Our Bandcamp of the Day is For Farewell of Nostalgia, the latest EP from Montreal-based ambient artist Vision Eternel. The band is anchored by the creative vision of Alex Julien. When Alex sent his EP to us a few weeks back, it was clear to our team that he had a lot to say. Despite there being no actual lyrics to the album it still managed to capture a literary quality that we found fascinating. To learn more, we reached out to Alex for a brief interview over email, and what we received in return was far more than we could have expected. We figured he was a thoughtful guy, we just didn’t realize how thoughtful. Below you will be able to read his complete responses to our inquiries.
Be sure to check out what we had to say about For Farewell of Nostalgia here, and keep scrolling for the interview below:
Interview conducted on January 17, 2021 via email.
Can you give us some insight into the meaning behind the title of your EP?
Vision Eternel’s For Farewell Of Nostalgia is a concept extended play, so its title was carefully selected. During the making of a Vision Eternel release, I dedicate a great deal of time to choosing words that will be used for the song titles and the release title. This process normally involves taking notes of words that I feel are relevant to the sentiments and themes that I am experiencing during the composing and recording stages.
I then arrange different combinations of those words into phrases. Vision Eternel’s release titles always have a certain rhythm, not quite a full sentence, but more of a statement of fact. It is also very important that the release title be completely original; that nothing else shows up on Google with that exact term. If a title is too similar to another work of art, I discard it.
For Farewell Of Nostalgia, as a title, is intended to be taken with a slight poetic liberty. It is meant to be interpreted as “for the well-being of nostalgia”. The concept upon which this extended play is based is falling in love at first sight and the heartbreak that follows. It is also a Dear John letter to the city of Montreal, a burg that I once considered home. I wanted to say “Thanks for the memories, the wonderful and the miserable; now good-bye.” Those were years of infatuation; years of broken hearts. At the same time, I also wanted to state that I would not be forgetting these events, but rather, that I would be cherishing these memories, in nostalgia, for the rest of my life.
Nostalgia is such a personal and intimate sentiment, one with which I have lived for most of my life. All of those moments were incredibly meaningful to me, and they continued to be as they became memories. It was therefore even more so important that nostalgia be represented respectfully and gracefully with this release. Not only with the title, but throughout the conceptual release as a whole. I felt that if my release was to use the word nostalgia, then the music, the production, the story, the artwork and the physical packaging all have to live up to it. I did not want to use the word nostalgia for effect; I wanted it to be representative of what I was offering.
Not to be completely overshadowed by the release title, the song titles also go through a similar selection process. They are slightly easier to compile, however, partly because they all have a common prefix. In the case of For Farewell Of Nostalgia, all of the song titles begin with the words Moments Of. So I typically only need to find a single word to complete the song titles. But these words are nevertheless just as deliberate since they tell a greater portion of the story. The title of a song on a Vision Eternel release needs to chronologically capture the appropriate moment of the story being told within. Since the songs are instrumental, the titles need to be descriptive enough, to a certain degree.
What is the setting for the story the EP takes place in? / Can you give us a rough outline of the EP’s plot?
Vision Eternel’s For Farewell Of Nostalgia is about falling in love at first sight, the intimacy of a one-night-stand and its aftermath: a heartbreak once the realization hits that the feeling is not reciprocal. It is about living with absence of love and cherishing memories; a brooding, yet hopeful, melodrama.
Vision Eternel is an instrumental band, so I was limited by how I was able to convey this story. The music is certainly very emotional, but without words to pair it with, there would have been a tendency to wrongly interpret its essence. I therefore wrote a short story to accompany the release which recounts the events that influenced the extended play. But the short story is only available inside a booklet with the physical editions of For Farewell Of Nostalgia.
