IN CONVERSATION WITH TSAR B

interview by FIONA FROMMELT

Tsar B is the musical alter ego of musician, producer, and composer Justine Bourgeus, an artist known for merging electronic pop with her deep-rooted love of classical music and folk traditions. Her work exists at the intersection of sound and visual art, where colour, silhouette, and form are as vital as melody and lyric—evident in striking projects like Amor, whose surreal imagery features a monumental animatronic bird. This January, Tsar B released her new album The Writer, an intimate, autobiographical love story exploring her relationship with her partner, a writer, while further blurring the boundaries between music and art through a refined blend of classical and electronic compositions.

Birds are a recurring motif in your work and imagery. What do they symbolise for you?

Last week, a crow flew into me. I loved Hitchcock’s The Birds, but it didn’t scare me at all. I think these birds walk like clumsy dogs, yet they are very smart; they recognise faces, so you'd better be kind to them! I never thought I would be linked to birds (laughs). At some point, I started seeing so many Egyptian geese and bright green parakeets in my neighbourhood; they had once escaped the royal gardens and since formed a wonderful colony. Crows and ravens also unconsciously slip into my mind. Recently, I used this thirteen-meter-wide bird in a video installation created together with Lennert Madou, which we will exhibit in museums soon. My unconsciousness keeps wanting to connect to these animals. They fascinate me more than I thought.

skirt OTTOLINGER
hat CHRISTIAN WIJNANTS
corset and vest LES FLEURS
eyepatch JASMIEN VAN LOO
heels ROMBAUT

You’ve described your brain as being stuck in a universe that is going twice as fast. How do you translate that internal velocity into your productions and music?

It is true, I walk, talk, type, work, and think at 180 per cent. Honestly, I can type the alphabet in under 3 seconds. This means I have to half-speed everything to become normal. My beats, my music and my videos; Almost like I put a “slowed down” filter on everything. I like my videos at their recorded speed, but I am such a ‘wind,’ that when you film me and slow it down, it still looks like normal velocity! I feel lucky to be able to do this, to live this fast. It feels like I have to. One of my heroes, the surrealist painter and writer Leonora Carrington, once said: “My friends would ask me if I wanted to play chess, and I would say, ‘No, I don’t need anything to kill time. Time is killing me.” I will never play a board game. I want to make things from scratch. 

veil and corset LES FLEURS
knitted sweater Marknull
top as skirt BLUMARINE
heels JULIE KEGELS
bracelets and rings LA MANSO
gloves SQUILLANCE

How did you discover and create your particular sound?

As a three-year-old, I got obsessed with the Amadeus movie about Mozart and begged for a violin. It was one of the few things I immediately got from my parents, without too much effort. Classical music has been a part of my upbringing. Of course, through learning the violin at such a young age, but also through my parents constantly playing soundtracks at home. We would lie on the floor listening while they told us the plots of the movies. Back then, we basically watched films without watching them. I believe that this laid the foundation for my future multidisciplinary practice and for my synesthesia, the ability to taste sounds or hear images. My favourite time periods have always been the Baroque and the Renaissance. The manneristic ornamentations have a lot in common with Eastern music. As the Baroque was very much inspired by Ottoman and Arabic sound. That’s why you can’t always really tell what the exact influence is from. That time period is my absolute inspiration because it is so dramatic and passionate. It is so dark yet so hopeful, yet so naughty. There is a lot of “air“ in this kind of music, so much space, so much opportunity for breath, you could almost hear people’s tears fall on the ground. My sound traces back to my earliest years; 90’s pop, trip-hop and Belgian techno are the other sisters of my inspiration. I call them the daughters of darkness.

Is creating a choice, or does it feel more like a calling or a necessity?

Writing feels like a necessity. It is something that just happens, and it happens in the most random moments. In this dark, dark, dark world, we have to keep going and keep creating.  Music helps me process, to give fear a form. Writing is complete catharsis. It is like crying, I can totally let go of what was inside of me. I just saw Hamnet by Chloé Zhao, and it totally broke my heart. All this love, all this grief, all this excruciating heartbreak, that was put into a theatre play like Shakespeare did. We, too, have the ability to create beauty by sharing our sadness. We have to write, scream, and talk about what is happening and what has happened. 

blazer + dress ALAINPAUL
pants TALENT’S OWN

As someone who has been playing the violin since childhood, what does playing this instrument mean to you today?

The violin is a gateway to another world, but it is a tritagonist in my opera. Ableton is my main instrument; it opens the gates to my imagination. On the album, I sing, “but the symphony always comes clean.” By that I mean the symphony, my music, will always tell me the truth and help. I wrote this song during a period when I was pretty anxious, and I felt so much lighter after creating the Symphony.

blazer, pants and boots ACNE STUDIOS
shirt ALAINPAUL
vest KHOL

When you are composing, do you have a specific environment you retreat to or rituals you do to help you create?

I love spending time in my studio. At the moment, I’m building silver walls in it, referring to Warhol’s Factory. It’s my little haven where I produce all my tracks alone. Yet I create anywhere, everywhere. Composing my last album was a total trip. I used ancient, 500-year-old polyphonic vocal compositions as a starting point. To quote one of my heroes, Aphex Twin: It made me visit places I didn’t know existed, and I hope people who listen to it will also have their brain chemistry changed forever.

Your album, The Writer, has just been released. What does the release of this album signify for you?

I really want classical, baroque and renaissance music to live forever, and I’m glad to see it’s working. People are becoming increasingly curious about our past. These times are so wild. Heartbreak and useless wars are as loud now as they were hundreds of years ago. We live in nothing but a vicious circle. With my music, I want to show hope. I want to cry together. I feel powerless most of the time. Apart from protesting, I can try to show people beauty whilst acknowledging their pain. I want to give them this album, an album inspired by love, by the passion for reading books, falling in love with the writer, and finding love and hope in the dark, dark ages.

TEAM CREDITS:

talent TSAR B
photographer ORIANE VERSTRAETEN
styling VINCENT VAN LAEKEN
art direction TSAR B
makeup EMMA CATRY
hair PASCAL VAN LOENHOUT & DANIELA AMPLATZ using KEVIN MURPHY PRODUCTS
styling assistant ANANO GOGESHVILI
bird design DRIES DE WIN
editor TIMI LETONJA
Interview FIONA FROMMELT