Romance, Classical Music, and Life Lessons: Sacha Gordon & The Weird Orchestra

Sacha Gordon & The Weird Orchestra are exactly what they sound like. Created by two best friends Sacha and Jules, The Weird Orchestra’s music puts Paris into song; their sound going hand in hand with the city’s gothic and extremely detailed architecture. The band’s use of classical instruments as well as their slightly echoed, distant sounding vocals is what gives their music a dark and eerie antiquity to it, almost as if Red House Painters were French. I met Sacha and Jules at Bois de Vincennes, a lake just outside of Paris, on an unexpectedly sunny day to ask them more about their band. We settled on a row boat in the middle of the lake for some quiet, uninterrupted conversation. Here’s what I learned:

Sacha and Jules by Bella Berry

 Known for being a bit of a diva and heavily Bowie inspired in every way, Sacha Gordon is the face of the band. Jules is the brain behind the weird orchestra aspect of things. The band has grown in size over the years, starting out with just the two of them playing alongside a backing track. The band is now complete with Jules playing the accordion and the keyboard, Alice singing alongside Sacha, and Quitterie playing the violin. 

Sacha and Jules joined forces in ESRA, the cinema school where Jules studied filmmaking and Sacha studied sound engineering. In the process of making a short film, the two were connected by a mutual friend to create a soundtrack for the movie, which later became their first EP entitled Goodbye, Baby Blue. The EP established their talent in creating beautifully composed melodies.

The inspiration for that sort of sound comes from Jules’ background in classical music, but what makes their music so different is the mix of Jules’ and Sacha’s influences. Still, the music that the band makes differs greatly from anything that Sacha typically listens to. “I really like garage music and stuff like this. That's what I'm listening to everyday,” he revealed. When asked why he doesn’t make garage music, he explained that “one day my teacher in sound engineering said you should make music that you don’t like. You’ll get more inspired and less frustrated. It's pretty clever. Like, if you try to make music that you don’t listen to and you don’t understand, you learn to develop your art and make more sounds that are original.” Although there isn’t much about their music that screams garage, the genre still has an affect Sacha’s music. “I think I bring a lot of garage influences to the weird orchestra. Like, the way I sing is not the proper way to sing. All of my favorite singers are people that don’t know how to sing. I get inspired. That's the only thing I bring to the weird orchestra, musically. But it gets, how do you say, it gets more comment dit vrai? True. It's true.”

Sacha’s character really drives the band aesthetically and thematically. With his signature look of perfect-fitting suits, gel-heavy curly hair, and gold framed glasses, the way he dresses matches his bold personality. Sacha is a romantic through and through. His romantic affairs heavily inspire his song writing. In fact, it was lust that inspired him to pick up a guitar in the first place, “I started playing guitar because I fell in love with a girl who played guitar,” he admitted. He is also romantic in the literal sense, finding the beauty in everything, especially different emotional states. Sacha explained that

“[Sacha Gordon & The Weird Orchestra is] very cinematic and very theatrical because I love to be dramatic in my emotions. I want everyone to know what I'm feeling because it’s important for me. If I’m feeling sad, I want everyone to know that. And when I'm feeling glad, everybody should be glad too”.

The Weird Orchestra has guided both Jules and Sacha to where they are now musically. Starting the band was their first experience creating and releasing music. When all of their creative output was collectively put into this one project, it created some tension between them at first. 

Jules explained that working with Sacha now is “less frustrating because I work on a personal project too, and I wasn’t when I was playing with Sacha, so I wanted to put everything into Sacha’s work but it didn’t match the energy. Now I’m doing [music] on my own so I’m getting less frustrated. So when I get to Sacha’s studio we can just work on a…”

“Friendship!” Sacha cut in.

“On a structure blends the two ways [we make music]”. 

Sacha’s attitude towards working together has also changed a lot since they started “Now i don’t fucking care which chords Jules is playing. Like, for the first two EPs, I was right behind him like What’s that note you played? I wanna know. and now I’m just like, when he’s playing keyboards or accordion, I’m like smoking cigarettes and just vibing to his contribution”.

Sacha also has his own project outside of the Weird Orchestra. “I met a girl and I tried to make her sing and it went really well, so we made an EP together. It's also all in french,” Sacha said about his now released EP titled Michèle D’Alva, in which he sings alongside his girlfriend, Louise.

Through creating and working on The Weird Orchestra, Sacha learned a lot about communicating with others. “The music didn’t make me learn about music, it made me learn about relationships. It made me grow up. I think from two years ago to now, I didn’t improve myself musically. Maybe I’m more precise in my guitar playing or guitar picking, but I improved myself in other ways. Relationships, how to speak with people, how to deliberate ideas,” Sacha explained. 

Though the two of them write all their music, they're best known for experimenting with different string instruments such as the violin and cello.

“I wanted soon enough in the project to bring other people who can do what we can’t, so that’s why the second EP is more mature. It's because we wanted to have a more complex sound, but not go against the principal vision of Sacha by constructing a song that’s too simple,”

Jules explained. With the new music they’re making now, Sacha and Jules are trying new things. “I think we are still young and we have many opportunities to do like fifteen projects and fifteen records so, who knows? With this record that we are now building, it’s more like 90s music. Lots of drums and more rock,” Sacha revealed. “He's trying to sing in French! That was something we never did,” added Jules. On singing in French, Sacha said “In the way I sing in French now, I can be less dark than in English. I can be more subtle. Not in the actual writing but in the theme that I’m approaching. I'm not singing about death and a girl who died because she got married to me. Now I can sing about people I meet in the street.”

Sacha Gordon and The Weird Orchestra are an extremely creative band that love to explore new sounds with old instruments. Both Jules and Sacha are constantly evolving their musical style as well as their approach to music in general. Their band is a big part of the music scene in Paris and something that everyone can take inspiration from. 

Sacha and Jules by Bella Berry