Artist: MFG

[mars]

Artist: MFG (Aharon Segal & Guy Zukrel)

Date: 08-29-00

By: Gustav

 

Q: So...could you tell us a little about yourselves?

A: Guy Zukrel is 30 years old and single, i'm (Aharon Segal) 30 years old, happily married and have a 4 years old baby girl and expecting a 2nd baby boy in about 4 months. We've been playing electronic music together for many years, we met in high school when we were about 15 years old and we never stopped playing together since then.

 

Q: Were you involved in any musical projects before MFG? Did you play in rock bands like most people seem to have done?

A: No rock bands, we were always writing original electronic music of our own in various styles, nothing really that good that could get us famous, but we had a lot of fun and so did our friends who always support us

 

Q: How did you get in touch with psychedelic trance music and when?

A: While we were trying to make our first album of electronic industrial music (in the sound of Skinny Puppy, Front 242, Front Line Assembly) a very good friend of ours played us some tracks by The Infinity Project (TIP) and we liked it a lot, until that day we were sure that electronic music must be dark and heavy and then we found out that the same instruments and sounds can be used for a different kind of pure electronic music, a happy style, with positive inspirations that we didn't know before, and we simple fell in love with this type of music.

 

We then wrote a couple of tracks and went to meet Oren Kristal from Phonokol Records which said that we sound too dark to enter the scene and played us (for the first time) an Astral Projection track called "Let There Be Light" (i'm sure not if that's the right title!?) and we left, after two days we came back and Oren thought that we forgot our keys in his office but we came back with our first psychedelic trace track "Shape The Future" and right after we played him the track he signed us for 3 albums on his label. That was a very quick start for a new band like ours, and it took about a couple of months till our first album "The Prophecy" was released in Israel, France and the UK.

 

Q: What's the best/worst thing that has happened to you as MFG?

A: The best thing was the way it all started, so fast (as i wrote above), we found ourselves touring all around the world, meeting lots of people and having lots of great time.

 

The Worst thing is that the trance scene was starting to fade not a long time after that, and we could feel that happening when our second album "New Kind of World" was released, less sales, less shows around the world, also through our third album "Project Genesis", but we survived because we also have a day work and we knew from the start that being a trance artist is not enough to make a living.

 

Q: What do you think about the progressions in the "scene" during these years. Have things gotten better/worse or is it just the the same?

A: As i said above, we had the chance to experience the trance scene in it's best days and also lately when it started to fade, but it still exist in it's original underground size, we think, which is good.

 

Q: Which musical artists do you admire the most? (both psytrance/non-psytrance)

A: From the trance scene we like our friends Astral Projection, also Hallucinogen, some of X-Dream, old Transwave and Etnica and some others too. Outside the trance scene we like bands like Skinny Puppy, Front Line Assembly, Front 242, Numb and lots of others, they are all playing dark electronic industrial music.

 

Q: What kind of studio are you using now? I only know you used to share one with Astral Projection long time ago.

A: We only used Astral studio once when we recorded our first (non-album) track "Shape The Future" and then we also wrote the track "Radial Blur" together for Astral album, since then we always used our own little homey studio with our own equipment.

 

Q: Do you have any sideprojects for the moment? As far as I know, Guy Zukrel is involved in Emuna & The Passenger.

A: That's all of them, we wrote a couple of tracks with California Sunshine, released some tracks on compilations but not any side projects beside those you mentioned above.

 

Q: Which track of yours are you most proud of and why?

A:

Aharon: i like "Why" from our 3rd album "Project Genesis" the most because i find it more deep and interesting than the rest, but i also like many of our other tracks too ofcourse...

 

Guy: "When We Dream" from our 2nd album "New Kind Of World", and i also like all of our other tracks too.

 

Q: I've heard very little of you as a live band. Your name is very rarely found in the line-up for parties, except for some far-away parties. How come, is most of the time spent in the studio or is your personal life pretty demanding?

A: We played a lot around the world through the years, believe me, but maybe because we also have a day work and sure we have our own personal lifes you couldn't find our name everywhere and in every party. We also didn't release anything in the last year so beside of a few shows in the USA we didn't preform anywhere, but soon with our new album i'm sure everyone will get the chance to see us in his county, so get your self ready to party with us, we're coming back really soon...

 

Q: At least the last months I guess you've been quite busy working on the new album. How long has it taken and when will it be ready?

A: We started working together again about a couple of moths ago and we believe our new album "The Message" will be ready in about two more months.

 

Q: You have changed sound quite alot during the years as MFG, especially with Project Genesis; going to darker, more alienated sound. Can you give us a little hint about the sound of the new album?

A: We have 6 tracks ready so far, we plan to write two more and one Ambient track (we never wrote an ambient track until now), the album sounds like a new MFG album, a bit melodic, a bit darker and always new, we never give up, we always try to create new atmospheres otherwise we might get bored...

 

Q: I hope we expect some heavy touring when the album is finished. Is that planned?

A: We are ready, it all depends if the party organizers will like our new album and will like to invite us to play, we sure hope to reach every country on this planet (and beyond) with our new album and meet all of our fans.

 

Q: Would you like to give any special message to everyone reading this?

A: Well, i must say that although people like to relate the Psychedelic Trance scene to drugs, we don't use drugs to write our music so we would like to recommend all of our fans and listeners to save their lifes and listen to us without using drugs, we think drugs kill people and their personality, hiding the truth from them and stopping them from doing things in their lifes, we plan to write something about it in the booklet of our new album, i hope we will.

 

Thank you very much for you taking your time to do this interview!

 

Best Regards,

 

Aharon Segal & Guy Zukrel

MFG.