I did that on purpose because I wanted to offer an old-fashioned type of listening experience to Vision Eternel’s fans. I wanted to present an opportunity to enjoy the release as one would have prior to the digital and streaming revolution. I remember when it was an event to go out to a record store (because it was the only place where one could get new music), looking through the bins and picking out a release, sometimes based entirely on how the artwork and packaging stood apart from the others. Then, the anticipation of getting home to play the new acquisition. Putting the medium on and sitting down while admiring the full artwork, going through the booklet and reading the liner notes and lyrics. I kept all of this in mind when I constructed the layouts for For Farewell Of Nostalgia.
For Farewell Of Nostalgia also conceptually fits into Vision Eternel’s greater story-line; a multi-release, continuous development that ties nearly all of the band’s releases together. For Farewell Of Nostalgia is the band’s sixth concept extended play, but it is only the fifth to fit within this greater story-line. It follows 2007’s Seul Dans L’obsession, 2008’s Un Automne En Solitude, 2010’s Abondance De Périls and 2012’s The Last Great Torch Song. The 2015 extended play Echoes From Forgotten Hearts was originally composed as a soundtrack to a short film so it does not fit conceptually into the greater story-line.
This greater story-line was introduced very early on in the band’s time-line: Vision Eternel was founded when I decided to compose an extended play to document the pain of having to move on from a failed relationship. “Boy meets girl, boy loses girl”. Once work began on Vision Eternel’s sophomore release, which documented another past relationship, it immediately opened up the greater story-line: “Boy meets girl, boy loses girl. Boy meets girl again, boy loses girl again”. Each new Vision Eternel release is another chapter in the story. I later came to realize that this plot, though reflective of my personal life, is also present in Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo, my favorite film. There was a period of my life when I watched that movie every day, so I am sure that it seeped into my subconscious as I conceptualized Vision Eternel’s early releases.
Who were some of your literary influences for this story?
When it comes to Vision Eternel, I always try not to be directly influenced by any other works of art from the same medium. I purposely do not listen to music while I write and record a new Vision Eternel release, so most of my influences are therefore from my subconscious. I attempted to approach the writing of For Farewell Of Nostalgia’s short story in the same manner.
Ernest Hemingway has long-been my favorite author so I do naturally see a strong resemblance to his style of writing. The short sentence structure. The frequent punctuations. There might also be a slight influence from my favorite poet, Percy Bysshe Shelley, with the rhythm and flow of the story and in the selection of words. Finally, my favorite author as a child was Jules Verne, whose works I had the opportunity of reading in their native language. Perhaps he is another subconscious influence but it is very difficult to tell because he was an adventure writer; For Farewell Of Nostalgia is a melodrama.
I think that my biggest influence comes from watching films. I watch a great deal of movies, normally one to three daily, and I gravitate towards American films of the 1930s-1970s. I love film noirs and melodramas. I would like to think that there is an old-fashioned tone and setting to my short story; I certainly imagined it that way when I wrote it. It was definitely black-and-white in my mind.
Some of my favorite screenwriters include Woody Allen, Cameron Crowe, Wes Anderson, Billy Wilder, Orson Welles, John Michael Hayes, Ernest Lehman, Ben Hecht, A.I. Bezzerides, William Faulkner, Raymond Chandler and Paddy Chayefsky. I cannot say that I read many of their filming scripts, but the type of dialog that they wrote undoubtedly found its way to my subconscious and may have influenced my style of writing.
The EP appears to have been written in phases, can you give us a brief history of how you wrote and recorded it?
For Farewell Of Nostalgia took nearly four years to come together; three years and eight months, to be precise, from the first composition to the release date. I had originally hoped to begin working on Vision Eternel’s sixth concept extended play in early 2015, shortly after the release of Echoes From Forgotten Hearts, but I was side-tracked by several other musical and biographical projects. I spent from February to September 2015 working with my other bands Vision Lunar, Éphémère and Citadel Swamp.
In the autumn of 2015, I was struck with composer’s block; I was unable to compose new material for nearly a year and a half. I spent that time working on biographies and research projects for defunct bands, record labels and classic Hollywood entertainers. I also put together the Various Artists compilation and fanzine Billowing Tempestus for Abridged Pause Recordings/Abridged Pause Publishing, which was unfortunately shelved.
