Interview with Séverine Cayron & Jérôme Vandewattyne from Pornographie Exclusive & Yannick Franck from Antibody Label
PORNOGRAPHIE EXCLUSIVE is a Belgian duo, a couple both on stage and in life, composed of Séverine Cayron and Jérôme Vandewattyne. Their music shatters the boundaries between musical genres, concocting an alchemical blend of Cold-Wave, Goth-Rock, Psychedelic, Darkwave, Shoegaze, Krautrock, Techno, Industrial influences, all sublimated by a cinematographic dimension. Both artists are also active in the seventh art: Séverine as an actress and Jérôme as a film director. And, the cherry on the cake, Séverine plays the cello wonderfully, giving their concerts a decidedly epic breath. They play so-called cine-concerts, in which they play their songs live while there is a screening, behind them, of their movie ‘One-Way Ticket To The Other Side’. They do it in movie theatres but it's also possible in “normal” music venues.
PORNOGRAPHIE EXCLUSIVE is, without a doubt, one of the great revelations of recent months and 2025 will be the year of their explosion on the international scene. We met the two musicians, accompanied by Yannick Franck, from the Antibody label, who produced the duo’s first eponymous album. The interview was organized by the WAVES radio show.
Reflections of Darkness [RoD]: Thank you for this interview! My first question will be very simple. Why this name, “Pornographie Exclusive”?
Jérôme: First of all because these are antinomic words. They represent the duality of our human condition. Plus, it sounds very “cold wave”.
RoD: Yes: a common noun plus an adjective, it’s directly cold wave.
Séverine: There you go. These are two words that came out a bit randomly. We like the French language, the sound of words, even if we don’t sing much in French. We have a weakness for associations like that. We said to ourselves: “Hey, that sounds good; it’s very strong.”
RoD: It’s almost an oxymoron.
Séverine: Exactly. And what amuses us is to see people’s reactions when they are only words, sounds.
Jérôme: The older generations will think that it’s “pornography” that is shocking, while for the younger ones, it will be more like...
RoD: The word “exclusive”, as opposed to “inclusive”?
Séverine: Yes, but of course we don’t exclude anyone.
RoD: I felt the name was simply an description of your duo: “exclusive” since it’s the two of you and “pornography” in the sense that you go all the way, without limits.
Jérôme: That’s it! We are really naked, one in front of one another and we dare everything. We are in our bubble and, as you say, there are no limits.
Séverine: And indeed, we do not limit ourselves to one style. We are extremely open.
RoD: Indeed. In a song like ‘Cracks’, there is a Cold Wave element, even downright Gothic Rock, and also a Shoegaze aspect. And, in addition, I see a cinematographic dimension. It’s a crazy mix, in fact!
Jérôme: Yes, but it is not calculated. It starts with a bass line, then we add a sequence of chords and a desire for lyrics.
Séverine: It also corresponds to a particularly intense moment in our lives, during a trip to Berlin.
RoD: I understood that the album was composed in hotel rooms?
Séverine: That’s right. It was during the lockdown. We couldn’t go out, so in Berlin, we stayed confined. And since we always travel with our portable mini-studio, we composed and recorded the song in the hotel room.
RoD: And the lyrics talk about that?
Jérôme: No, the lyrics talk about how a person can be toxic in a relationship or even with oneself. Toxicity doesn’t only go one way. We always talk about narcissistic perverts, but, in fact, toxicity is something we often build together. It talks about the cracks that can contaminate the other.
RoD: I understand this point of view. In fact, as they say: “It takes two to tango”. And the crack is the place that lets the light pass through...
Jérôme: But that’s exactly it! Our project is precisely to find light in the darkness.
RoD: That’s the principle of alchemy...
Jérôme: Exactly.
RoD: I also had a huge crush for the song ‘Kosmische Liebhaber’ - ‘Cosmic Lovers’! How did this composition come about and why the use of Goethe’s language?
Séverine: We always try to capture a moment to write and compose. So, in this case, I was on a train to Switzerland and it was a long journey. Since I was in a German environment, I decided to write these lyrics for my lover in German. Like a poem written from a distance.
RoD: The lyrics begin with “Du bist Das Feuer, ich bin der Ozean...” And then?
