Interview

Hello “Dear Friend”!
How are you doin’? I’m pretty happy to be able to make another interview with you for 21Octayne.

A: Hi Lionel! Glad to talk with you, it’s always a pleasure!

So, let’s start this interview and first of all, we gonna have a quick way back to “Into The Open”, your first album released last year. As we said the feedbacks were incredible and you’ve made a lot of shows to promote that album, and in the same time you wrote this new album. Quite busy isn’t it?!

A: It was really busy. However, the chemistry we had during the songwriting sessions was so great and fruitful, that in the end it only took something like 5 sessions to actually write the album. Now, obviously it still had to be recorded and mixed and all that, but still, it went really fast.
Anyways, we wanted to make sure to show that we are serious about this band, so it was important to not let too much time pass between records.

In between these two albums, we can see that Andrew is no longer a member of the band. What happened ?! ‘Coz he was one of the founder member.

A: It was actually a personal thing. Almost no musical issues were involved here. The tension between him and the other members was building and at some point it just wasn’t possible to carry on anymore.

Compared to the first 21O opus, you choose to name this album 2.0. Why did you make this choice, not to take a song from the album? As well as the cover is more ‘basic’ as the “Into the open” was.

A: Again, this was sort of a statement. The second album should be like an “update” to the first one.
More in terms of everything. More mainstream, more progressive, more groovy, more technical.
I guess more is more after all….hahaha. So that’s why we went for this 2.0 idea.
The main idea was that also nothing is repetitive, that no song sounds like anything of Into The Open and so it was also natural to go for a very different artwork.
The head, with the two different layers, symbolizes duality. Life is full of duality, in fact most things define them by having a clear opposite. And it fits our music, because we will always have this duality as well.

Checking your news oftenly, we can see that the promotion activity for 2.0 is really intense, heading from TV Shows to Radio shows, through different Medias as magazines, webzines and also a special show for the release party.

A: Yes, well obviously promotion is vital. There’s hundreds of releases each month and to stand out, especially as a relatively new band, you have to make sure you use all available channels. The fact that also mainstream radio has now started to pick up our music is of course great!

You also realized two singles to promote the album. The first one was “Devil in disguise”, a powerfull rock song made as a lyric video; and the second one “When you go”, an amazing video clip with those two kids playing nicely through this power pop rock song. Two different faces of your music.

A: Which leads us back to the thing I said about duality. We did the same thing with ITO. We had a first single that was more rocky, “The Heart (Save me)” so it was very important to us to show a different side of our music with the second single “Dear Friend”.

Listening to your music, reading all these great feedbacks, I’m wondering how your label / manager are getting with it. I mean, did get some best offers from other record companies etc?

A: There has been a huge interest in the band from the industry from the beginning on. But for us, it was a natural choice to go with AFM. Both Marco and I had nothing but the best experiences with any bands we had been part of on that label previously. It takes a lot of trust to give your music to people to work with. So the personal factor was really important to us here.

There’s a song “Take me away” which included various musical sides as rock, pop rock or even psychedelic sequences a la Genesis or Pink Floyd. Can you give us more information about that one please?

A: One of my favorites of the album. It’s cool that you hear Genesis in it, because both Marco and I are huge fans, he even a bit more than I am.
The song came together in about 2 hours during a jam. People think that verses and choruses have different tempos in this song, but in fact, it’s the same tempo actually. What we did here is a thing called “metric modulation”. In this case it’s about taking the quarter note triplets and “pretending” they are the new quarter note pulse during the chorus. It’s something you often hear with Dream Theater for example.

Your album is ending with kind of an epic song, about ten minutes running time, called “Tale of a broken child”. This song is giving me goose bumps each time I’m listening to it. What a great job you’ve done!

A: Thank you so much my friend! Another favorite of mine as well obviously. We had this idea of doing a longer, more epic tune on this album, but it wasn’t until the very end of the songwriting that we realized we could “marry” two ideas to a single song, which resulted in the song as it is now.
We added a couple instrumental sections, especially one that is a lil more jazzy, and that’s about it.
I think the beauty of it is, that still it doesn’t feel like a long song. It’s not boring, at least I hope so.

Any plan for playing in France yet?

A: We can’t wait to play in France. We’re hoping to present a tour for 2.0 soon. At this point of our career as a band, it’s still better to go and support a bigger act, so this is what we are looking at right now.

Now, it’s time to talk a little bit about yourself. You’re still quite a busy man, running between 21Octayne, the private drum lessons you’re giving and of your course with Luca’s Rhapsody with whom you’re going to tour next year intensively. How do you manage all those activities and of course your private life, ‘coz you’re also involved in Elina’s musical project.

A: I wish I could say something smart now, but the truth is, that I just try to concentrate on whatever it is that I have in front of me at that very moment. It’s something I’m trying to also have in my personal life and it comes from the teaching of a great British buddhist monk by the name of Ajan Brahm. When asked who is the most important person in the world, he answered “always the one right in front of you, the one you are talking to in that very moment”. What it basically means is, if you give somebody or something your attention, don’t do it half assed. Do it for real, or don’t do it.

We’re reaching the end of the interview. Thank you for taking the time to answer to my question once again, and I do hope (and we will) to see you soon my Friend!!! Best!

A: Again, thank you so much for having me here and for all these nice things you had to say about our music. Merci mon ami!