Have you heard of OAKMAN? If you haven’t, chances are, you will soon! This talented French pop/rock trio has had a big week, as they released their third EP, SCP, on September 30th. We had the opportunity to sit down and chat with lead singer/guitarist Marine and drummer Jesse about their new music. Check it out below.
Crowdsurfer: Give us a background about who you are and how you got started as a band.
Jesse: Hi! I’m Jesse, I play the drums. I started music with my brother Geremia who is our bass guitarist. Music was a big part of our family as my dad played music and was part of a band. We grew up in this environment of music and live concerts, so it was a normal thing for us. We picked up playing instruments at a young age and started playing as a trio with my dad.
Geremia and Marine met during high school. At that time, I was in college in a different city in France. Geremia and Marine played music together for fun. I thought they had a really nice taste of music. Later, they decided to start taking their music seriously as a duo. Afterwards, they came to my city, and we started something that we now call OAKMAN.
CS: Your third EP SCP came out yesterday! What did you to celebrate?
Jesse: I would say like French people, we went to a French restaurant and had a couple of glasses of wine with our close friends and team. We wanted to celebrate as a little committee in a restaurant. It was fun and we definitely ate too much!
CS: Tell me a little bit about the inspiration for the new EP.
Marine: The inspiration for SCP came from many different things. During the pandemic, we listened to many different artists including Phoenix, CHVRCHES, and The Weeknd. Even though I’m not much of a pop listener, I do love Dua Lipa, her music is really cool. All these influences, plus all the pop punk bands we’ve listened to in the past, inspired our new sound and this EP.
CS: You said your sound changed. Can you tell us about that and how this EP is different from anything you’ve done before?
Marine: So now we have more synth vibes than before. I have always wanted to experiment with these types of sounds, but I didn’t really have the time or the money. During the pandemic, I still didn’t have the money, but I had the time to experiment, so I decided to explore with analog music. It was a cool experience, and it gave me the chance to add new elements to our music, which is something I have always wanted to do. The pandemic was a good time for me to try new things.
Jessie: Also, we had more experience as people and as musicians after touring which gave us the freedom to experiment with new things. Our previous music was raw, with just the three of us with and our instruments. Marine started to produce our songs more and more and developed that skill. Which also gave us an opportunity to experiment in new ways and bring different sounds into this EP.
CS: Why did you pick SCP as the title track and why is it so special to you?
Marine: We chose SCP, which stands for Sugar Coated Pill, as the title track because it encapsulated all the different emotions you can find in the entirety of the EP. The song represents the kind of sweet but also spicy and crazy part of life as well as the fears many of us have. We felt that SCP was a song that represented all the emotions we cover throughout the EP.
CS: Your song “Murder” talks about a difficult subject that many people experience. Why did you feel it was important to write this song?
Marine: When I was writing this song, I didn’t know that I was going to talk about this topic. I always wanted to talk about this, but I never felt like I had the perfect song to do it. But after I wrote the first few sentences, deep in my thoughts/ I murder you for once, I started to think it was a good song for this subject.
CS: Who came up with the vision/idea for the music video for “Murder” and what inspired the idea?
Jesse: Marine, she’s the boss!
Marine: When I thought about “Murder,” I pictured somebody running away from something or someone, like their murderer. I wanted to go further into the idea of what would happen if the roles were swapped – the idea of the murderer becoming the victim and the victim becoming the murderer. I felt like this would be a more interesting concept because we always talk about the victim and the murderer, but sometimes the victim wants his/her revenge. So, I thought it would be more interesting to see it from this point of view and see the emotions that overtake the victim.
CS: You guys did such a great job on the video, we loved it!
Jesse: Thank you! It was pretty tough to shoot because it was outside and pretty cold. We wrapped at 6 am! But it was worth it!
CS: Switching it up a bit, who is your dream collaboration?
Marine: I have too many! I would love to collaborate with Phoenix and Dayglow!
Jesse: I never thought about this, but maybe Fatherson or I’d really love to collaborate with Enter Shikari! I think that would be a great mix because they are kind of crazy with their music.
CS: Who would you love to go on tour with?
Marine: Pheonix!
Jesse: Yeah! They are pretty big and maybe it would be easier for us to communicate with them and link up because they are French. I really like Manchester Orchestra but is like a different type of music. Honestly, I would like to tour with any pop punk or pop band. Touring with CHVRCHES would be amazing!
Marine: Yeah! CHVRCHES would be really cool!
CS: What do you hope people get from listening to your music?
Marine: I hope they get hope and motivation in their life and I hope they love the EP! I don’t know, this is always a hard question because I can’t speak for other people, but I hope they feel what we wanted to transmit through this EP. We hope they feel the emotions and see the authenticity that we wanted to share with them.
Jesse: As people, we are musicians, we are a band. But, we are also listeners like everybody else and we have our favorite bands and artists. So as a band, the most important thing for us it to try to recreate what we like about our favorite songs and artists. When you listen to a new song or watch the music videos, you are so into it. We want people to feel connected to us and we hope to build a bond with our fans through our music. Music is emotions – its’ happiness, it’s sadness. Music represents life. As a band we create music, but when we release it, it’s for people, it’s not only for us anymore.
CS: If you could go back in time and give yourself a piece of advice, what would you say?
Jesse: Work more!
Marine: That’s a good one!
Jesse: Sometimes I’m a bit lazy, you know. When you don’t see the results you want after working so hard to obtain a goal, sometimes you just stop and abandon the idea. I am that type of person. So, I would tell myself “Just go! Do it!” But I’m pretty sure there are a lot of people like me, so I am not alone!
CS: No, you definitely are not!
Marine: I would tell myself to be more confident about our music. Sometimes when we compose a song, we have some doubts and sometimes we feel like its not worth it. The song can be good, but we always have doubts. And I want to get to a place where we can be more confident and take more risks.
CS: What are some of your plans for the rest of this year and onward?
Jesse: Our EP came out yesterday, so we’d like to have the opportunity to defend our it on stage and play live shows. We will have some shows in France of course, but we’d like to tour Europe and the UK, and we’d love to go to the US and do a bigger tour there.
CS: Lastly, is there anything you want to say to your fans or mention?
Marine: You can listen to our new EP SCP on Spotify! Add our songs to your playlists. Any support means the world to us!
Jesse: Thank you for your support! You guys adding us on social media, chatting with us, buying merch, just everything, really means so much to us as a band. We need that support to keep pushing further and creating new music.
You can stream SCP here and make sure to keep up with OAKMAN Band on Instagram and Tik Tok. You’ll definitely want to keep them on your radar!
crowdsurfermag.com 