Séverine: “Wir kommen auf die Erde, um liebe zu verströmen”. The idea is that we are “aliens” who came to earth to enjoy, to experience enjoyment... It’s a poem about the power of love. At that time, because of the health crisis, we really felt like we were part of another world. We saw ourselves as two lovers who come from another planet and who arrive on earth to bring beautiful things.
Jérôme: And it’s this piece that inspired the movie in front of which we now play during our “cine-concerts”.
RoD: Yes, it’s the film ‘One-Way Ticket to the Other Side’...
Jérôme: That’s it. And the common thread of the film’s sequences, which were shot by different directors, is represented by two characters, timeless beings who cross an apocalyptic world.
Séverine: They are a bit like our “alter egos”, who wear masks of an old man and an old woman. We don’t know who they really are. Everything is a bit in an artistic blur.
RoD: Let’s clarify for the readers that each sequence of the film corresponds to a song and that the directors only had a budget of €100 per clip.
Séverine: Yes, well, in theory...
RoD: And this very interesting concept of playing in front of a film, in a cine-concert format, is that one of your discoveries?
Yannick: The idea of the cine-concert is not new. But what is original in this case is the fact that the film is not a pre-existing film from another context. Here, everything was commissioned and supervised by the group. It is a very unique approach but one that suits PE well since they are both in music and in cinema.
Jérôme: We presented this concept last February in Brussels.
RoD: It was an amazing concert! Now let’s talk a little about your background. Séverine, you started with a classical career.
Séverine: Totally classical. My father is a composer, in neoclassical, contemporary music and my mother is a music lover. I started the cello at eight years old and I discovered a lot of works, whether solo or in an orchestra. And then, I stopped. I decided to be an actress. I understood that I didn’t want to continue playing the cello as a professional. I needed another means of expression. So, I took a break from playing the cello until I found it again later as a means of arrangement. And with our group, with Jérôme, I really rediscovered the cello.
RoD: And singing?
Séverine: I’ve always had singing. I had a singing career, with Valkø and before that, with Auryn. It was more in a Pop-Rock style. Both projects received a lot of media coverage in Belgium. But I wanted something more rock, more energetic, more danceable.
RoD: And something more alternative?
Séverine: Yes. With PORNOGRAPHIE EXCLUSIVE, I have all that. And on top of that, I play the cello again.
RoD: So, you can reconcile the past and the present.
Séverine: Yes, and that’s what makes us different.
RoD: The idea of not choosing. We put everything on the table and mix everything.
Séverine: It came little by little. For example, in the first version of ‘Icon’, there was no cello. It was while rehearsing, when the track was already mixed, that we developed the song. First, thanks to a bass riff from Jérôme and then, I had the idea of the cello passage. And we said to ourselves: “but that’s it! That’s the song!”
RoD: It’s true that the composition takes on a completely different dimension from two minutes on.
Séverine: Usually, we avoid reworking the songs, because otherwise, we would never release an album. But in this case, we said to ourselves that we really had to rework it.
RoD: And on stage, this song really tears down the house.
Séverine: It’s epic, let’s say... (laughs)
Yannick: This song set the place on fire! There is a lyrical element, a powerful breath.
Jérôme: Hence the importance of playing the songs “live” before definitively cementing them as a final mix.
RoD: To give them the opportunity to develop?
Jérôme: In the cine-concert, we have a song, ‘From Bridges View’, which is not on the album and which has also evolved a lot. At the beginning, it was an improvisation for an interlude. And one day, while we were shooting for the movie, near Doel, in Belgium, in the middle of the night, a gang arrived, and they started to smash everything around us. After a while, we preferred to leave. But later, looking at the images, we said to ourselves that we had filmed a real moment of cinema, in an unexpected way. So, we rewrote a dialogue and it inspired us to develop other musical ideas. Based on that, we went back on site to shoot other sequences. In the end, we obtained a magical audio-visual moment.
RoD: And these songs, which are not on the album, are you going to release them?
Séverine: Yes! We have four songs, which are already mixed. It will be a bonus EP of ‘One Way Ticket...’
RoD: Cool. Thanks to this film and this concept of cine-concert, you have been selected for festivals, notably in Germany, and in Montreal.
