Kids Return uncovers a timeless melody and follows the contemporary journey of musicians and producers Adrien Rozé and Clément Savoye. The band is a homage to their childhood, growing up in France and their lifelong friendship—producing soulful ambiance, and attaching the value of memories and nostalgic remembrance within their creative sound design.


Photo credit: Elsa & Johanna

The pair met in grade school and have stayed close ever since. The friends share the same interest in music and the emotional storytelling in cinema. Inspired by Takeshi Kitano’s filmography, and soundtracks by Joe Hisaishi, Rozé and Savoye immediately named their group after watching Kitanos, “Kids Return.” The film “Kids Return” follows the story of two childhood friends finding separate paths in life and eventually finding their way back together and their everlasting friendship. Driven by the film's emotional message, together they wrote and produced their recently released, debut album “Forever Melodies”. The album was recorded in various locations within the French countryside and written amongst its picturesque mountain scenery. The 10-track album is a dreamy and positive message between euphoria and nostalgic reminders. The album plays like the soundtrack to a summer day or a beautiful core memory of a sunset.


Photo credit: Elsa & Johanna

Kids Return will be performing their recently released debut album “Forever Melodies,” in Fort Collins on October 22nd, and will be opening for Polo & Pan at Red Rocks on October 24th. Their three-day tour in the US is only the beginning, the band will be returning for a full tour in February visiting major cities in the US from LA, Denver, New York, and performances in Canada. Adrien Rozé and Clément Savoye paint the picture for “Forever Melodies” with nostalgic memories of childhood, first loves and friendship. The poetic pair describes their upcoming tour and elaborate on the creative inspiration behind the melodies.


Photo credit: Elsa & Johanna

When is the best time of day to listen to “Forever Melodies”?

I think it's the time of the golden hour when the sun is going down. Seven o'clock. During spring, in the mountains. The place where we composed the album is in the mountains. We went there during spring, and we had a big view from the mountains with the sun going down. I think this is the best moment to listen, because it's the moment we composed the album.

What is a mantra that you follow throughout the creative process?

I think it’s being sincere with our emotions, trusting ourselves and listening to each other. Whenever Adrien has a good idea or I do, just listening to each other and the trust between us. The trust I have for him, and he has for me is the most important thing and being sincere—and to like the music, if you don’t like the music you do, it’s not good music.

Can you describe Takeshi Kitanos,“Kids Return” for audiences who may not be familiar with the film?

It's about a friendship story. One character, he's making the choice to being a Yakuza, Japanese mafia. And the other, takes a different way and, and wants to become a boxing champion. And it's talking about when in life, in a friendship, you take two different ways, how you can come together at the end. They meet each other again and they are different, but the friendship is the same. The main difference is that Clément and I always wanted to do the same thing together, and I'm not a boxer. Before Kids Return, we both had other bands, Clément was making music and I was making music in another band, but we both wanted to be musicians for life. Now we are making this adventure together so that is the main difference, but the common point is that we are friends since high school, since we were 13 years old, so it's also a childhood relationship. And we like bicycles, like in the movie.


Photo credit: Elsa & Johanna

 Let’s talk about the album, “Forever Melodies”. What were your original ideas for the album and what was the production process like?

The name of the album is about two things. It was the idea that forever, we will create melodies because it's the only thing that can stay even after death. And the other thing is that melody is an eternal thing, a melody will never die. So, it's these two things. That's why we call them Forever Melodies. The process of creating (Forever Melodies) was in five different places. One in the mountains. at my parent’s place in the Pyrenees—the very last village. In Bourgogne, near Paris, in the French countryside in a wood cabin. We created part of the album, especially the voices in Studio Pigalle, in Paris. There is another studio in the countryside, The Red Studio where we recorded the drum and the bass and the strings at the studio. The last one is Motorbass, one of the best studios in France. There's five places and we composed 10 songs. We made 10 songs, and we kept all the songs. You know, sometimes musicians create, for example, 25 songs, and after they listen, they say, okay, we're going to keep this one or we're going to throw this one. The first 10 songs were the good ones, so we composed 10 songs, and we kept all the songs in the album. We produced with analog synthesizers and organic instruments, with real guitar, bass, and drums. We asked some friends and very good musicians to come and record with us.

Are your lyrics written as abstract concepts or personal storytelling?

They're all based on experience; our own experience, they are not abstract, they are reality. We talked about things like problems in love, problems in friendship, problems in family. but also, something sweet and not something that is too heavy, that is not too strong and not too hard. Life is beautiful. We wanted our album to be something good for escape. If you're in trouble with your boyfriend or girlfriend or something like this, you just listen, and just put on the album and listen and think okay—I'm not alone, it's life and let's go. It is very positive and dreamy.

Anticipating your upcoming tours, what are you most excited about?

We're coming to Los Angeles and to Denver. We’ll play Fort Collins two days before the gig at Red Rocks. We’re very excited. We’re going to LA and then we’ll take a car with some friends, and drive across the desert to Colorado. It’s a dream for us to do that. Then we are coming back for 12 shows in February. We have a tour from New York, to Canada, and then we go to LA again, San Francisco, Seattle. For the moment, in October, we have only three shows—we're very excited because when you make music in France, and come to the USA, all the things make sense. Because most of our inspirations are coming from there.

What do you hope audience members will talk away from your performance if they are seeing or hearing you for the first time?

We want people to feel the emotions, we want people to feel the relationship we have between us and the energy in the middle. And experience the production of our synths. We want people to feel nostalgia and to have fun. The best thing is when people discover your music during a gig, and they come back home and they're like, oh, want to listen to them again.

Listen to “Forever Memories” and more by Kids Return here, kidsreturnmusic.bandcamp.com

 
Photo credit: Elsa & Johanna