In December 2016, I decided to shift my focus and energy towards my own music again. I realized that the reason why I had been struggling with composer’s block was due to the fact that I had spread myself too thin musically; I had taken on too many bands and projects. There was a time when I was able to shuffle from one band to the next; composing, recording and releasing music in shifts. But I had reached a point where I was more meticulous and measured about my work. I worked much slower and that, in turn, placed pressure on the amount of output that I was expected to produce. In addition, each of my bands had a distinct style and sound so that limited, to an extent, my creativity.
That same month, I also realized that I had missed out on the ten-year anniversary of two of my bands: Soufferance, which had been founded in September 2006, and Vision Lunar, which had been founded in October 2006. I was very sad about that because I had anticipated highlighting the events with new releases; but it was too late. Vision Eternel was founded in January 2007 so its ten-year anniversary was right around the corner. I did not want to miss out on that event because Vision Eternel has always been my favorite, my most personal and intimate band.
With all of those things considered, I made the decision to solely focus on Vision Eternel; ending Soufferance and Citadel Swamp, quitting Éphémère (though I was only a sporadic session member), and placing Vision Lunar on an indefinite hiatus. I was not planning to work on new material right away. I instead planned to spend the first half of 2017 celebrating Vision Eternel’s ten-year anniversary with the release of the retrospective boxed set An Anthology Of Past Misfortunes, as well as rebuilding the band’s online presence. It had been years since the band had been mentioned anywhere online and many of its social media profiles were outdated.
By chance, journalist JJ Koczan stumbled on Vision Eternel’s previous extended play, Echoes From Forgotten Hearts, in late February 2017 and published an extremely favorable review on his webzine The Obelisk. Koczan ended his article by mentioning how he hoped that the band would be releasing new material in the near-future. That was for me a great motivational booster and I was soon working on new Vision Eternel material. I began composing new songs, re-arranging older ones and recording rough demos at Mortified Studios, my home studio, in April 2017. I was then hoping to release Vision Eternel’s sixth extended play before the end of 2017.
Since Vision Eternel was the only band for which I was composing, I was able to take the best songwriting elements from each of my previous bands and combine them into Vision Eternel’s new songs. Some of those elements included Soufferance’s lengthy, repetitive, almost hypnotic, codas and segues; Citadel Swamp’s multi-instrument layering; and Éphémère’s textural guitar leads. There had been prior Vision Eternel recordings which utilized some of those elements, such as the song Sometimes In Absolute Togetherness from The Last Great Torch, as well as the majority of Echoes From Forgotten Hearts. But it was only in 2017 that I was finally free to return to composing music without worrying about honoring a genre or style tag. It did, however, take me a great amount of time to perfect the amalgamation of these different elements. The songs were written and demoed in 2017 were very rough and abrasive so it was probably for the best that these original recording sessions were cut short.
The extensive work required in producing the retrospective boxed set An Anthology Of Past Misfortunes delayed things considerably and I was forced to stop composing new material. I was also working on a music video, merchandise and apparel, all in highlighting the band’s ten-year anniversary, so that had to come first. The boxed set’s release was ultimately delayed by over a year, finally coming out in mid-April 2018. Once that was out of the way, I immediately resumed working on Vision Eternel’s sixth extended play.
I spent seven months in 2018, from April to October, composing, arranging, recording and mixing the original version of For Farewell Of Nostalgia. Only a couple of songs from the 2017 sessions were carried over, though they were heavily re-arranged and further developed, so I still had a great deal of writing ahead of me. I had yet to figure out which of the newly incorporated elements to showcase and how to properly blend them together, so the 2018 sessions were tedious and disorganized.
