RFI Musique: You’ve said that your X Festival was inspired by Lollapalooza in the U.S. What motivated you to set up your own festival in the first place?
Nicola Sirkis: Well, I’d had the idea knocking around my head for at least two or three years. The thing is, when you read the rock press, especially specialist music mags in France, you get the impression rock fans are completely intolerant of other music, that they’re just stuck in their own rock rut. The media make out that heavy metal fans hate Goth stuff and people who are into French 'variété' can’t stand pop. What we’re trying to do with this festival is prove just the opposite, to introduce music fans to different sounds and get them to appreciate other music. I know our fans are really tolerant and totally receptive to other sounds. The thing that kicked it all off for me, in fact, was this concert in Strasbourg last year with Tarmac, Dionysos and Mass Hysteria. That mix of groups went down really, really well with the audience.

What about the name "X Festival"? Where did that come from?
I see it as a sort of challenge. I’d originally wanted to call it the "Gang Bang Festival" 'cos we were going to have all these different bands playing. But I thought "X" would be a nice tribute to Generation X, you know, that whole movement that started with Nirvana. Besides, I like the letter X, it’s got other sorts of subversive connotations too... I like the idea that you don’t really know what X stands for either. It’s like the festival’s some sort of UFO or something!

Why did you decide to limit the number of dates on the tour? You could have made it a lot longer...
Yes, that’s true. We could have done the rounds of all the major festivals this year and done what the Brits call a "fill the coffers" tour. But frankly that sort of thing doesn’t interest me at all. It’s funny, the moment we’d sold out at Bercy (stadium) in Paris we were literally inundated with invitations to play at all the big festivals. The people who said our album was crap last year suddenly seemed to think it was pretty good after all! That’s one of the things that motivated me to set up the X Festival too, you know... I wanted to invest in something sincere and present genuine indie bands around a central rock core.

Isn’t it a bit crazy taking such a big risk?
Well, yes and no. If the festival turns out to be an absolute financial disaster - and let me just say there are no signs of that at the moment - then it’s only a financial disaster, nothing more. I wouldn’t see it as a catastrophe on any other level. And if the festival’s not a catastrophe, if it works we’ll have to face another set of pressures. But that’s fine. Routine can be a dangerous thing in this business. It’s good to branch out and try something different every now and then.

But you are heading outside the commercial mainstream with this, aren’t you?
Yes, and that’s where we’re taking a risk really. There were some people who were really pissed off when they heard we were setting up our own festival. They immediately felt threatened, as if we were going into direct competition with them or something. But the thing is, we’re not competing with anyone! We had a few problems with agents trying to nick artists from our line-up and organisers of the more mainstream festivals put the heavy on musicians too. They were like, "If you play at the X Festival, you won’t be working with us this year!" So it got pretty difficult organising the X at times. But then that’s business. And I’m not interested in that side of things at all - I wanted to do something that was the complete antithesis of business!

So do you think the current crop of festivals have become too business-oriented then?
A lot of festivals have gone absolutely mega these days. They’re just enormous - and when you reach that size you’re talking about assuring quality sound for audiences of 50,000 or more! Those kinds of festivals are run like big machines. It’s got to the point now where they’re practically inhuman. You know, you’ve got groups waiting backstage in their pre-fab dressing rooms while their agents are up front collecting their fee before they’ve even gone on!
Believe me, you’ve got to have nerves of steel to organise a festival these days. And I think the problem is we’re moving towards a world where festivals are organised around economic criteria, not artistic criteria now. OK, that’s normal in a way and I’m not making a dig at anyone! I know how much you have to invest to get something like that off the ground, paying for the site and hiring between 300 and 500 people to get things up and running. You do reach a point where you have to act like a multi-national!

How did you go about choosing the artists in the "X Festival" line-up?
Well, I’m the one responsible for the line-up so I only chose groups I like. They tend to be groups who have a certain sensibility, groups who’ve had problems with the mainstream industry or who are fighting to do something different. Take Aqme, for instance, that’s not really the kind of music I listen to at home, but I loved what they did on their new album.

Is the "X Festival" intended to last X number of years?
I feel like this is the start of an adventure, but it’s an adventure with an end in sight. I don’t want the "X Festival" to go on for ever, you know! I reckon we’re looking at five years, no more, no less. But we’ll see how things turn out, maybe we’ll only organise it every two years or something. Right now this is an experiment and we’ll have to wait and see whether we do it again or not.

Do you have any plans for a new Indochine album?
We’ll be starting work on the music and lyrics for a new album very soon. But this time round we want to work abroad. We want to take a few risks with things and have the whole group head off together to work on the songwriting. The idea is we’d go and live abroad for six months and live in two capital cities that are radically different from one another. If things go according to plan that should be Tokyo and Prague. Maybe it’ll be a complete disaster. But, who knows, it could lead to some pretty good stuff too!