The God Machine - Sunday Velvet

About

- what is sunday velvet ?
- is this site run by the remaining members of the god machine ?
- frederic, what are your favourite god machine songs ?
- when did you discover the god machine ?
- what about the site ?
- why the name sunday velvet ?

- what is sunday velvet ?

frederic: well, "sunday velvet" is an internet site dedicated to my favourite band: the god machine. but it is also a site that gives me the opportunity to present and share some of my main interests. as you can easily imagine, music has got the greatest part of "sunday velvet". for example, every month, you can find my playlists on the "frederic" page. there are also some links to the bands i like very much on the "links" page.

- is this site run by the remaining members of the god machine ?

frederic: no, it isn't. "sunday velvet" is not officially affiliated with the god machine in any way. it is an independent web site run by me and as you should have guessed by now i'm a huge fan of the god machine. i owe them a lot. they bring so much good things in my life. in a way, i would believe they "save" me. so, this little site is a tribute to jimmy, ron and robin.

- frederic, what are your favourite god machine songs ?

frederic: well, that's a difficult question. i like both albums very very very much. but i especially appreciate "one last laugh in a place of dying..." because it has a very special meaning to me. i think it's the record of my life. the masterpiece. i feel like this record is the most perfect "image" of my life, i mean, the different stories the album tells, the different images the album shows... it isn't easy to explain my feelings. it's like a "nostalgic trip". this record is beauty. this record is purity. i don't really know how to say but... that's my favourite record, definitely... i love all songs the god machine wrote but if i had to pick some absolute favourite they would be, in no particular order, "the life song", "the devil song", "the hunter", "seven", "pictures of a bleeding boy", "out" and "purity".

- when did you discover the god machine ?

frederic: well, if you care, here is the story: i've been in rock'n'roll music for so many years. music is my passion. that's my main hobby. i remember that my first real musical shock was the release of "nevermind" by nirvana in 1992. "smells like teen spirit" and other great nirvana songs gave me the desire to learn and play music. so, i immediately decided to learn the guitar. when kurt cobain passed away in 1994, i was very sad but i couldn't imagine that a few weeks later, jimmy fernandez, the bass player of the god machine (well, i didn't know the band at that time), would die too. years passed and in 1996 i read a review of "fixed water", the first sophia release, in the french magazine "rock sound" (no. 45). it was a very nice article. according to the journalist's words, i thought that i would surely enjoy the music. you know, actually, for different dark reasons, it was the worst period of my life. i really needed some kind of music that could cheer me up. so, when i first listened to "fixed water", i felt i had found a great friend in robin proper-sheppard's character. and, naturally, i heard about his previous band, the god machine. after much much much events (it isn't important to have them all written here), i finally got the second album "one last laugh in a place of dying...". and i totally found myself in the band, the record, the lyrics and the music. now i'm a robin proper-sheppard and god machine fan for life, forever... as you can easily imagined, i never saw the god machine on stage. i regret it a lot. but i already had the great luck to see sophia several times. and i (nervously) talked to robin a few times...

here's the "fixed water" review (rock sound, no. 45, mars 1997):

sophia - fixed water
(flower shop / pias france)

"quand jimmy fernandez, le guitariste du trio anglais god machine est décédé en 1994, le groupe s'est logiquement désintégré. profondément choqué, robin proper-sheppard, guitariste et chanteur du seul groupe à avoir su ressusciter et réactualiser la beauté sombre de la grande époque cold wave sans sombrer dans le ridicule, ne se voyait plus jouer de nouveau. la création de l'excellent label flower shop a été un bon dérivatif, avec la découverte de trésors comme les combos elevate et ligament (malheureusement pratiquement introuvables en france), dont les membres l'entourent ici. robin revient donc et, à la première écoute, on peut être surpris. puis, l'on réalise qu'il ne pouvait revenir que comme ça, avec une guitare sèche et une voix blessée, entourée de quelques autres discrets instruments. ces chansons aux rythmes amortis ont clairement été composées seul, dans une piaule, avec l'effroyable douleur de la perte comme seul compagnon. rarement un disque aura transmis avec autant de douce puissance cette déprime sublimée, dépouillée de tout effet théâtral. "this world is full of dreamers / this world is full of deceivers... love has no meaning", chante-t-il sur la sublime mélodie épurée de "is it any wonder", la voix semi-anesthésiée mais prête à fondre en larmes. dans un registre tout aussi neurasthénique, mais avec slide tranquille et piano, il lâche: "death comes so slow when you're waiting to be taken" dans le délicat "so slow". "i think i lost another friend today / he says he's gotta go but he'd like to stay / is it because we don't see life the same way / maybe i should lie and say everything's okay", insiste-t-il encore dans "another friend". noir, c'est noir. on retrouve sans doute dans les harmonies de robin des traces de son héritage new wave mais la forme, voire l'esprit, le place dans un registre blues au sens plein du terme, celui du cafard mortel qui se doit d'être exorcisé. et robin l'exorcise avec une grâce et une justesse qui donnent envie de pleurer et pansent les plaies à la fois. (badi)"

here are my sophia dates:

24.10.97: dolce vita, lausanne (ch), with hoodoo club

28.11.98: bad bonn, düdingen (ch), with cat power

02.04.99: dolce vita, lausanne (ch), with calc

13.09.00: l'usine, geneva (ch), with pinback

02.03.04: el lokal, zürich (ch)

04.03.04: l'usine, geneva (ch), with a season drive

06.03.04: fri-son, fribourg (ch), with a season drive

03.05.04: la maroquinerie, paris (f), with gamine

04.05.04: le grand mix, tourcoing (f), with beulah and under byen

06.08.04: pully for noise festival (ch), with sole and spiritualized

30.10.04: sommercasino, basel (ch), with the album leaf

- what about the site ?

frederic: the desire to make a site about robin proper-sheppard's releases came quite fast. but, unfortunately, because of my studies, i didn't have time to learn how to make a web site and realize one of my dreams. so, when the excellent sophia's site maintained by wouter berteloot came on the web, i was in the same time "frustrated" and "happy" with it. "frustrated" because i would have liked to do it by myself for a long time... and "happy", just because it was the first good site about sophia, regularly updated. i contacted wouter in order to give him all my god machine and sophia stuff, especially the big tabbing work i did. then, dries neyrinck came on stage, i mean, he sent me an e-mail telling me that he was also doing the same tabbing job and that it could be great to work together. and it worked. dries came to switzerland where i live. we visited. we played the guitar. we talked about music. and i went to belgium where he lives. we visited. we played the guitar. we talked about music. and we both met wouter. "three cities, three men"... finally, a few months ago, one of my colleagues charged me to do a school web site and he taught me a little bit how to create and maintain a web site. in order to improve myself, i decided to create this god machine site and to also take part in this nice adventure. i still have regular contacts with dries and wouter. that's great ! otherwise, there are surely some spelling mistakes or other things on the site to change. usually, i speak french. so, please, don't hesitate to write if you see something wrong...

- why the name sunday velvet ?

frederic: i really wanted to give a special name to my site because i don't like names like "the unofficial god machine homepage" or "the best god machine site on the net". actually, i wanted something to deal with the god machine. at last, after (not so) much deliberations, i decided to name the site with some pieces of god machine's lyrics and a little later i went with "scenes from the second storey"'s first track, "dream machine". at the end of the song, robin screams and enigmatically repeats "sunday velvet"... i'm still asking about the precise meaning of those words... but i always like how the words sound together... so, there you have it.