moni Posted December 24, 2006 Share Posted December 24, 2006 ETHEREAL INTERVIEW (psynews.org) Artists: Ethereal (Fredrik Haglund & Carl Larsson) Date: 04-12-06 By: Cosmogenesis Q/Before to speak about music, can you give us some personal info of yourself in order to know you better? (Name, age, nationality, studies, hobbies or passion…) A/ C: Carl Larsson, age 28, residing in Gothenburg, Sweden, studying informatics. I spend a lot of time outdoors, but I'm also active in the pc demoscene (demowhat? Check www.scene.org for details) and do lots of 2d/3d graphics as well as music. F: Fredrik Haglund, age 29, lurking in Falun, Sweden, studying software development. Beside my interest in music, I also enjoy building scale models of WW2 armoured vehicles and that collection is steadily growing (although the pile of unbuilt ones is growing even faster... hrrrm) Q/How and when did the Ethereal project really start producing? For which reasons did you originally choose to produce psychedelic trance music instead of another genre? A/ F: It was in early 1999 that we started collaborating and created the project when I sent a very early version of the track Shai to Carl. Ha, I still have the IRC-log of our conversation about that test track! Let me check the date… the 4th of Mars, 1999! Ah, the memories! Before that, we’ve both been listening to and enjoying goa for quite some time so it was only natural that we choose that genre to compose in. I remember that Carl borrowed Cosmosis – Cosmology from me somewhere back in 96. I haven’t seen it since C: What Fred said, except maybe the part on Cosmology. That album really sparked my goa interest, though Q/ Your two first released tracks, “Fireflies (extended remix)” & “Accessing Infinity (remix)” were both released on the VA/Blissful Moments. How did happen, at that time, the contact with Tranceform records? A/ Kalle contacting us was one of many things that happened after the original "Fireflies" became one of the winners in a competition hosted by psynews. The igniting spark for the album deal was the Forms of Energy party in Helsinki, where we met Kalle and shared a stage with Ra, Ypsilon5 and many others. Q/We take there the opportunity to ask you, still in relation with the same subject, if you can tell us some fresh news about your label. It’s been a long time we didn’t hear something from it and from Kalle. The “Fluorotronik” compilation has been also postponed a couple of times since two years. What’s the current situation with Tranceform? Is the label still alive? A/ Tranceform seem to be in a coma at the moment. Last we heard, the "Fluorotronik" CD's are pressed but that was some time ago. Let’s hope Kalle decide to release it soon since there really is no reason to delay it further. Other than that, we don’t know much about the current status of Tranceform. Q/Let’s talk about your first and high quality album, “Anima mundi”, released back in 2003. It got a very positive reception and was much appreciated by the fans and the goa community. How do you explain yourself this success? How much time did you spend to produce it? And finally, something that remains a mystery for all of us: who did create this wonderful and well-inspired album cover? A/ Perhaps people liked it because it offered an alternative to the common trance released at that time. Something more melodic and goaish sounding. The album was in production for a little more than a year, but several of the tracks include elements dating all the way back to 1999. The cover was created by our good friend Ako Zahir. Hopefully he will return to also do the cover for our next album Q/What kind of equipment do you use for your productions? A/ We have used a variety of hardware and software synthesizers, and the setup can change quite frequently. Over the years it has changed from a pretty large hardware only setup to a smaller scaled down studio which also include software synths – so now we use the best of both worlds! The main workhorse in the making of "Anima Mundi" was the legendary Waldorf Q, but that one is now gone and has been replaced by several other different sound sources. Nowadays we use JV/JD-synths a lot, particularly for pad sounds. FabFilter Twin is a favourite amongst the softsynths. Not much equipment really, but gear is merely tools to help us realise our musical vision. The real composing takes place in the most important piece of equipment – our brains! Q/Some people consider you as the continuators of the “space goa trance” genre, started by projects like Dimension 5, RA or Chi-A.D., and labels like Blue Moon or Novatekk, to just give a few examples. Have you been influenced by any of them or not? A/ Throughout the years we've had the opportunity to listen to lots and lots of great trance music, and there are probably many groups who have influenced us in some way but we have never deliberately tried to imitate a specific artist/group. However, similar to those groups, we also try to achieve a “spacey” feeling in the music but at the same time we have all chosen different methods and paths to do so. Q/How do you describe and define yourself your style and your almost “scientific” approach of your music? In which genre do you classify them? A/ Quoting yourself, "space goa trance" really has a nice ring to it, doesn't it? We try to explore more of the mystical side of the music instead of hammering away with pure energy tracks. Therefore, we rely more on several less intensive melodic lines woven together along with a carpet of heavy pad work and FX, all to create nice flowing