I originally wanted to mix For Farewell Of Nostalgia with a wall of sound type of production. I did dozens of different mixes for each song, but I was never happy with them. Some of the songs that were recorded and mixed in the spring of 2018 differed greatly in mood, atmosphere and production from the ones done over the summer, and even more so from the ones completed in the autumn. The release, as a whole, was not sounding like a concept extended play; it sounded more like a compilation of random songs.
I then noticed that several of my raw tracks had crackling and distortion; issues caused by faulty studio equipment. I attempted to re-record some of those problematic tracks only to be plagued by uncontrollable fret buzz on several of my guitars. I was unable to finish recording the overdubs. I was growing dissatisfied with the extended play and the endless recording and mixing sessions; I became disconnected from the emotions which I was trying to capture and share with my music.
I had already secured a handful of record labels to release For Farewell Of Nostalgia in late 2018, but I was so unhappy with it that I made the decision to indefinitely shelve it until I could regroup and return to it with a fresh ear and mind. I spent the next twelve months bringing my studio gear up to date, purchasing a new guitar and getting two of my older guitars fixed. I also took the time to plan out which songs were going to appear on the extended play. The 2018 sessions had produced a lot of songs but I wanted to know which ones would make the cut; which would get re-recorded and appear on the final release. There was a lot of b-side material.
By early October 2019, I was ready to re-record For Farewell Of Nostalgia. I had a blueprint to work from this time, and all of the songs’ arrangements were done so the recording sessions were efficient. The extended play was fully re-recorded in only a month-and-a-half. I then spent another month-and-a-half doing minor overdubs, editing, mixing, and sequencing. The new versions of the songs sounded incredible; they had so much emotion and really felt like a concept extended play. They all had the same mood and atmosphere. The new versions also had textural guitar leads, which was something that the 2018 recordings lacked, and that brought the songs to another level. This release taking so long to come together was truly for the best and I could not be happier with the result.
You list Frank Sinatra as an inspiration on the EP. He seems like an unlikely muse for an ambient release. Would you be able to elaborate how his work inspires your own? / How did you go about capturing the right mood for this EP? / Is that a portrait of you on the cover of the EP?
I would not say that Frank Sinatra was a muse for Vision Eternel, because the music is based on past relationships, but his global work has definitely been inspirational and played a great part in helping the release come together. For Farewell Of Nostalgia was recorded twice; once in 2018, then again from scratch in 2019. I did not like the original recording because it lacked unity; it did not sound like a concept extended play. So when I decided to re-record it in 2019, my priority was making sure that all of the songs sounded like they belonged together. They all had to have the same mood and atmosphere; the same level of emotions.
In order to accomplish that, I isolated myself in my studio for the duration of the recording session. I wanted to remain in the same, somewhat-depressed-yet-motivated, state while I tracked the songs, so I was very strict about what I allowed myself to hear, see and feel and with whom I was in contact. I deliberately did not listen to any music because I did not want to be consciously influenced by anyone’s style or genre. I limited my reading material to my collection of books on classic Hollywood.
I controlled my mood by what I saw. I placed two of my favorite pieces of art next to my computer so that I could admire them while recording. The first was a painting of my maternal grand-parents’ cottage where I had spent some of the best days of my childhood. That place was filled with positive nostalgic memories. The second was the vinyl sleeve cover to Frank Sinatra’s album In The Wee Small Hours. That album had kept me company on so many lonely nights over the years while I was depressed and heartbroken. It had become somewhat of a best friend during those times; the only thing that I could rely on to help me get through the night. It had also been there for me during the events upon which For Farewell Of Nostalgia is based. In The Wee Small Hours was filled with saddened nostalgia.