Jérôme: In fact, the film is a creation in partnership with the Oldenburg festival in Germany, which is the festival of Torsten Neumann and his wife Deborah Kara Unger, the actress of ‘Crash’ by Cronenberg, and ‘The Game’, by David Fincher. They gave us carte blanche. So, we worked with directors linked to this festival, some we knew, others we knew less or not at all. The idea was to realize this project together and we completed it in four months. Our album was the basis and they shot their video sequences inspired by our music.
RoD: And how did you make sure that there was a link between everything? Did you provide specifications?
Séverine: No. The link is made by our two characters, the Cosmic Lovers. Jérôme directed all the interludes between the songs. They present two masked characters, who are on a sort of “road trip”. Each piece and each short film offers a different world. It is the interludes that constitute the cement of the film and ensure the coherence of the whole.
Jérôme: It is really an experience to see “live”.
RoD: Now, let’s talk about your background, Jérôme. Your family was also into music, I think.
Jérôme: Yes. My father was an amateur DJ. He spent all his weekends hosting parties. I started music theory at the age of five, but I stopped very quickly because I didn’t like the academic side, the rigid side. At first, I played the piano. But at twelve, I wanted to play the electric guitar, to do Rock’n’Roll, or Punk. What’s funny is that today, Séverine brings me back to classical music a little...
RoD: You fertilized each other...
Jérôme: Yes, we contaminated each other. And for the good!
RoD: In the other direction, Séverine, you probably discovered “dark music” thanks to Jérôme.
Séverine: We already had references in common. Especially the soundtrack of ‘Lost Highway’, by David Lynch. We were touched by the music, more than by the story. That was the beginning of our musical intersection. But I was already familiar with “harder” stuff like Mr Bungle, Fantômas and bands like THE CURE, THE PIXIES...
RoD: And the album ‘Pornography’, by THE CURE, no doubt? It’s not a coincidence, this word “pornography”? There is a connection, I think...
Jérôme: Yes, it’s thanks to THE CURE’s album that we dared to put the word “pornography” in our name. But it wasn’t a tribute to this group, which we like a lot by the way.
RoD: The sound of ‘Pornography’ is just huge. I imagine a sound like that for your music, it would be even more impressive.
Séverine: Yes, we can imagine what it would be like! We, of course, are completely self-produced. This album allowed me to realize a dream, that of producing an album. I love the geek / computer / plug-ins, etc. side.
RoD: It’s amazing. We always imagine that it’s the man who is the geek of the group.
Jérôme: In PE, she’s the “geekette”... (laughs)
RoD: There, the neologism is registered...
Séverine: Yes, in our case, it’s really my thing, you know. It’s my hobby; I can really spend hours playing around...
RoD: So, you didn’t go to a real studio?
Séverine: Yes, for the mixing.
RoD: But you didn’t re-record the tracks in the studio.
Séverine: We just re-recorded the strings for ‘Invitation to a Suicide’.
Jérôme: Everything was entirely recorded in hotel rooms. That’s why it’s Electro-Rock. It would have been impossible to record drums in a hotel room.
Séverine: Everything is done with plug-ins, including the amps, the drums, and obviously the synths.
RoD: At the beginning of ‘Invitation To A Suicide’, which is a cover of John Zorn, there are crazy synth plug-ins! It made me think of TANGERINE DREAM, and POPOL VUH. There are even mellotron sounds.
Yannick: It’s very rare, a band that has a “wave” identity and that, at the same time, is open to a form of psychedelia and to the repetitive rhythms from Krautrock.
Jérôme: You mentioned POPOL VUH, and well precisely, some of their songs were included by Werner Herzog in his films. This kind of music gives a 100% cinematic atmosphere. It’s again a sign of the fact that we refuse labels. We just want to create sensations.
Yannick: It’s like TANGERINE DREAM, which we find in the film ‘Sorcerer’ by Friedkin.
Jérôme: Absolutely. The idea is to refuse limits. And so, in relation to my career, besides music, I also do cinema. And Séverine is an actress. So, we always switch from one art to the other. Cinema inspires our music and music reflects a cinematographic side.
