« TRAP & REWARD » by Amélie, Billy & Pauline

"You are a trap and a reward deep down."

Two years after writing this song, we still don't agree on the meaning of this sentence: a call for distrust towards all the small "pleasures" that kill us, the denunciation of a promising relationship that has become toxic, a kind of anti-mantra to "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger", or an ode to risk-taking in a society that pushes us to vegetate without knowing if in the end there will be success, disappointment, humiliation or nothingness (for the few people who will read this, do not hesitate to give us your own interpretation) ? It was not planned, but ironically we are releasing this song in a time when the trap/reward, lie/promise, love/betrayal, violence/cynicism, minority/majority, intelligence/intuition link is particularly present, in the news of the world as in our own lives.

For Staircase Paradox, the “trap and reward” arrived following a big discussion that occurred at the beginning of the year. We had on our hands for more than two years an album we never released, no more drummer, and a new musical identity born from hundreds of songs composed during the moments of isolation of these last years. We have often shown great pragmatism since the beginning of the band (for financial and logistical reasons) but yet it always seemed psychologically difficult for us to get out of this "highway to happiness" which governs the life of most indie rock bands : write lots of songs --> suffer while recording them --> spend months of hassle on mixing and administrative stuff --> release them in a general indifference right at the time of the band life's lowest phase. This method has two very big “advantages”:

1) it kills 90% of bands (in any case, those who managed to release their record)

2) it allows you to put under the rug all the new things that have happened since the beginning of the creation process : did you write your greatest hit after the recording phrase? Do you have a new guitarist who plays 10 times better than the old one who left you just before the release of the album? Did you take 4 years to release the record and no longer play live any of the songs that are about to be released ? Too bad.

To get out of this pattern, our problem was simple: how could we release new songs quickly enough when we still hadn't released the previous EP ? How could we avoid wasting time releasing everything on an album when at the same time we were probably going to write others?

Like a revelation, we had the idea to release a song every 13th day of the month by intercalating old and new compositions, live songs, remixes, alternative versions. Quickly we set a schedule over several years.

The only advantage we found in the first lockdown was that it served as a catalyst for all our fantasies. No more drummers, no more illusions about the future, maybe even less of an audience than before, but we were suddenly driven by a kind of energy of desperation, phlegm, nihilism and excitement that - without realizing it - drove us to write non-stop.

This same "energy" now pushes us to release one song per month, working day by day without a safety net, with at the end the stress of not being able to record and mix it, or seeing our computer crash at the wrong time, but with the reward of getting to spend our free time doing just that and making our discography grow a little more each month.

After "19/91" (released in February but in our boxes for 3 years) we really opened hostilities with "Nevereverland" where everything was done in a few months. For this new April song, we started recording it at the beginning of the year, mixed it in a few days less than two weeks ago, the text you are reading was written this Monday, and the video will surely be finished the day before the deadline.

On May 13, we will release an “old” song from our unreleased EP, then on June 13, a song written in early January that is such a love at first sight that we couldn't bring ourselves to release it after all the others…

"Trap & Reward" was written in April 2020. An almost prehistoric time in this "new world". It had already been a few weeks since an apparent calm had invaded a large part of the planet, without anyone knowing whether it was a time of « quiet zen » or the start of a long and slow depression.

Unable to be the three of us together, we spent our days fantasizing about our new songs, our new sound, and what the result would be on stage. To our great astonishment, our first ideas foreshadowed dancing, joyful and hedonistic songs. Almost the exact opposite of what we had been used to doing for 10 years.

The song having been pronounced "nice but not great" by Billy, it was shelved for more than a year before coming back the following summer and taking its place in our hearts. In the meantime, many things had changed in our daily lives, but the song had infused us, taking on a little more place and getting more interesting each time we worked on it.

As with all of the band's new songs over the past two years, the identity of the lead vocals was decided naturally in less than a few seconds. This is the first song in the history of the group that Amélie sings in lead, and fate wanted her to start with the one that we consider almost the best of our songs. Nina Hagen, Madonna, Debbie Harry, Alison Mosshart, Emily Haines & Wejdene have since today a new serious competitor on the market...

We can't wait for you to listen to the next fifty songs.



Fun facts :

- Most of the synth glitches were born out of an heavy-drinking evening where we played the song on a loop fifteen times in a row. Ou fingers were starting to slip on the keys and the buttons, hence the mythical "Tuuuuuuh WaaWaaWaaahuuu" from the bass synth at the beginning of the chorus (as well as many other great details that you will notice on the fifteenth listen!)

- As Billy happily prepared to record his first guitar-less track of all time, a riff was recorded at the very last moment on the chorus which sounded furiously like "I Gotta Feeling" by the Black Eyed Peas

- The cover photo for the single was taken by the fantastic Julie Falzon a few years ago, but it wasn't until a few weeks ago that we linked the concept of the photo to the title of the song.

- The idea for the video was born from Amélie: type each word of the text of the song in an animated GIF search bar, and see what comes out randomly (with a little sorting).

- Big fan of Trap music, our producer Iséo Furudoï (who will end up mixing the piece) was very enthusiastic when we sent him a song entitled "Trap & Reward", thinking that we were making a small passage in his favorite style. Once the disappointment passed, his first comment was "it sounds like an Iggy Pop song in an electro version"

- A large number of our musical heroes being (unfortunately) heroin addicts, the theme of premature death because of that addiction is recurrent in our songs. It was hard to imagine that talking about "the needle" would take on a relatively different meaning in 2021. Talking to a musician friend who had removed a verse written in 2019 talking about a pandemic, convinced us to keep the offending sentence.

- Only one passage without definite lyrics remained on the demo without anyone knowing what to replace it with. Amélie, who speaks fluent English, Italian and Chinese, then had the idea of putting a string of words… in Spanish. Idea was instantly mocked, refused, then validated the following days with acclamations.

- One of us who has buttocks that could have ensured him a great career in certain fields of activity, particularly related to music (but not only) was invited by the other two to record the slapping of his buttocks as a "percussion " on the microphone. Of course, their identity will remain "top secret".

- The song was almost stupidly abandoned because of the beginning of the second verse. For the first time in 10 years, the three of us had a very different idea of how to bring it about, and instead of drawing lots (or killing each other) we thought it would be better if we invented a fourth version that suited us completely. An evening of fatigue (and needless angst) and a big pinch of luck finally fixed the problem.

- One of our children hears “bouche-fesses !!" (a term that could be roughly translated as « mouth butts ») instead of "Bullsh#t!" », so 9 times out of 10, we say “bouche-fesses !!" both in rehearsal and in concert (Billy is 2 times out of 2 live, please do not encourage him…)

- Pauline's gimmick on the chorus is a tribute to the Wombats

- Billy was bitten until he was bleeding to get a sample of his dog Fiona growling...

- Before even its official release, YouTube decided to limit the viewing of the video by rating it 18+ (without any explanation) and threatens to close our channel (without any explanation)

- the "reverse" effect on the voice sample "Amistad!" at the beginning of the song creates a kind of auditory hallucination (at least for us) where we clearly hear "Activé / Activated" (even if Billy persists in saying that he also hears "Goes away" or "Motivé / Motivated", depending on the level of his tiredness)

- The "voice" at the very end of the song is a violent declaration of love (yelled from the other end of the room) from Amélie to Pauline when she had barely finished singing. It took us days to figure out where that weird voice was coming from. Our legendary wittiness made us keep it, increase it, add an effect on it and a dog growl to hide the swear word.