I continued to watch a lot of old movies but I restricted myself. I decided that I would only watch Frank Sinatra’s films during the entire recording session. Frank Sinatra is one of my favorite actors and some of his films are amongst my favorite films. He often showcases a great sadness in his characters so it was very appropriate to the atmosphere with which I surrounded myself. I dislike musicals, so I did not watch those films of his, but I repeatedly watched his melodramas like The Detective, From Here To Eternity, Some Came Running, The Man With The Golden Arm, Pal Joey, The Manchurian Candidate, Suddenly, and several others. I would start my day by reviewing the previous night’s recordings, then decide if I was in the mood to work on new material. If I was not, then I would immediately watch a Frank Sinatra film. As soon as the film was over, and while the emotions of the movie were still with me, I would begin recording. Later at night, if I was in a lull or having an off-day with my guitar-playing, I would sit back and watch more of his films until the inspiration to record came back to me.
When the time came to decide on an artwork for Vision Eternel’s For Farewell Of Nostalgia, it seemed to make perfect sense that I should pay homage to Frank Sinatra. I immediately thought of basing it on Frank Sinatra’s In The Wee Small Hours‘ cover art because it had been so important in setting the mood for the recording sessions. But I did not want it to be a simple replica of my face superimposed over Frank Sinatra’s cover; that would have been cheap and disrespectful. I wanted the artwork of For Farewell Of Nostalgia to be an homage yet also represent me and Vision Eternel’s themes.
On In The Wee Small Hours’ cover, Frank Sinatra is the sole focus; the night-time street scene behind him is non-descript. It could be Anytown, U.S.A. But For Farewell Of Nostalgia was a Dear John letter to Montreal, so I wanted it to be representative of that. It therefore includes obvious landmarks like the Montreal Harbour Bridge, Windsor Station, the Saint Lawrence River and the Sailors’ Memorial Clock Tower on Victoria Pier. I originally wanted to include several more of my favorite buildings from Old Montreal, but I quickly realized that it bloated the background and made it too busy. It took away from the homage that I wanted to respect; it had to remain somewhat identifiable to Frank Sinatra’s cover art.
Another aspect that I wanted to be respectful of was with regard to the portrait section. Frank Sinatra posed as himself on his cover artwork, so I wanted to do the same. I was very meticulous about the angle and facial expression of my pose, but I wore my own clothes; I did not try to replicate what Frank Sinatra was wearing or doing. Frank Sinatra wore a suit and tie while I wore my overcoat and scarf. He was clean-shaven but I have a horseshoe mustache. He smoked a cigarette but I am a pipe smoker. Finally, and perhaps most interestingly to me because I am a hat buff, Frank Sinatra wore a short-brimmed, raw-edge, dark grey fedora. He always wore narrow-brimmed hats because he had a skinny face; even after he gained weight in the very late 1950s, he continued to wear narrow-brimmed fedoras. On the other end, I have a rounder face so hats with wide brims better suit me. I wore one of my own hats, a medium-grey, wide-brimmed, ribbon-edged fedora, which was manufactured in Montreal around 1952.
It took me a long time to find the right person to illustrate the cover art for Vision Eternel’s For Farewell Of Nostalgia. I wanted someone who was able to replicate the pulp-style illustrations of that era but a lot of artists today only mimic it; they do not achieve it. That is why I was so fortunate to land on Michael Koelsch, an American artist who has truly mastered pulp illustrations. He has been doing pulp illustrations since the early 1990s and has done hundreds of book covers. Michael Koelsch had also worked on music releases, so he knew what I needed for the layout and formats. More importantly, he was himself a big fan of Frank Sinatra, and of his album In The Wee Small Hours, so he was able to bring in a lot of his own emotions into the painting. It was my first time commissioning an actual painting for an album cover and it was an incredible experience. I would love to exclusively work with Michael Koelsch on all future Vision Eternel cover artworks!
Michael Koelsch is not the only artist to have provided visuals for Vision Eternel’s For Farewell Of Nostalgia though. Rain Frances contributed extensively to the project with photographs and three paintings. One was used for the short story booklet in the Compact Cassette Edition and the Compact Disc Edition, another appeared on the bonus tape with the Compact Cassette Edition, and she also painted splatters on the CD face of the Advanced Compact Disc Edition. Jeremy Roux contributed photographs as well as designed the Abridged Pause Recordings logo that appears on the Advanced Compact Disc Edition. Christophe Szpajdel illustrated the Vision Eternel logo that appears on the Advanced Compact Disc Edition and the standard Compact Disc Edition. Paul Lewis designed theSomewherecold Records logo that appears on the Compact Disc Edition. And finally, Yannick Tinbergen helped out with the layout and the Geertruida logo for the Compact Cassette Edition.
