Kids Return on headline set at Olympia, Daft Punk & cinematic elements

This year, childhood friends Adrien Rozé and Clement Savoye had the opportunity to tour the UK for the first time in their careers, opening for the Paris-based indie band Oracle Sisters in Birmingham, London, Manchester and Liverpool before the duo headed Stateside, where they will open for Polo & Pan at the iconic Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Colorado tomorrow evening. When asked if there was any pressure of performing in a country for the first time, Savoye offered some insight into what the experience was like for the pair.

“I felt a bit of pressure at KOKO (in London), but I think it’s a good way to discover a country when you are opening for our friends. It’s not too much pressure because you are invited; it's not like ‘Oh, you are the star of the show.’ You’ve got nothing to lose. It’s a bonus. So I think it’s a cool way to build an audience in a country,” Savoye stated.

Next month, the duo will play their biggest headlining show to date at the iconic Olympia in Paris – a venue which has played host to legends such as The Rolling Stones, The Beatles, Bob Dylan, David Bowie, Led Zeppelin and Jimi Hendrix, to name a handful – and recently welcomed the likes of Sam Fender and Spiritbox. Headlining the notable Parisian venue is a surefire sign that the pair’s stock continues to rise, and Savoye admitted the pair are relishing the opportunity to headline the famous venue.

“To play at the Olympia, it’s amazing. It’s a big venue. It’s 3,000 capacity. Sometimes I don’t realise we will play there. It’s crazy, but we are really excited, and we want to do the best show on earth, Savoye said.

Through their close friendship with cinematographer Tara-Jay Bangalter, the indie-pop duo have built a friendship with Daft Punk’s Thomas Bangalter – father of Tara-Jay – and the pair admitted that Thomas has been a “great help” for them.

“He is a very good friend of ours. It’s like when you meet the father of a friend, and he had a great band, so we asked a lot of questions to get good advice about music, and he just told us what we were thinking about. He was a great help. We love the music, and we love him because he is really nice. It’s really cool,” the pair added while finishing each other’s sentences.

As well as the duo’s passion for music, the love of cinema is evident. Savoye and Rozé selected the name of the band from Takeshi Kitano’s film ‘Kids Return’ during the coronavirus pandemic, and in 2024, the pair had the opportunity to create the soundtrack for the movie ‘Eternal Playground’ – an experience that Savoye described as “crazy”. However, Rozé admits that it’s unlikely that the pair will incorporate any cinematic elements into their shows for now.

“I don’t know because when you play music and people listen to our music, the aim is that we want people to imagine the scenes and images that they feel, and I’m not sure that in life we want to put the video behind us. I don’t want people to be forced to see what I want to tell with the music during the live shows. I think video clips are doing this job, and during the shows it’s nice to have the live experience to make unique feelings that are different each night, and I don’t know if, for the moment, putting screens behind us could be too much,” Rozé stated.

Earlier this month, the pair released their second studio album, ‘1997’ – the follow-up to their debut record, ‘Forever Melodies’ – and Adrien shared the biggest thing that the pair have learnt since the album was released in 2022.

“Before we did Forever Melodies, we didn’t have any idea of experiencing a tour and live shows. When we were composing the first album, we didn’t think about touring; we were only thinking about making the song without limit. Then when we released the album, we had the chance to go on tour, to make music live, to meet new people and to go to new countries, and I think the live experience was something important for us and influenced the second record,” Rozé explained.

The duo’s longstanding friendship is well-documented. Rozé and Savoye have been friends since they were 13 years old and developed their shared passion for music by listening to the likes of Oasis, The Stone Roses, The Strokes, Blur, MGMT and The Beatles, to name a few. Savoye touched on the duo’s favourite place to create music, and Rozé shared how their friendship makes their shared success sweeter.

“It depends; we love to compose music in Paris and on tour. But I think we have a magic place with Adrien in the south-west of France in the Pyrenees where we have a very old house with nothing around except the mountains, and one time a year we take the car with all of our studio equipment inside the car, and we go there for months making a lot of new songs, new stuff, and trying some new things, and then come back to Paris with a lot of new ideas and a new direction for our band,” Savoye said.

“Yeah, I think that making music when you are with your best friend and someone you know and love, you can go further in the emotions, and you can speak about things that we used to share together for a long time. We met 15 years ago, and we were born in the same year – 1997 – in the same city. I think that the album is full of references we used to share together and experiences as friends, experiences when we were children and then the experiences as young adults we shared together,” Rozé added.