RoD: We should point out for readers that you directed ‘The Belgian Wave’, for which Yannick created the music. A film that caused a stir in recent months.
Jérôme: It was programmed in Brussels and, given its success, it was “extended” countless times.
Séverine: If we hadn’t said “stop”, it would have been programmed indefinitely! (laughs)
Jérôme: And just before, I had made “Spit’n’split”, a film in which I followed the Belgian group THE EXPERIMENTAL TROPIC BLUES BAND on tour.
Yannick: A must-see. I had invited Jérôme to the school where I teach, the ESRA in Brussels, and the students still talk to me about it today. Jérôme’s approach inspired them. We always believe that you need huge resources to make films. In fact, you take an old camcorder and you film in the street, quite simply, and you test your relationship with the world a little. You confront yourself with the cinematographic act and we see very quickly what you have in your belly. We don’t need a ton of equipment, no need for a “steady-cam”. You just have to do like Jérôme: make a film using a broken camera.
Séverine: And a surveillance camera lens...
RoD: By the way, does the band you were following still exist?
Séverine: Yes! They’re going to release a new album. We work a bit like them. We also have this desire for DIY (Do it yourself). Being mobile and above all free!
Jérôme: Doing things with passion, without having someone above you to tell you what to do. As Yannick said: that’s where we see what’s in your gut. That’s why I love first films. When directors are beginners. I find these films more touching and deeper. Afterwards, it becomes more formatted. For example, I play a €60 bass. A Chinese bass.
RoD: And yet, it sounds great!
Jérôme: The sound is mainly in the fingers...
Séverine: And in the intention. As for my cello, it’s different. For a cello to sound, it has to be good. I’ve had mine for over 20 years. You can’t cheat. You need good quality otherwise it sounds like a saucepan... We also have a good sound card. The preamps are good. It’s a small RME interface, but it gives very good results. We finally have a vocal microphone that’s not expensive, but of a fairly high level: an Audio-Technica AT 2035. It’s a microphone that BILLIE EILISH used in her first recordings, so...
Jérôme: It costs around €180, which is very affordable. In a blind test, it’s comparable to a Neumann U87 at over 2000 quid.
Séverine: So, in terms of quality-price, we have good equipment. And then, above all, we have a wide range of possibilities because Jérôme masters guitar, bass, vocals and keyboards, and I play cello, keyboard and sing. It’s a wide range!
RoD: And on the guitar, Jérôme, you have a sound that can be “metal”, a bit “hard”, but often also very clean. In the style of the SHADOWS, or of certain film scores. It almost sounds like a glockenspiel.
Jérôme: It probably comes from my education. My father was in a SHADOWS cover band...
RoD: There, I hit the nail on the head, apparently...
Jérôme: What we liked about the soundtrack of ‘Lost Highway’ was the diversity. Lynch and Trent Reznor proved that it was possible to create soundtracks that included Lou Reed or MARYLIN MANSON, as well as free jazz or Cuban music. And I see a coherence in all that. We love listening to a lot of things. And then, we assimilate all that to develop our own sound.
RoD: In the palette, we talked about the classical side and the cold wave side, but there is also the NINE INCH NAILS side.
Jérôme: Yes, the “industrial” side. Trent Reznor is a great man. I was really happy to see that a guy like that could win the Oscar for the best soundtrack. And that, while remaining honest. He even did soundtracks for Pixar! For example, for the film ‘Soul’.
RoD: Yes! This film is extraordinary. A pure masterpiece.
Yannick: There is also LUSTMORD, who also does soundtracks for Hollywood films.
RoD: I would like to talk now about the cover that you did of the song ‘Invitation To A Suicide’, by John Zorn.
Séverine: It is a song taken from the soundtrack of the film that bears the same name.
RoD: Something struck me, it is the guitar riff. It reminded me of MIKE OLDFIELD’s ‘Tubular Bells’, famous thanks to the ‘Exorcist’ soundtrack. There are literally dozens of movie soundtracks based on...
Séverine: ...on circular melodies...
Yannick: ...with weird time signatures.
Séverine: We racked our brains a bit to do this cover.
Jérôme: We wanted to stay in the frame of a refrain-melody like that, to try to understand it, master it, tame it. So, even when the time signature changes, we kept the beat rolling without changing it...
