Blind Delon’s raw hypnosis: A conversation with Mathis Kolkoz

After conquering the A38 Ship stage in the icy winter of 2023, French post-wave project Blind Delon returns to Budapest on October 22, 2025, this time bringing the explosive force of their new album BLAST. Initiated by Mathis Kolkoz, Blind Delon has carved a sound both brutal and fragile — a fusion of post-punk, coldwave, rave energy, cinematic darkness and many more. Ahead of their much-anticipated show, Kolkoz reflects on inspirations ranging from obscure European cinema to hardcore’s uncompromising truth, and on why A38 remains a place of wonder.

First thing first. How did you come up with the name Blind Delon?

I grew up surrounded by cinema, especially the films of the 60s and 70s and more than anything, their soundtracks. Francis Lai, Georges Delerue… those melodies shaped my childhood. The name Blind Delon is both a wink and a way of twisting that heritage into something darker, more personal.

Your music balances between melancholy and euphoria. When you think back to the very first moments you felt compelled to make music, what image or feeling comes to mind?

I think of my father. He was a sound engineer and a musician, and I used to watch him spend hours experimenting with sounds, like a scientist in a lab. It reminds me of Antoine Delafoy in Les Tontons Flingueurs with his « noise room ». I never felt obliged to make music myself, I just found it beautiful, curious, and natural to explore.

On stage, your sound often feels like a physical force — raw, hypnotic, sometimes even violent. Do you see performing as a kind of transformation of yourselves, or more as a channeling of something already inside you?

Honestly, I’ve never really asked myself that question. It feels natural. Music is noise-drived like a Shepard tone to me : endless, always rising, always more intense. When I play or even just listen, it engulfs me. That’s how we build our concerts too, layer by layer, energy upon energy, until it becomes overwhelming. Half of it is conscious, half of it just happens.

Your sound references post-punk, coldwave, and rave, but what influences outside of music — books, films, places, or even personal experiences — have left the deepest mark on Blind Delon’s artistic identity?

The truth is we reference everything we like. The styles you mention are only part of the picture but you could also have talked about Japanoise, the UK crust scene, kraut-wave-rock from The Notwist, Crowbar’s guttural yet melancholic heavy riffs… We find inspiration everywhere, because there’s something valuable in everything. Cinema is one of our biggest influences like the forgotten corners of European films, Andrzej Żuławski, Liliana Cavani, Alain Jessua… all that universe of strange, raw, unsettling images feeds us just as much as sound. Beyond that, whether it is in literature, life, social interactions, human encounters, pictures, movies, everything we have watched, listened or faced is a source of inspiration and has marked this project in one way or another.

Having shifted lineups over the years, you now perform as a duo. How has this influenced the way you create and share music?

On stage we’re a duo, but Blind Delon has always been a solo project. Different friends have joined me along the way — sometimes two, sometimes three — but the music has always mainly been mine. And I hate working alone. I need to share it with the people I care about, make music with those I love, and keep believing that this is the only way to truly say what I want to say. They’re part of this project, you’ll always see them with me on stage or in the studio because they’re part of me, and their sensitivity, their ideas, give Blind Delon a multi-faced identity.

That said,  people often think of us as a band more than a project led by one person, and I like that. Despite our poor efforts in communication, everyone thinks so. It probably means we did our move, we built a chimera and created something alive.

If you could share the stage or collaborate with any artist — from any time, alive or gone — who would it be, and what do you imagine that encounter would sound or feel like?

Last week I would have given a different answer, and next week I’ll probably give another one again. Maybe I’ll end up like all music lovers eventually do when retirement comes : narrowing it all down to no more than eight or ten records. Warren Ellis and John Parish will surely be there at that point.

For now, though, I’d go straight to the American hardcore and alternative scene. Working with someone like Kurt Ballou would be a dream, or having had the chance to growl alongside Caleb Scofield from Zozobra (RIP). Man, that whole universe (Old Man Gloom, Sumac, Converge) their music is wild and uncompromising. Pure noise, pure truth, no concessions. I admire that brutality, that sharpness. Collaborating with them would be like diving headfirst into fire.

Touring can blur into a rhythm of travel and stages, yet some moments can stay with you forever. Can you recall a concert, a fan interaction, or a night on tour that truly changed how you see yourselves as artists, or simply became a “core memory”?

When this project began and we finally started playing live (more than two years after releasing our first EP Edouard) we were younger and full of self-doubt. Nothing ever felt good enough. But with every concert, touring moment, issues to deal with, we grew a little more confident, and step by step, the stage became a place where we felt alive. Over time we understood something simple : the most beautiful nights aren’t always the ones that go perfectly. In fact, there’s never been a single night to remember above all others. Very often, it’s the nights that go wrong that matter the most, because they teach us how to never let it happen again.

For us, every show is about taking people into our world, whether it’s a basement or a big stage. If we can’t do that, then we’ve failed. The concerts where we fall short are just as important as the ones where we succeed, because they push us to grow and to do better the next time.

Darkness — sonically, visually, emotionally — runs through your music. Do you see it as a reflection of inner struggles, or more as a creative lens that lets you process the world differently?

I don’t know if I’m that dark. Cioran used to think we are creatures capable of the worst and only the worst, that we’re full of sadness and contradictions. That is darkness. And unlike him, I don’t want to die. I just want to be fully aware that I am an animal often more bad than good and obviously that inspires what I tell in my songs or the way I harmonize my music, but I don’t see it as a fight against who I believe I am. I rather think that starting from the idea that we are fallible unlocks a way of having no barriers in creation and feeling free to do everything you feel is right.

Your new album BLAST has been described as an explosion of post-wave energy, a step further into rawness and intensity. In your own words, what does BLAST represent for you, both as musicians and as people?

When I was composing this album, my daughter was two years old. We were searching for illustrators who had made books for and with their children, and that’s how I came back to Manu Larcenet. I rediscovered Microcosme (2014), where he let his kids take part in the drawings, and even earlier works like the Donjon Parade series (2000). That playful, fragile way of mixing children’s imagination with his own dark universe struck me deeply.

And in the middle of his bibliography, I found myself again facing Blast. I had first read it at 18, and it was a shock — so violent, so intense, yet so full of beauty. In it, the main character reaches this state of inner explosion, the “blast”, where he suddenly perceives the world in total clarity, with poetry and flow. The book is in black and white, except for those colored moments drawn with his children.

That vision stayed with me. I wanted my album to feel the same way : each track like a humble tiny blast, a short-lived explosion that opens onto something fragile but beautiful. And beautiful precisely because it can’t last.

You played here in December 2023 and now return in October 2025. What is it about A38 and the Budapest crowd that makes you want to come back? Do you notice something unique about the atmosphere here compared to other cities?

The first time we came, it was around Christmas. The city was covered with snow, it was cold, the wind was blowing, there was silence, and it was beautiful. When we arrived at the boat to prepare the show, people were still quiet, nothing like the noise we’re used to in France. Then, when the concert started, the silence exploded into heat and energy. It was incredible. This time we come in October and there won’t be snow, but I hope to feel that same sense of wonder !

With BLAST now out in the world and a new chapter unfolding, what is the long-term dream or vision you’re still chasing as Blind Delon?

To keep learning about ourselves. To keep listening, being inspired by others, collaborating with friends and strangers alike. To keep producing, recording, mixing, trying new instruments, finding new energies. The dream is simply to keep moving forward, to make music even more different from that of today — who knows where it will take us.