Between 1996 and 2000, Maelifell changed its sound and styles several times; in other words, the project evolved.  One can hear, from the extremely primitive tracks marked by a great technical poverty to the very constructed compositions (on Eternity or Rois d'Ici-bas) using synthesizers as well as samples or acoustic instruments, what can seem a logical progression of the band, from a total amateurism to a certain level of competence, and from an ultra-naïve style to something more "adult".

Since 2017, when we started working together again, this logic no longer makes any sense. So much so that it would be relevant, in the absolute sense, to secretly record albums until we die, and then have someone put them online, all at once, without any indication of when. Because we are indeed out of time; out of any idea of progression vs. regression, or evolution vs. stagnation.

We record without the slightest premeditation what comes into our heads, what comes out of itself, under the effect of inspiration, chance, the specificities of the material used that day... It can sound like any of our old periods, or like something absolutely new to us.

Still owning all the material used from Demo 96 to Rois d'Ici-bas via La Peste, and having extended our studio to include analogue synthesizers, 16 and 8 bit samplers, various folk instruments, we are able to revisit all the styles we have practised, extending our music to other ambiances, other genres. "What exactly will be the style of the next Maelifell release" is a meaningless question because we have reached our own kind of eternity.

The indifference, if not hostility, with which I am treated in the artistic world in general – music and interactive fiction essentially – is probably a blessing, a chance offered to me, on the one hand, to develop, by force of circumstance, in a totally autistic way, my own universe, without the help, certainly, but also without the influence of a warm "environment" to surround me, but also, on the other hand, to escape the pride and the delirious pretentiousness of the artists who obtain at least a minimum of recognition.

I AM deliriously proud and pretentious, but fortunately my pretentiousness has ceased to be indexed to any idea of my artistic qualities or of the interest that my work should legitimately arouse in the public. Even if I were to do nothing more than draw with felt pens on sheets of paper, write three-line stories full of mistakes, and record two-note songs repeated in a loop, I would still be more and more proud and pretentious, because it is my identity, my being, that becomes my work over the years; art is only a poor means, a path like any other.

I often reflect on my relationship to music, instruments, etc. Just as I reflect on my relationship to photography – in both cases it is the relationship (and the most intimate one) to technique.

My inner life is more determined by technique (recorded music, movies, video games, internet dialogues and readings, photography, pornography, etc) than by anything else more alive, more direct. My experience of life is essentially mediated.

I realised something fundamental that I had never understood or at least never made clear to myself: I never play music for myself, for pleasure, just to frolic with my favourite instruments and sounds; everything I do is utilitarian, I only turn on my instruments to compose and record afterwards, and when I do so, it is with a very specific record project, with a content already determined in my head. And my way of playing, my way of writing a song is very cold, "professional", conscious, etc. I don't leave any space for the music to be played. I leave almost no room for chance, for accident, for madness. I don't do that anymore, if I ever did, anyway.

Xavier, on the contrary, and it's by observing him that I realise how I operate, does exactly the opposite: he only plays for himself, for pleasure, without recording himself, unless I literally beg him to do so, and he never asks himself what he's going to do with his compositions.

When we finish an album, he's not particularly interested in the cover, the title, the name of the project, the "concept" that encompasses it all. He quickly forgets what we're writing and when I give him a cassette or USB key containing our finished work after X months, he rediscovers our music entirely and I almost have to persuade him that it's really about us, not just me.

I am obsessed by the notion of the album, by the album as an intellectual object and a fundamentally multimedia work, where the music does not and cannot go without a visual and literary accompaniment, without the storytelling that surrounds the conditions of its production, etc.