Michèle Lamy: The story started when I was asked by the Red Bull studio to do an album. Out of the blue. I didn’t know there was a Red Bull studio in Paris, but they found me. I had no clue. Anyway, I was thinking of doing something with my new rappers and poets and they were giving me all these producers.

This guy here [points to Nico] was doing this big installation performance at Palais de Tokyo and he asked me through a friend, our good friend Jefferson Hack, if I could participate in his performance. Which I did of course, and like a sign, he told me three weeks before, “I’m going to send you the text.” When I arrived for the performance he had not written it but it went well. He was writing music and he had a band, Ninos Du Brasil, that he made me listen to. Because how could I imagine that big guy could be a Nino of Brazil?
Scarlett Rouge: [laughs]

ML: So you know, I was not looking for that, and then I said immediately on the spot, “Do you want to do this record with me and cancel everything that was in the plan?” And at Red Bull, Guillaume Sorge [music and art advisor for Red Bull France] said, “Do you still love Langston Hughes?” And I said, “Yes!” And here we went to record an album. That’s the story. This little Scarlett of mine, who was on stage singing when she was five, with music written by Devo’s Mark Mothersbaugh, or was it four?
SR: Four to eight.

ML: She has a voice that is the opposite of mine and was very interested, so I asked her and she said yes. And Nico has a producer, Rocco [Rampino], that is always with him and so we didn’t need another producer that they were proposing to us from Red Bull. We recorded [the first album] in five days and learnt some texts from Langston Hughes. In the middle of it, Nico and Scarlett said, “We have a band.” And then which one of you two found the name?
SR: You did.

ML: LAVASCAR. So these guys forced me into a band.
Nico Vascellari: Me?!
SR: Yeah, that guy.

ML: So that’s the way it happened and we’re very happy with what we did. When it started I was thinking of Langston Hughes but being together there is a big participation of them [Nico and Scarlett] also. The music side with Nico, that was, especially for this [album], a very cooperative thing with Scarlett. It was choosing words for the stories, because for me, even if we don’t use all of the poems, I like to have that mood. I feel it as I say it. But then it’s like composing music, those two were picking up on some words that could, I don’t know, what would you call that? Nico?
NV: Well, in a very classic way we were cutting and pasting from the poetry that you brought. Trying to create something new out of pre-existing words that somehow didn’t change the content of the poetry too much but made it a little bit more our own.

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