First established by guitarist Sacha Got and keyboardist Marlon Magnée back in the yesteryear of 2010, La Femme is an electro-punk-psych-rock band from France that has been making waves for over a decade and has helped define the avant-garde French music scene for an international audience. We sat down with Sacha to chat about the band’s journey, and how his music taste has changed over the years.

Hiya, Marlon! What are you most looking forward to while performing here in Australia? The ghost of Bon Scott.

Do you have any post-show rituals? Party!

You have been making music since with La Femme since 2010. How do you compare your earlier sound to your current one? In the beginning, we were mostly inspired by Californian surf music. Now, we like experimenting with a whole bunch of different genres like country, disco, opera, neo-soul, psychedelic and so much more.

How has your relationship with music changed over the years? At 20 years old I thought I had listened to everything there is, but now the more I grow up, the more I think I’ll need many more years to truly listen to everything. There are so many different blends of genres. For example, many people know about American soul music, but what about soul music from Vietnam in the ‘60s? All of the traditional and folk music from all over the world is so unique and diverse.

What are the best and worst aspects of the French music scene? The best part is that everybody is very nice, the worst part is that there is no really good band.

In your recent album, you re-record older tracks like “Sur la planche”, “Télégraphe”, “La Femme Ressort” and “François”. What inspired this? We wanted to put out this record digitally, and we also thought that we could have a better version of those songs, a much better sound. “Télégraphe” had never been released digitally, so now is the perfect opportunity to finally record it. 

What are the main inspirations behind this EP? In terms of sound, surf-rock and new wave. But in terms of themes, Paris and Biarritz, the waves and the subway, sun, sadness and life.

Talk to us about La Femme’s creative process. Do you come up with lyrics or melody first? Most of the time, the music comes first but it does depend. Sometimes, it’s just a melody that gets stuck in my mind or it comes from a dream.

What’s the best mindset to be in to create music? Not too sad but also not too happy.

Over the past decade, what has been the band’s favourite project and why? It’s hard to say, since each record is a quest and every time we finish one it’s like a miracle. The movie we did though, Paradigmes, was a crazy project!

La Femme will be playing So Frenchy So Chic at Centennial Park in Sydney, 20th January.