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Formed while still at school together in the 2010s, the now Lyon-based Jean-Noël Scherrer (vocals/guitar), Julien Peultier (guitar), Timothée Gérard (bass) and Antoine Baschung (drums) released their serrated debut in 2017 and its string-laden follow-up in 2019, which not only forged a committed and passionate fanbase around their music but also saw them earn the approval of the likes of Muse, Placebo and the iconic Johnny Hallyday, who all invited Last Train to join them on tour. Having released records via their own label to get things going when they first started, this set-up has evolved into them also making videos and artwork and even running their own touring company – activities they now collaborate on across the music industry and also provide for other artists too – Last Train found themselves free to try something a bit different.
Released in early 2024 and styled as a “soundtrack to a movie that doesn’t exist”, the record Original Motion Picture Soundtrack was a collaboration driven by Scherrer between the band, composer Fabian Cali and The Mulhouse Symphony Orchestra, that reinterpreted and refashioned Last Train’s earlier songs into new expansive pieces, ones that embraced space and ambience in opposition to Last Train’s usual impact. “The collaboration came about because over the last ten years we’ve always said we’re open to any kind of music, we’re music lovers,” explains Scherrer. “Obviously rock music is what we do, but we listen to a lot of ambient music, soundtracks, electronic music and pop. We would always say this, but it wasn’t so explicit, so we decided to introduce our own melodies to another musical point of view. It was an interesting exercise, showing that a melody wasn’t fixed in just one explicit way.”
The directness of III ( trois or three) is more than a hint of the key, primal force behind the album’s creation: raw anger. Yet this fury is not the usual release of life pressures – although they no doubt played a part – but instead is the result of a unique creative energy the Alsace natives needed to vent from their systems. Yet this cathartic outpouring has not been allowed to surge unmitigated into their music as III is the result of a meticulous and crafted creative journey that saw them make the album in a crumbling, unheated chateau in the midst of winter.