Occasionally you find things in Second Life that jump straight out of the screen and grab you. In this case the leap of faith was taken through my speakers.

Captivating an audience at U21 Global earlier was a band called Chouchou. I am sure you have heard the name or seen the pictures, after-all the Chouchou sim is one of the most photographed places of late. However if you are like me you might not have heard the music. With a haunting voice juliet Heberle (lead singer of Chouchou) could be likened to Morcheeba in tone and makes the listener drift off into a quiet relaxing place, which to do in Second Life is sheer and complete escapism.

After the concert I managed to speak with juliet and asked her about Chouchou

Trinity Dechou: Firstly, can you tell me a little about ChouChou?
juliet Heberle: Chouchou is a Japanese music group existing only in SL. It's formed on July 2007 for searching new possibilities of music.

Trinity Dechou: Did you play Second Life before forming ChouChou?
juliet Heberle: Arabesque, the other Chouchou, and I started SL together about a year ago, but we didn't know what to do at that time like everybody else. We tried little bit of everything like creating objects, making textures, building something and so on. Then one day I thought maybe doing the radio program could be interesting, so I started my own radio program which is in Japanese only. And arabesque said, "why don't you sing songs for your radio show?" He composed music for me, and that's the beginning of Chouchou. :) I had never sang as a singer before we formed Chouchou.

Trinity Dechou: What does Chouchou mean?
juliet Heberle: It's a french word meaning favorite, but we also love the sound of it. And we both like Debussy, and Chouchou is the nickname for his daughter.

Trinity Dechou: You said above you had never sung before you started ChouChou. Did you have any problems or fears singing?
juliet Heberle: I'd never sung in front of people as a singer, but I've always loved singing, so it was fun. :)

Trinity Dechou: Do you find that singing and performing in Second Life helps your confidence?
juliet Heberle: I think so. And we're not presenting only music, but also spaces, atmospheres and stuff.

*To see the complete presentation by Chouchou visit the Chouchou Sim*

Trinity Dechou: How can people find out more about Chouchou, other than visiting the sim?
juliet Heberle: We have our MySpace, official blog and our group "Chouchouholic"

Trinity Dechou: You said above Chouchou only exists in SL, no plans to take that into RL?
juliet Heberle: Well, recently, a Belgium record company really liked our music and asked us to release an album from one of their record label. It'll be very small production, I guess, but we're very excited about that because it's going to be our first album. We never know about the future. We're going with the flow, but so far, we only perform in SL. And we kind of like it because performing only in SL is very unique, we think. :)

Trinity Dechou: What kind of feedback have you had from the residents of Second Life when you perform?
juliet Heberle: People always loved our performance, and we're so glad about that. Some people have said to me they felt like they were in dreams during the show.

Trinity Dechou: Your performance sounded very professional, what technical aspects do you have in place to ensure that level of sound quality, and do you sing live?
juliet Heberle: arabesque composes and edit all the song of Chouchou. He is very talented composer and particular about sounds and qualities. All of our songs are created with lots of sounds and instruments except sign 0. And some of them are electronic sounds and edited for each song. Each of them is very important, even if it's a very tiny clipping noise. And with all of that, we present our music. In some of our songs, vocals are also edited and have effects to perfectly go with each songs. Those songs are impossible to sing in live, unless I have my private PA or something. :) But other songs which don't have so much effects on vocal, I sing in live.

Trinity Dechou: Where and how regularly do you perform in Second Life?
juliet Heberle: I guess, 2-3 times in a month. :) We always send group notices for our performances at our place. :) But we usually don't send notices for other performances requested from other people at other places because of the limitation of the number of access to the sim.

Trinity Dechou: Excellent, Thank you very much for taking the time to speak to me juliet.
juliet Heberle: Thank you so much. :)