RoD: Yes, the beat of the drum machine remains the same and there is a shift, a discordance but at the end of the cycle, it all comes back into place.
Jérôme: Indeed. The melody has a mechanical side and we wanted people to be able to continue dancing to it, to follow the beat. That's how we made the song our own. At first, it was just an exercise, but eventually, we said to ourselves that the song could perfectly have its place in the album. And then, Yannick reminded us that we needed permission to release this cover. And Yannick managed to contact John Zorn...
Yannick: In fact, I know Martin Bisi, who runs the BC Studio in New York. A cult studio where famous albums by SONIC YOUTH and HERBIE HANCOCK were recorded, such as the famous ‘Rock It’. One day, I was in this studio, which is located in the Gowanus district of Brooklyn, and I saw reels, lying around on the floor in boxes. I asked what they were and they told me that they were John Zorn’s improvisations. Later, I made the connection and immediately asked Martin for John Zorn’s contact details. Five minutes later, he sent me the producer’s private email address, who responded very quickly to my message, saying: “Your cover is very beautiful, you have my blessing. Send me copies of the album when it’s out...”
Séverine: It was huge to have his blessing.
Yannick: Séverine and Jérôme can be proud to have been “knighted” in this way by the Master. Because he must receive a lot of requests. And it’s all the more remarkable, since they deeply reworked the track, in a more alternative style.
Séverine: If we had just had his agreement, without a positive judgment on the cover, we would have already been happy. But there, we really didn't expect to have such a warm response.
Yannick: It went very quickly and it was very enthusiastic.
Séverine: We were a little scared because we had adopted a very Techno-psychedelic sound, based on a big beat and big synthesizer sounds.
Jérôme: But, towards the end, the cellos come back and bring a certain softness. And let’s not forget that John Zorn is also ‘Funny Games’. He is also linked to Mike Patton, from FAITH NO MORE. He represents a form of musical freedom that suits us well. So, it made sense for us to put the cover on the album. And it also shows that we are not only in Cold Wave...
RoD: The album is very eclectic! There is also ‘Electric Blue’ and the song sung in French...
Séverine: ‘Pire que la Douleur’...
Yannick: That’s why it’s on my Antibody label. It’s not an orthodox label. You have Cold Wave, but it can also be produced by a Lebanese or a Moroccan, with Levantine melodies and a mix of many influences. It’s not a purist label, quite the opposite. So, I have a certain pride in releasing PE’s album. Since we’re friends, we asked ourselves if it was the right label to release it. And in the end, it turns out that it’s the right place, precisely because the project is unclassifiable and has a real singularity. In perfect harmony with their nature as human beings and as artists.
Jérôme: And it’s the same for us, in the other direction. It makes complete sense to release the album on Yannick's label and we're really very proud. It really symbolizes a lot of things for us.
RoD: Especially since you also share a passion for cinema.
Jérôme: You know, we were ready to release it alone, in Indie mode, and then we sent it to Yannick and it fell into oblivion.
Séverine: For a month or two, no news... (laughs)
Yannick: I always do it that way...
Jérôme: Since we are friends, we didn’t dare to contact him again, thinking that maybe he was embarrassed to tell us he didn’t like it. And then my phone rang. He said “But that’s incredible! Don’t you want to release it on Antibody?” We thought that it was a great idea! And now, we have this “team” side and it’s really important today to stick together. So, Yannick, I’m sending you back the pride you feel. We're really delighted to be on an independent label like Antibody. It’s super important for us.
Séverine: It’s a form of resistance.
Yannick: In a world that is so corrupt, you have to put your heart at the centre of everything. The corruption of consciences is such that if you don’t do things by tracing a path with human connections that make sense, it’s not even worth it.
Jérôme: Sense and sensibility...
RoD: There you go. Thank you very much for the interview! It was great and we wish you lots of luck.
Jérôme & Séverine: Thank you very much!
To listen to and buy PE’s album, click HERE.
Trailer of the film ‘One-Way Ticket To The Other Side’:
Photo credit: Olivier Donnet (https://www.facebook.com/olivierdonnetphotography / https://www.instagram.com/olivierdonnet)
