Loïk Gomez aka BFRND has been stunning fashion audiences with his original scores for Balenciaga shows. Here is a conversation with Gomez on his creative whereabouts.

Balenciaga’s new show released as a video game called “Afterworld: The Age of Tomorrow” on December 6^th also coincided with the release of BFRND’s new single with the same title on his own label. While we still struggle to understand the true merit of clothes, which are presented in an exaggerated video game format, we find the couture house’s rigor in terms of experimentation truly trailblazing. Demna Gvasalia is at the forefront of creative directors for heritage brands who not only has the fashion training to propel things forward but also the curiosity to engage his brand in all things future oriented.

But let’s talk about the brand’s musical director since Fall 2017, Loïk Gomez.

His first collaboration for Balenciaga came with Andrew Eldritch, the charismatic lead singer of the band Sisters of Mercy. From then on out he went to set the bar very high with his bombastic soundtracks for the shows, which Balenciaga started holding in Luc Besson’s Cité du Cinéma. Balenciaga has been using the film studio complex located in Saint-Denis, north of Paris, in a renovated power plant to elevate the sound and staging of its shows to unprecedented heights even for the fashion world. Naturally, Karl Lagerfeld’s Chanel shows at the Grand Palais became canonical but they did not allow for the precision in music and production that a professional soundstage can naturally offer. Gomez is also behind Loops, another Balenciaga original idea in which Achtung friend and collaborator DJ Hell featured with unreleased house tracks. The concept is to have an artist making a video loop complimented by a DJ mix with the idea to create a Balenciaga lifestyle. Some of the loops even have a specific purpose such as workout music. Let’s not forget Demna Gvasalia, who is Gomez husband, released his own play list on Apple Music recently.

Here is an excerpt from a phone call our editor had with BFRND:

“I have been living in the suburbs of Zurich for three years now, to be exact in Kanton Aargau. I am French and have entered the business of fashion show music out of nowhere. I am not really familiar with people like Michel Gaubert and Frederic Sanchez who have dominated the industry for nearly three decades. I am an outsider. I am a musician who never went to music school. I started playing the guitar at age nine and from then on out started composing my own music. In fact my first guitar melody is part of my new album ‘Afterlife’. It has to be said that my auto didactical approach was more or less made possible by watching youtube videos. When I wanted to learn to play a certain chord I checked youtube. The Internet has helped me to express myself. My parents listened to a lot of New Wave. I am from the south of France near the border to Spain. I grew up in the Black Metal scene and used to work in a club in Perpignan where death metal and cyber goth were also featured. From this schooling my love for Rammstein and Marilyn Manson manifested itself. I think there is nothing more educational in terms of staging and musical performance than a Rammstein concert. I love adding orchestral elements for Balenciaga as well. I composed the music for all five levels of the video game featuring elements of techno, rave music but also Claude Debussy classical aspects. The whole game culminates in a breathing exercise, which I love after all the dramatic scores. All the music was produced in my home studio. And I hope it stays that way.”