the middle of light and sound. You do have to take the time to really feel it. With the graphics, you have something spontaneous and instant. From the event to the cartoon characters to the masks to the lights, it’s a surprise. People’s reactions are not premeditated.
J: They don’t get scared. The idea is that the reaction is simple, and it becomes unique to each person. The idea is that the simplicity can spark a range of motions inside each person that is only his or her own.
A: I remember seeing an installation by James Turrell [Twilight Epiphany Skyspace] in Houston. You had to come very early in the morning to see the sunrise. We were really lucky, since we were both jet-lagged and up early, and the day was absolutely beautiful. You went into the space of the piece, and this incredible light surrounded you. It was amazing. We also went to the Opéra Garnier one time in Paris. But instead of having a show that took place on the mainstage, they had several mini shows happening around the [venue].
J: It was like subway dancers, but ballet dancers were performing instead. Visually, it was quite unexpected. At one point, the ballerina would have such poise with her hands that she somehow brought you up and down through all your emotions. It somehow reconnects you to the fact that you belong to everything and you are still going to be everything after. It’s as if you are nothing without ceremony.
A: It somehow really brought tears to your eyes. It’s as if it’s always there, but you don’t usually see it.
J: It’s pretentious for us to think that we are always trying to accomplish these sorts of awe-inspiring experiences with the hut, but the bubble is there.
And the bubble itself, it’s created from polarities. On one hand, we have these cartoons, and on the other, quite subterranean, minimal music that’s not at all typically French. The people who experience your art are being hit from very different ends.
J: Masomenos is about polarity. We are, after all, a couple. We both have our individual magnetic fields, and the more we find our different space, the more there is to work with between us.
A: Yes, that disco-house style is not ours at all.
How do you direct the business aspects of the project?
A: We have amazing friends who support us. Our real blessing is our friend Kevin. He’s documented so much of what we’ve done for the past two or three years, that we have it there to show. He’s been an incredible driving force for us to become more focused, business-wise. If he hadn’t recorded our project with Kate Simko and the London Electronic Orchestra, we wouldn’t have that in our portfolio. Kate is great; she has such an incredible drive. Aurelien, the engineer intern, even profited from the experience and is now working with a member of the orchestra. So, his internship with us did lead to something constructive for his future. That show for us, though, was a dream between connecting the music and musicians to the light and art. It was like watching children. And if it hadn’t been for Kate, it would have never happened.
J: We also have Amande, who we have known for 10 years. She helps us pull the information together and organize what we’ve done, and speaks to people. We are lucky to have great help and good connections.
Is the kids’ bedroom decorated in all Masomenos?
J: We always laugh about the idea that our daughter will turn out to be a goth! We try to be smoother about it and let her choose. We think if we push less, she will react less.
As quickly as the journey ascended up to the studio, I was whisked back down the stairwell and this time spit out into the Hôtel Costes’ iconic atrium garden, the smell of their earthen fragrance lines filling my nostrils as my mind tried to come to terms with what I had just seen. Joan directed me past palm trees and chic hostesses and then pointed out the Bon Voyage piece on the hallway wall, singling out cartoon snakes and monsters that would later become the chicken, frog and third-eye ambassadors to their extensive mythology. I remembered the pile of at least 15 albums that had rained on my lap, images of bright balloons, eyes, animals emblazoned on the front of each jacket cover. In a quick turn, the bellhops bid us goodbye. My eyes winced in the early Parisian spring sunlight, focusing away from the Technicolor dreamworld and back to reality.
Masomenos’ most recent EP, Le Jongleur, featuring Tobi Neumann, was released March 25. Stay tuned for monthly releases by the couple throughout the year.
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