You guys debut in Japan first time! For Japanese music fans, please tell me a little about yourself. About your band name Mutiny on the Bounty too.

Nicolas So it's our first proper release in Japan even if the first two albums have been distributed by Japanese labels. "Danger Mouth" by Stiffslack and "Trials" by Parabolica. We formed in 2004 and have played around 600 shows around Europe and a couple in the US. "Digital Tropics" is our 3rd album.
Mutiny on the Bounty was more about a personal joke between us back in the time where we formed about a guy we knew rather than a proper link to Captain's Bligh history but it reflected something epic and grand that we wanted to show to the audience.

Already you released the new album "Digital Tropics" overseas ; the digital, a CD and a Vinyl on Bandcamp. What are listeners reaction to the new one?

Nicolas It's been really good so far! Some people seem a bit surprised that it's entirely instrumental, but everyone says that in the end it doesn't matter, that the guitars and the melodies do the job. I think we came along with a very personal album, that represents the band really well and which sound pretty unconventional for the math-rock or hardcore scene from where we come from. It's more like a dance album for nerds and that's why it talks to a bit everyone.

Previous one “Trials” is great! I like keen roar like post-hardcore style. But, you decided to leave the vocal out of “Digital Tropics” completely, why? Also, does your band have anything to change?

Nicolas It might sound a bit easy for an answer but we just thought that these songs didn't needed any vocals. We worked pretty hard to make sure that the guitars would fill-in for the vocal melodies. We always have been a band with very dense songs with a lot of info, this time, we've decided to let it breathe more. But it doesn't mean we're gonna stick to that forever, who know's, next one could be an accapela math album ;)

I feel like some bands look similar to you; Brontide, Jean Jean, early Aucan or aggressive Battles? What are you influenced?

Nicolas Haha, thanks a lot. Of course, all these bands are great and we've listened to them all. But our influences come from deeper in general. We've all been listening to a lot of different music and our tastes are pretty different within the whole band. Of course bands like Battles or Adebisi Shank are personal favourites to everyone in the band but a lot on this album comes from older influences like old-school hip-hop, 80's pop, Soul and of course Electronic and math-rock music. I guess that it's the first time we weren't afraid to show what we really like musically.

What does “Digital Tropics” mean? And tell me why you choose this red artwork. (It is smoke?)

Nicolas "Digital Tropics" showcases the ambiguity of our music in general. It really is the clash between the hot and the cold. We believe our music, especially the sounds, is pretty cold. Everything sounds very synthetic, close to computer sounds or drum machines. On the other hand, this album is more danceable and probably brighter than the previous ones. It's got kind of a calypso vibe to it which explains the Tropics thing. The artwork is a picture by american photograph Kim Keever. He uses fluids that he drops into water and takes picture of it which gives these mysterious shapes between lava and smoke. We just thought that the image was strong and in a way really representative of the music, it is dark and bright. In a way super abstract but also concrete so it showcases pretty well the antinomic nature of our music, these "digital tropics".

I love “dance AUTOMATON dance” so much because too fast, too tech, too cool!

Nicolas “dance AUTOMATON dance” is pretty much a dance song. I believe this song could pretty much be played in some discos and people won't notice that it actually played by rock musicians. We've created the song in order to have a super fast song where elements would add themselves like in a dance/techno song. It's a constant build-up with a huge breakdown at the end. It actually a way to keep things minimal up until the end. We just didn't wanted to make another classic rock album where guitars would sound like guitars, where songs would be build like classic rock songs. For us, we wanted to create something a bit different from what we're used to and I hope that we've succeeded ;)

Don’t you sing from now on?

Nicolas Yes, like I said earlier, we're very open to try a lot of different things. We still play older songs from time to time. And we don't exclude that next album would have singing on it so yes. We just don't want to play the same stuff over and over again, we like to try new things all the time ;)

In short, what do you think that people say that your music is math-rock? Also, tell me something about this math-rock scene.

Nicolas We define ourselves as math-rock. But it is just a shortcut to say that we're playing something different from what people are used to hear. Even if our music was trickier before, we just never really felt that we ever played math-rock per se but we feel being part of a collective of musicians who are trying to make a different kind of music. We all listen to a lot of what bands that are labelled as math-rock and are part of this music scene. I believe it is also a very tight and cohesive scene where people are helping each others out. It has kept, at least in Europe, a very DIY feel where all the bands know each others and giving ourselves hands to play anywhere.

By the way, what kind of country is Luxembourg? Are math, post-rock and post-hardcore popular in your country?

Nicolas Luxembourg is very small. We're only around 500 000 people living in the whole country. You go from North to South within a hour. But there's a really strong musical culture. There are many bands playing and very good ones indeed. This kind of music is kind of popular in Luxembourg (in its own scale) there really cool bands like No Metal In This Battle or Mount Stealth playing very cool music and we already have organized a lot of cool bands over here! I'd say the most active scene over here might be Metal and Hardcore but you definitely can find very distinctive bands over here!

I hear that you have the plan for Japan tour. Do you have anything to tell for Japanese fans?

Nicolas Japan is definitely a dream for us. We really want to come over here, you've got so many great bands and the music scene seems completely crazy over here! We'll be doing our first Japanese tour in November and are super excited about that! We hope people will love what we're doing in order to come back very soon!