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Hi guys, welcome to VENTS! How have you been?
Pretty good thanks ! It’s not every day you put out your debut album. So that’s one thing to feel good about I suppose.
You guys have mentioned how Knots & Chains is both very personal and very broad in its themes. When did you realize that “control” had to be the main theme of this first album?
The more I wrote lyrics to the music we had, the clearer it became. I like to think the purpose of what you seek to achieve in any art form reveals itself naturally, rather than being carefully over planned. I didn’t wake up thinking “well, let’s make a record about control”. Sometimes when I wander in a chord progression that I like and look for vocal lines, I often sing absolute nonsense syllables. In those may appear one or two words, sometimes complete sentences that flow naturally with the music. It happened with pretty much all the songs on this album and they all had the theme of control in common. I strongly believe that this process is really just the result of an emotional digestion that I find myself spitting out when I write songs.
Your last EP, That Never Happened, was about grief and healing. How did that emotional base grow into the bigger existential range we hear on Knots & Chains?
This EP was kind of like therapy to me, a very cathartic experience. I found myself comfortable sharing some of my thoughts and explaining how my personal filter processes life experiences, whether good or bad. That’s how we like to approach music in Lone Assembly: something very vulnerable, like walking a tightrope, and undeniably emotional. We’re not exactly known for writing upbeat songs. There’s an almost immediate emotional impact to sad songs that really resonates with us.
The album looks at three types of control: control by other people, control by ourselves, and control by the places we live. Which of those themes did you feel you had to deal with the most while you were writing?
I guess more about the control we apply to ourselves. When you think about it, we’re the beings we spend the most time with. At least that’s true for me. I spend a lot of time in my own head, often trapped in certain patterns, strange habits, or just parts of my personality. And when you’re a perfectionist, making an album can be one of the most challenging things imaginable, especially when so many aspects of it are ultimately out of your control.
The songs “You’re Pulling at the Same Strings” and “The Pain Keeper” deal with different kinds of internal and external forces. Did the person who wrote these songs have real-life experiences, saw things, or both?
Both. The first one deals with the power dynamics and domination exerted over the protagonist, while the other explores a way of coping that revolves around self-protection, never allowing anyone to break through the shell. Both songs are a blend of lived experience and fiction.
“The City Works Like This” makes the city seem like a living thing. How much did the sounds and lyrics around you in Switzerland affect the atmosphere?
I’m not sure it has anything specifically to do with Switzerland. I think the song really started from the perspective of a kid who grew up in the countryside. I remember that, as a child, I saw ‘the city’ as something very imposing, almost intimidating, and synonymous with adult life, suits and ties… basically the end of childhood. Back then I almost imagined it as a living organism that would kidnap you, consume you, and then spit you back out once you were completely drained. Funny enough, I felt the same way in my early adult years the first time I experienced New York: so many things happening at once for my Swiss brain, and all those tall buildings. It was exhausting. The second time was much smoother, though.
You guys said that the album goes from being closed off to being open, especially with the song “In the Open.” Did you plan that order, which is almost like a story arc from darkness to fragile hope?
Absolutely. We’re very attached to the album as a format. We more or less come from a generation where albums told a story, and where the order of the songs really mattered. I think we simply carried that principle over to our first album because we genuinely think of songs as stories, or fragments of stories. Once the songs were finished, the idea was to shape the album almost like a form of breathing: moving from the claustrophobia of mental spirals to wider, more open spaces, like on ‘In the Open’ indeed.
The sound is very reminiscent of the golden age of Factory Records, but the production is very modern. How did you find a balance between respecting that cold, eighties look and being clear about what you were doing?
We weren’t born in the ’80s, so for us it can’t be a place of lived memory, only interpretation. What we hear from that era is already filtered: through records, through stories, through the way our generation has re-digested and mythologized it. Those sounds often carry a sense of nostalgia, of course, it’s just not ours. It’s something we translate rather than relive. And because we approach it from the present, with our own references, tools, and anxieties, it naturally shifts. So it’s less about recreating a past we never experienced, and more about reinterpreting its textures through contemporary ears. That distance keeps it from becoming pure nostalgia. It turns it into dialogue instead of imitation in my opinion.
Do you see Lone Assembly following the same path as other new wave and synth-pop bands, or do you think they are going in a different direction?
We’ll follow whatever path feels the most coherent to us at any given moment. So far, I think we’ve made pretty good choices for our career. As long as we keep trusting our instincts and our gut, I don’t think we can really go too wrong. It might sound a bit cliché, but I genuinely believe it’s true. We’ve also been lucky to surround ourselves with the right people, who help us make the right decisions along the way.
The album uses chiaroscuro, which means that light and shadow are always changing. Did you actively seek out that duality in both the arrangement and the production?
You should ask our sound engineer! He’s also the one who makes sure we sound good live: he’s always with us. To be honest, after us, he’s probably the person who knows best what each song can convey. We had pretty clear ideas about moving from shadow to light, for sure, and he helped bring that to life through the sonic colors of the songs. Some feel colder, others warmer, and those choices were made together with Léo, whom we also gave a bit of room for interpretation (even though we’re hopeless perfectionists).
Knots & Chains is a very confident and big debut album. What does Lone Assembly want people to get from these hymns of pain, loneliness, hope, and bravery now that they are out in the world?
Honestly, whatever they want the songs to be about for them. What I love most about music and lyrics is how they can become whatever the listener needs them to be. I really enjoy it when a melody or a lyric can bring back a memory for me. I especially like it when an artist manages to capture a moment from my life in the most beautiful way, without even knowing it obviously. I’ve always found that fascinating. So if we manage to give that same feeling to anyone who listens to us, that’s already a victory.
