KRAAK FEST 2025 HIGHLIGHTS: Muon S

How did you two start performing together as Muon S?

Anna: At first, Jean and I were sometimes meeting to make music for a few hours. We were compiling modular electronics and DIY electronics. But we wanted to try out something with tap dance as it’s my main practice, but a specific floor was needed. In January 2022, we had a first residency at Komplex Kapharnaüm (next door to Grrrnd Zero in Lyon/Vaulx-en Velin, fr); there we tried technically how to amplify the tap shoes. We had several residencies in France and Italy to develop what kind of dialog sounds the most pertinent between us. We are looking for a common physicality/gesture expressed within the sound, at some point, we like to blur the receptivity of what is seeing/what is hearing. We refuse the illustrative relationship between dance and music.

Muon S really came out at Asilo in Napoli in Spring 2022.

So, how does everything work? Technically speaking!

Anna: The tap shoes are wireless amplified with directive microphones placed below the shoes. The tap sound is amplified as well as dry as through Jean’s instrument, so that he can collect the sound I make to distort it.

Jean: The fact is also that I try to not distort it all the time. I worked a lot with my modular to find sounds that fit the one Anna can produce. My setup is also built around feedback processing and then I sometimes use Anna’s sounds to feed it. Everything is on the go, nothing is sequenced nor recorded before. I like playing with my ears and feelings.

Does the heritage of tap dancing come into play in terms of the movements executed and performed?

Anna: No really. I've been tap dancing since I was 13 years old, but I am an autodidact. Even though I have knowledge of American tap dancing, this is not what I play.

My first relationship with my instrument is listening to the acoustics of the place (specifically when I play not amplified) and the acoustics of the floor (specifically when I play amplified). I play tap by scratching the floor, sliding, looking for inner resonances, tapping small, tapping strong.

Then, the rhythms I have are provided to music I love such as Ethiopian music and Flamenco, some free jazz as well. But I like to break.

And I have developed my own way of tap dancing using bones and weights impulses. What I like with Muon S is that we dialog suddenly, like a rage shot - a shout - we can suspend too within the almost not-noise.

Given the multiple possibilities that your project can open into, are there any special spaces or contexts you dream of performing in?

Anna: It’s one aspect of Muon S: the possibility to play anywhere as long as we can plug. Even in places with no electricity, we succeeded in playing on an amplification system working on a battery. We recorded our first tape in an old convent in Grottaglie. We also played underground, in the guts of the National Library of France. We played in many different places, as we like to explore acoustics, floors and situations. This is an important aspect of Muon S and our personalities too.

We have the project of playing in/under Lyon’s bridges. And we have the project to play in old spinning factories. We want to travel with what we do, playing as well in unknown places. It’s also important to play in “bigger” venues which afford good sound quality. My dream would be to play within concret architectures, such as Tadao Ando’s. We did it once in Le Corbusier’s Cité Radieuse.

You both have a multitude of other projects, anything we should look out for in the future?

Anna: For me, there are 3 projects I like performing today: De haut en bas de bas en haut et latéralement, with Nina Garcia (electric guitar), Romain Simon (drums), Jennifer Caubet sculptures, Christophe Cardoen (lights) and Etienne Foyer (sound); because I like playing with Nina and Romain.

A duet I have with the composer/saxophonist Jean-Luc Guionnet which has no name. RAGE, a project we are working on with Léo Dupleix (harpsichord), Jean Bender (electronic), Clément De Boever (dance), Sonia Saroya (light) and Etienne Foyer (sound). That project will come out next September at Musica (Strasbourg).

And I play solo, tap dance with worawora (bells from Ethiopia) with the capacity to adapt inside and outside doors.

Jean: I’m still playing alone as Jean Bender, with my modular, playing ambientish noise, and I'm working on a new release! I also started an improvised duo with Anatole from RPT (Nancy, fr). We don’t have any rehearsal for that project, we only play when we meet in noise venues, and it’s kind of power noise, where drums and electronics talk to each other pretty roughly.

And I really hope that I’ll soon be able to propose workshops, in order to return to my roots when I was circuit bending almost everything. It would be about building noise boxes (standalone cheap synths).