Hearing music. From any source. Maybe i like your band too. Also love hearing interesting ideas from people who have, really, something to say.
I'd like to meet:
U!...O.K......
....but before this....
There's got to be a certain reason to love the ones who “ignore†today. Barbara Carlotti's one of them. It’s, only, last year that she released an old-fashioned record. A sound flirt to the “roots†of French pop echo. Her album “Les Lys Brises†was magnificent. Below you can read her answers to typical questions. The original interview was printed in the Greek newspaper that I work.
-What's the idea "behind" your record?
-I decided to pick up the tracks that I was playing on stage with my band, on top of the songs with Bertrand Burgalat. Most of my songs are sentimental and melancholic, I think it’s probably what I wanted to express the most to start. It’s a very intimate record, where I’m revealing a lot of things, and it has got this very spontaneous vibe mostly because it was the first time I was recording with real studio conditions. I wrote all the chorus, some Glokenspiel and horns parts, whose are things I’ve never had done before.
-And what's the idea "behind" the title of your album?
-Lilys were Oscar Wilde favourite flowers. Oscar Wilde is one of my favourite writer, a real aesthete. Lillys have got a huge elegancy, a lot of purity but in the meantime a heady and very sensual smell. Lillys are a bit my personal “Fleur du Mal†(reference to Charles Baudelaire book of poetry). From my point of view, the album title is a poetic image which is symbolizing the purity of sentimental feelings, mixed with a certain kind of sensuality but also a big melancholy, because the flowers are broken... But please notice that all of my songs are sad and melancholic, poetry is also how the words are sounding.
-While recording what's your favourite habit?
-Drink a lot of tea, be focused on every details, not missing any instrumental recordings. I want be there all the time and follow every steps.
-What's the most marked compliment, others, made about your record and you still remember it?
-I’m happy when someone is saying that he has been stir by my songs. It’s the most beautiful compliment you can get.
-Where and when it happened?
-Recently a young man sent me a letter after discovering me at one of my shows. It was a big poem, and he wrote two things whose really make me happy : “What a wonderful voice†and “music and lyrics touched the deeper of my soulâ€
Roberto Di Gioia’s “portable†and “easy to find†inspiration was the fuel he and the singer Martina Rojina needed to create a beautiful record. “Minx†is a beautiful pop psychedelic album, released under the name Marsmobil. Below you can find Roberto playing in the playground of "evidence". In other words, explaining the secrets of cocking beautiful four minutes songs.
-Where you find inspiration?
-My main inspiration is to enter unknown territories and worlds seeking for “enlightenment†and sometimes happiness through music I create. A song isn’t just a song – it carries a certain vibe with it. I am very spontaneously implying instantaneous vibes or moods into my music, like recording the raindrops falling onto my roof…that is a surrealistic and a very realistic moment at the same time.
-And what Minx means?
-Originally MINX was called “mind implosion on nuclear xyloniteâ€, so we took the first letters of it, and it became MINX. The inspiration to this title is again a psychedelic vibe which obviously contains my half-Italian-half-german blood cells.
-While recording what’s your favourite habit?
-Being faster than I can think…that gives my unconsciousness the chance to express itself without “myself†interfering too much
-Where and when Minx recorded?
-Inside my studio, outside of Munich, in January March 2005.
A Speaking "Monitor". The Inteview.
Vassilis looks stressed. Perfect. When his mobile rings he answers “definitivelyâ€. As if a “yes†or “no†are the only words in his vocabulary. I like the fact that this is happening. We’ve known each other for years. We first spoke, I think, just before the mid-80s. Since then the times are numbered when I’ve seen him publicize, without “shameâ€, his thoughts. His desires. His decisions. I like the fact that he can finally say No without much thought. Monitor will shortly release their second album, “To Tragoudi tou Hydrogonou†(“The Hydrogen Songâ€). And Vassilis (Nakis, their songwriter) wants certain things to only be better since the time they released their first. “Ena†(“Oneâ€), a work released in 2000. Will he make it?
-It took just over 7 years to make your second album. Why? Isn’t that a long time?
-A lot happened. A lot more than I and Aliki (Avdelopoulou, Monitor’s vocalist) could have imagined. Disappointments and difficulties on a personal level. Band member changes. The issue for us was, and is, that we never stopped functioning as and being Monitor. Some songs on our new album were written some 5 or 6 years ago. What I’m thinking now, something I am more than sure of, is that the next album won’t take that long.
-I remember you sometime around the end of 1999; at the time the radio was playing your song “Stin Ammo†(“In the Sandâ€) and everybody was saying you were the freshest sound amongst the Athens band scene. What do you think of those days now?
-“Stin Ammo†meant, for us, the beginning of Monitor, the moment our music went beyond the narrow limits of our practice space and into the world. It was beautiful when everybody spoke about us in those words. I’d really like the same to happen with our new songs. But your question still concerns a part of our past. The part I like reminiscing about. I don’t want to be eclectic about the moments I spent in the band. What I’m looking forward to now; what I want to experience now is our new album. Everything that can come from it. We have rid ourselves, to a large extent, from our musical introversion. We’ve finally learnt to be here and ready to try anything we can possibly claim.
-Why do you cover everything from Hatzidakis to Black Sabbath in your live shows?
-Well, because we like so many different things. We find the same beauty in a theme by Yann Tiersen as in a song by Led Zeppelin, to mention 2 more artists we’ve covered. For us, music belongs to two groups only. The first is real. The other is prefab, fake. Anything with the scent of truth touches us.
-Your first songs had exclusively Greek lyrics. Now many of your songs are in English. Why?
-To be more correct we have songs with English lyrics as well. The truth is that it didn’t happen after much thought and consciously, it just did. At a certain moment I felt the need to write certain things. I realized that what came naturally and spontaneously to me was English lyrics.
-When is your next live?
-On May 5th, at “Ston Aeraâ€, in Petroupoli.
-Monitor’s new album, “To Tragoudi tou Hydrogonouâ€, is released by Archangel Music.
-Part of this interview was published in “Ethnos†newspaper. The text you’ve read here is, essentially, the first transcribed version. The second version will be uploaded shortly.
Yiannis
Music:
U.F.O., Syd Dale, Coup De Bam, Air, D.J. Krush, D.J. Shadow, The Seeds, Love, Anti - Tropau Council, Ojos De Brujo, Corduroy, Thievery Corporation, Thunderball, Ennio Morricone, Magazine, Gang Of Four, Strawberry Alarm Clock, J.T.Q., Koop, Electric Prunes, Nu Spirit Helsinki, St. Etienne, Massive Attack, Azymuth, Marcos Vale, U.N.K.L.E., Tosca, Kruder & Dorfmeister, Madrid De Los Austrias, Kraak & Smaak, Les Hommes and the man you can see...-
Movies:
Love silly dramas.
Books:
Like journals not books. Love fast reading.
Heroes:
no heroes! I prefer windows
and "deleting" tar
