“They use notes out of sequence – they’re more experimental than bands like Dream Theater, who are very respectful of tonalities”: Novelists’ Florestan Durand is passionate about Periphery (or at least their early albums)

In 2016 Novelists guitarist Florestan Durand told Prog how the discovery of Periphery changed his musical life – and explained why he preferred their earlier albums to their later ones.

“It was my brother [Novelists drummer Amael] who first played me Periphery’s Letter Experiment, maybe four or five years ago. I immediately fell in love with it because it was so fresh.

I really like their use of clean sounds and their ambient touches, like on Have A Blast from Periphery II. Their guitarist, Misha Mansoor, has both a simple and heavy style in his music; he uses richer chords with a slightly jazzy approach. That influenced me a lot as I studied jazz at music college after I left school.

I think the way Misha creates contrasts in his music is really interesting, like juxtaposing beautiful moments with these very rhythmic, overdriven guitars. I’ve actually tried to play a few of his riffs but I haven’t tackled any of their full songs.

Before I discovered them I was listening to a lot of Dream Theater and John Petrucci’s solo work, which I loved. I listened to quite a bit of Symphony X too, and simpler music like Steve Vai and Joe Satriani.

I’ve had Periphery’s first two albums on repeat play for the last couple of years. Their sound is very original; it’s interesting to listen to their music and enter their universe. They use notes out of sequence – they’re more experimental than bands like Dream Theater, who are very respectful of tonalities.

I got to see Periphery live in Paris at the Zenith in 2012. They were supporting Dream Theater; it was cool to see both bands together, and to see Periphery in person was great. I’m not so much into their newer albums, though – I miss all the weird, techy sounds.

Periphery was the bridge to me discovering other djent bands. My brother subscribed to the Djentlemans Club channel on YouTube, and through that I’ve got into bands like TesseracT and Monuments.

TesseracT have got such great ambient sections – they’re very precise and show real perfectionism. Their music is really beautiful to listen to and it’s really awesome to see them live as well.”