tracks while still keeping it energetic enough for the dance floor. This is also where one of the main differences between goa and recent psychedelic music lies. With goa, you can actually listen to the tracks in your home and enjoy it as a musical piece in comparison with modern psychedelic music that is almost exclusively geared towards the dance floor. Q/Concerning now your future projects, a question that your fans are burning to ask you: when is your second album approximately going to see the light? Did you already finish some tracks? What kind of genre will it be? Old /new-skool goatrance like Anima Mundi? A/ The album is under way, and it will be finished. Since Ethereal is something of a hobby project, we can't really tell when though. Real life (school, family, work etc) tends to steal away most of our precious studio time. Also, our workflow is such that a track could take quite some time to finish. Some of the album content is already done, and we're really trying to bring the ethereal sound to new levels. More complexity, more melodies, more of mostly everything. If you want a sneak peak, check out the track “Stream of Life” on the compilation Pyramidal Trancendence. The album will go in a similar direction. At least parts of it…. Q/I heard about the existence of some parallel ambient projects you are also currently working on. Please, can you reveal us a bit more info about that? A/ Yes, we both have several parallel projects going on, and there are some ambient projects among those. We're right now unsure if any of them will be finished before the Ethereal album. You'll have to wait and see. We don’t want to reveal anything about them until we have something finished to share. The projects span over several different subgenres of ambient so there will be plenty of material to go through, record, mix etc. They're also a great way to take a break from just composing goa and do something else for a while. Q/ What are your favourite psychedelic trance groups or tracks? And why? Is there a particular artist you would like to collaborate with? A/ C: To name a few favourites: Ra, Dimension5, Transwave, Chi-A.D., Jaïa, early Cosmosis and MFG. As for collaborating, this is hard. Very hard. Everyone has their own style of composing, and two good artists can't always create a good production. F: N.D.M.A. (especially their track Vitan – pure magic!!), Astralasia, Blue Planet Corporation, Transwave and Dimension 5. I agree with Carl about collaboration. It would be very hard indeed to adjust the workflow for a collab. If I were to select an artist to cooperate with, it will most definitely be Astralasia. I’ve always loved their music and ability to mix genres and it would be great to work together with them. Q/What other kind of electronic /non-electronic music do you like listening to? Any particular artists? A/ F: Front Line Assembly, Front 242, Skinny Puppy etc. so mostly industrial music for me. I also enjoy music from the Cold Meat Industry label. Listening to just electronic music would drive me insane so I listen to a wide variety of other genres as well, for example various types of metal, goth rock, pop, country, jazz and more. C: Lots of spacesynth (Protonic Storm, Laserdance etc) and ambient for me. I also have quite a collection of traditional music, irish in particular. Q/What’s your feeling about the actual trance scene? Are you confident about the hypothetic goa resurrection? A/ C: As far as I'm concerned, the goa trance scene never really died, it simply evolved into something else. I'm very confident that as long as there are listeners who enjoy the oldskool goa sound, there will be people producing this kind of music as well. However, since the number of active labels is not what it used to be, I have the feeling that most new goa tracks will be released on web labels or something similar. F: Yes, it has certainly evolved but not in a particularly good direction. The original goa trance scene is pretty much dead so I do not believe a “resurrection” to restore the scene to its former glory is possible nowadays. It was good times indeed but those days are long gone. All we can do now is to continue producing and listening to the music we love and see where that leads us. As Carl said, there will always be some people that enjoy the music and some artists producing as well, just not as many as it used to be. Q/At the same time, do you think personally that you can bring something new to this musical genre? What kind of evolution will happen, according to you, to the psychedelic music? Perhaps we can bring something new to the genre… perhaps not. Our main goal will always be to compose music we like and if that brings something new to the genre, it’s just a nice side effect. All music is constantly evolving, and there's no telling where it might take us. Production techniques has been improved as well, with the exception of aggresive brickwall mastering which is far too popular not only in psychedelic music. Such mastering is a sure way to destroy a potentially good record. Q/And last question, what would you like to tell to your fans? A/ To enjoy the goa trance scene for what it is. While waiting for the new album, pick up some old goa records or explore the freeware music community. You might discover some real gems. Thanks a lot for this interview and all those interesting answers. And, of course, good luck for your upcoming projects! Here is a picture of their studio: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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