01 Jul. 2016
A CRAZY IDEA
It must have been about a year ago today; we were all sitting at Kaspar’s place, at one of our infamous meetings.
We had decided that we needed to shake things up a bit and got together to brainstorm new ideas.
As usual the conversation turned into one of our “uhuhuh wouldn’t it be funny if…” things that we’re known to end up doing whenever we need to get any serious work done.
Then out of the blue someone said “wouldn’t it be cool if we made a pirate album?!”. We all stopped for a second and pondered the thought, and with those words, the joking turned into a serious conversation.
Previous to that night we had written a song (Which is now called Echoes of Silver & Gold), that had kind of a pirate-like vibe to it, although it had none of that usual ‘cheesy-ness’ that would usually go along with that sort of thing. On the contrary, it was a pretty cool sound. A NEW sound! Something we hadn’t really tried before, yet something that still sounded like US!
THE MUSIC WROTE THE STORY
It was just one of those songs that immediately inspires a whole album to go along with it.One of those songs you JUST know needs more than just lyrics. It needed A STORY!
And so one thought led to another, and we decided to see how many songs we could write, that would make sense together. Instead of writing song by song, as we traditionally would do, we sat down and wrote an album!
It just felt natural, and the more we wrote, the more the ‘story’ started to build in our imaginations.
Before we knew it, we were so inspired by the sound, that it simply felt natural to draw up some drafts and ideas for a storyline to go along with the album. So we immediately started to write an illustrated story!.
Although it was a conscious decision to do things a little bit differently this time, it’s as if the project was writing itself. Yes, the details were hard HARD work, but the idea in general just came naturally to us. The amazing thing about it all was that the songs were doing all the work for us. It’s as if the natural dynamics from song to song, the ‘feeling’ they had, almost created a whole universe by itself.
It was incredibly important to us that the album should be able to stand on its own. We want the listener to be able to associate their own experiences and feelings with the music, rather than have the band tell them what we think the songs are about. We wanted to leave room for interpretation.
It would be the easiest thing in the world to write a song that goes along with a specific story, but to us, it’s an art to find that magical place in a song that balances between the story we want to tell, and the feelings and experiences we would otherwise want to express. These are the feelings that other human beings can relate to. A story of heartbreak, a story of anger, a story of hope etc…
THE RELEASE
So we’re at the point now, where all the songs have been recorded, and we’re getting ready for our second album-release.
Judging from the last album, we have decided that CD’s seem to be a thing of the past, so we will initially be concentrating on a digital release. Just like the last one, this one will be available on Spotify, Apple music/iTunes, Deezer, Amazon etcetc…
But when that’s all said and done, we REALLY want to see this album on vinyl too at some point.
It will mostly be a matter of whether the circumstances will allow for a vinyl release, but nevertheless, it’s something we would like to try some day. So we’re hoping that will be a reality also. Let us know what you think of that idea. Would YOU want to see the album on vinyl?
Although the book is closely associated with the album, we feel that the album should be able to stand alone for a bit, so we will be releasing the book separately and at a later date.
We are REALLY ready for this, and we are really looking forward to sharing our new sound and ideas with you.
As always, we would love to hear your feedback!
- By Chris Angel Walker - Substereo