I strive to credit everyone involved in my releases’ liner notes, so it is unusual for me to have the need for a thank list. However, there was no other way to thank Frank Sinatra other than with “a sincere thank you for the continuous inspiration.”
What instruments are you playing on this EP? / How do you achieve the dreamy reverb and effects that help develop the EP’s atmosphere?
I play guitar and bass on For Farewell Of Nostalgia. Vision Eternel has always been a guitar-based band. With the exception of a guest contribution by Garry Brents on a single song recorded in 2010, there has never been any keyboards; nor synthesizers, samplers or any digital instruments. I think that because of that, a lot of people have had difficulty using the term “ambient” to categorize Vision Eternel’s music. Ambient has a connotation of keyboards and electronic music.
On previous Vision Eternel releases, I limited myself to only using a single guitar per extended play. Occasionally, there would be bass and/or eBow tracks. The early songs were simpler so it was instinctive to play everything with the same instrument. But on For Farewell Of Nostalgia, I used three of my guitars and one bass. I think that it made the songs sound bigger and fuller. I also made it a point to utilize my eBow on every song; I love using it and some people have told me that they have come to expect hearing an eBow when they listen to a Vision Eternel song.
With regards to the dreamy reverb and effects, I am rather secretive about my exact gear and setup. But to be perfectly candid, I do not have a large effects rack or rows of pedals. My setup is somewhat minimal and very rock-based as I come from a metal background. Likely because of that, my gear would probably be considered non-conventional for “ambient music”; I am not keen on electronics. I also tend to use much less reverb during mixing than a lot of the other ambient music that I have come across. That was definitely one of the things that I disliked about the 2018 version of For Farewell Of Nostalgia: it had far too many layers of effects and endless reverb. When I mixed the 2019 re-recording, I wanted the guitar notes to be heard distinctly and not be buried and blurred into a haze of reverb. I kept decreasing the amount of reverb on my mixes until it had the bare minimum, yet retained the atmosphere and sound that I was looking for.
I do not have a predetermined way of getting this sound. The process of recording and mixing comes somewhat naturally, after so many years of playing in Vision Eternel. But mixing is not something that I particularly enjoy. I am not really a producer; I simply took on the role by default because I was recording in my own studio and I needed to be self-sufficient. The reason why For Farewell Of Nostalgia sounds the way it does is because I spent so much time in pre-production and working on the songs’ structures and arrangements. When I re-recorded the extended play in 2019, I knew how I wanted it to sound. I also had much better studio gear and instruments with which to work.
A lot of praise needs to be given to Carl Saff who mastered For Farewell Of Nostalgia at his studio Saff Mastering. I wanted to work with him because I loved what he did on Castevet’s releases (the Chicago emo band). I do not think that Vision Eternel’s For Farewell Of Nostalgia would have been as accessible if it had not been mastered by such a professional engineer.
Which five artists you do always include when you are making a playlist for yourself?
I do not normally make playlists; it is a format a little too modern for me and I never picked up the habit. I was never big on mixtapes/CD mixes either. I tend to listen to releases in full, even if that means skipping over a couple of songs manually. But to be fair to your question, I can tell you which five artists I tend to play often and sometimes on repeat. I suppose that this can be considered somewhat of a list of my five favorite bands. This may not reflect my five favorite releases or my five favorite songs though.
-Faith No More
-The Smashing Pumpkins
-Castevet
-Mother Love Bone
-Eliminator/Brainscan
Photo courtesy of Alex Julien.
Pick up a copy of Vision Eternel’s For Farewell Of Nostalgia EP here.
