FEVER 103°

DARKWAVE / TECHNO DUO

Employing elements of darkwave and industrial techno, Fever 103’s music explores sexuality, death and more via Margot Pereira’s ethereal, choralinfluenced vocals Having moved to Bristol from France, the duo’s brilliantly dark music has established them amongst the city’s most intriguing projects, released on Illegal Data and Avon Terror Corps What first drew you to Bristol, and what were the original ideas behind Fever 103?

Margot Pereira: Through Paul’s band we had met Harry and Robin from Giant Swan, as well as the guys in Spectres. We came for a weekend in January 2016 to visit them and go to Howling Owl’s New Year: New Noise event. Robin and Harry took us to a Young Echo night the first evening we spent here. Paul was more aware of Bristol’s music than I was, but I remember thinking I’d never heard music like that before. We moved here one year exactly after that weekend, and have been here since. The original idea behind Fever 103 was first and foremost for me to finally start making music. I’d wanted to for years, but really had been struggling to gather enough courage and self-confidence to do it. When I finally got there, I did not have a specific idea of what I wanted: I thought I’d just try and see what comes out.

Paul Boumendil: The freedom we experienced moving here, and the freedom we heard in the music in our new city is what I feel shaped things the most. To some extent, I think we both let what we heard and experienced here shape things a lot without always being very conscious of what was happening. I kind of see Fever 103° as the collision of who we were before Bristol and what Bristol made of us.

Lyrically, your use of violent, morbid imagery is shot through with a wonderfully shocking sense of humour ‘Swallow’ from your collection Right Between Before And After features the line “I’ll swallow your cock and throw it up on your face”, while ‘You’re So Sad’ from that collection includes the lyric “I don’t give a shit how many times you made me cum ” What draws you to this lyrical approach, and what do you see the effect as being of delivering these scorching lines in a reverb-drenched, choral setting?

MP: In my lyrics, I am able to paint myself in situations where I have the power, which is something I rarely get to experience in real life – being a woman and all. It helps me deal with the frustrations that come with that, because in that fictional world I get to tell the story. I decide when I win and when I lose. I decide when I am vulnerable and when I’m strong. I decide when I love and when I don’t.

But, as you said, the lyrics are to be taken with a pinch of salt. My lyrics are fictional at the end of the day, and I think I am trying to signal that fictional element by using my very dark sense of humour. As for the actual delivery, I like that the lyrics are not fully intelligible, which is helped by lots of reverb and a little bit of delay. I like that people might understand bits but not necessarily the full thing, because it makes it more relatable, and anyone can project whatever they have got inside them onto what I am singing. I also like how my lyrics can be dark and violent but be delivered gracefully. As one of my favourite albums says, PainIsBeauty

Your music’s marriage of live, organic elements with dancefloor-facing electronic production recalls many of your peers in Bristol, who employ similar approaches to radically different ends: from Ishmael Ensemble to SCALPING To what extent do you think your experiences in Bristol have influenced your music?

MP: A lot. Live is my preferred way to consume any music, so it kind of makes sense that what I go see in Bristol makes its way into my own creations somehow. I love the idea of unintentional inspiration, and noticing sounds in my music that remind me of the musicians around me.

PB: I think we were blown away witnessing how fluid and diverse music felt here. Fusing the organic with electronics therefore felt pretty natural, and there are so many incredible acts that do so here and have been an immense influence. In the same way, it never felt like a question for us to play gigs or club nights, with a shoegaze band or with an EBM or Techno act. There really is a tradition of fusing genres and scenes here: the results get under your skin so much that it feels impossible for it not to transpire in what you create. The influence of dub and sound-system culture is everywhere too. It’s not what is always at the forefront, but I think it always lives somewhere within music created here, including ours.

During the lockdown you began hosting a residency at Parisian radio station Station To Station Representing another means of expressing your musical passions, to what extent do you think this influenced the more recent music you ’ ve made as Fever 103?

PB: Working on those radio shows has been great – we just called it a day after 15 shows. It felt like an amazing way to have a monthly deep dive into the music that we listen to on a daily basis. Putting it together often felt like drawing maps with sounds. Firstly of our surroundings, and therefore often of Bristol, as we always tried to showcase as much music from here as we could.

Somehow, from the whole range of things we have been playing in radio shows, I think there’s a bit of every song that lives within Fever 103°. Putting all those little sound maps together strengthens our confidence in our sonic identities, and diving deep into so much incredible music so regularly definitely pushes us to aim for making more music ourselves.

Perhaps my favourite song of yours is ‘Leaving The Club’ from Right Between Before And After An uncharacteristically sparse, melancholic piece, it is shaped by a wonderful interplay of swelling synths and white noise What can you tell me about its creation?

MP: I wanted it to talk about that very specific and paradoxical sensation of leaving the club You are exhausted, but also joyful, but also full of despair: intoxicated from that immensely intense experience, but in a state of limbo. To achieve that, I thought we needed to strip down and go easy on the beats, so the deafening beauty of that moment could emerge from the ashes.

Male/female relationships seems to be a recurring theme in your work. How would you describe your approach to this, and how do you see the instrumental palette and dance setting of your music as serving this theme?

MP: This is something I am trying to make sense of, and writing songs about it seems like the only way available to me to try and do so Not a lot of things make sense to me on this planet, and I’ll probably keep writing songs about them until they do. Male /female relationships are a big mess of emotions, domination, love, violence sometimes, and intimacy, and I am trying to come to terms with that. In terms of sounds and musicality, I like that our songs contain lyrics in the dance music setting. For me, that’s a reminder of how powerful and meaningful dance music is Dance music carries so much meaning, which I think is sometimes disregarded. I like that we try to make it very obvious. It is an amazing medium for ideas, emotions and thoughts

How do you envisage Fever 103’s music as developing from here?

PB: I think we’ve definitely grown more confident, and the music has naturally evolved It still feels rough, a bit strange, and in tune with who we are, and that’s all we can hope for. We have been writing quite a bit, and hopefully we’ll have more of this to unveil soon. The only wish is to go deeper within ourselves, and for Fever 103° to keep being the vessel that carries what we find there.

Fever is my first project, but now that we have been doing it for four years, I am much more confident and less hesitant. The core will remain the same: giving meaning to our existence or die trying.

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