Psicodelia espacial da pesada, leia-se Soft Machine, Tangerine Dream, Captain Beefheart, Pink Floyd era Syd Barret e por aí vai os caminhos delirantes do debute dos finlandeses do Octopus Syng, o disquinho atende pelo nome de Reverberating Garden Number 7, dá pra se ligar na trip só pelo sugestivo nome não?
Fora a nostalgia toda, tem uns toque de modernidade aqui e ali, mas o lance do Octopus Syng é entrar naquela máquina do tempo imaginária e sair lá no meio das trips sessentistas e cair de cabeça no ácido sem dó nem piedade, eu só digo o seguinte, boa viagem.
Fora a nostalgia toda, tem uns toque de modernidade aqui e ali, mas o lance do Octopus Syng é entrar naquela máquina do tempo imaginária e sair lá no meio das trips sessentistas e cair de cabeça no ácido sem dó nem piedade, eu só digo o seguinte, boa viagem.
***** Interview with Octopus Syng *****
- When did Octopus Syng start, tell us about the history...?
Octopus Syng started as my one man's studio project in summer 1999. I made music in my rehearsal room by myself. I wrote lyrics, music and did arrangements and then I sang and played all the instruments on a record. It was nice but very slow work to make music this way. I made two albums for German "Nasoni Records" label (2004 and 2007) and some "little records" for other labels too. In 2004 I formed a live band to perform Octopus Syng music on a stage, but I still wanted to make records by myself till in the summer 2011 when I realized that I had a so good live band line up, so there's no sense to make records by myself anymore. Then I buried my one-man's band idea and we started to make our first real band album in October 2011 and it finally saw the daylight in June 2014. It's called "Reverberating Garden Number 7" and it is our first and new band album. -
Who are your influences?
My personal influences have changed a lot during all these years. When I started to make Octopus Syng music there were a lot of Indian music influences and plenty of 60's USA West Coast folk influences too. Earlier on, I used to be mostly influenced by 60's psychedelic UK / USA scene but nowadays I have found something new to listen to as well. Maybe you can hear some influences from 60's French YeYe music, early 20th century strange classical music and early 60's pop music too in the future. Will you hear these influences in Octopus Syng's music in the future, that's is another question.
-Made a list of 5 albums of all time...
This is very hard to make but maybe it could be something like this...
1. Pekka Streng and Tasavallan Presidentti: Magneettimiehen Kuolema (1970)
2. Pink Floyd: The Piper at the Gates of Dawn (1967)
3. The Velvet Underground & Nico (1967)
4. Kaleidoscope: Tangerine Dream (1967)
5. Lubos Fiser: Valerie a Tyden Divu (a movie soundtrack from 1970, one of my favourite films ever too)
-How do you feel playing alive?
I love to play alive, but unfortunately we haven't got many gigs these days, but I have to confess I have been quite lazy to get them, because it's hard and frustrating trying to get gigs in Finland for this kind of band we are.
-How do you describe the Octopus Syng Sound?
If you mean our songs, I can say that our songs are mostly 60's inspired pop / rock and folk music where you can find sometimes some other musical dimensions too. If you mean our sound itself, our sounds are often very reverberating and quite lo-fi. Nowadays I try to find us some 30's-40's very mystic lo-fi sounds in our songs. I'd love to do very psychedelic music that sounds like it was made in 30's or 40's. I don't know what fascinates me in very old lo-fi sound, but it has always fascinated me a lot. I have always thought that "time" is the most psychedelic dimension that you can understand with your normal senses. There are mostly 60's sounds in "Reverberating Garden" album still, but maybe you can hear this 30's-40's sound in Octopus Syng's music in the future, but we will have stereo sound, not mono anyway.
-Tell us about the process of recording songs.
We record all our songs in our rehearsal room. There are two good reasons for that: time and money. If we’d go to a real commercial studio to record our songs we’d have to record our songs very quickly because we have no money for "living" there. Maybe we could get a little bit more professional sounds there, but this kind of sounds are not necessarily the sounds we want and we’d not have enough time to try out different things, so rehearsal room is good for us unless we are like The Beatles and can use Abbey Road Studio 24/7 for months, heh heh...
We usually record our songs with very old dynamic and crystal microphones, mics from 30's to 70's. If you want old sounds you have to use old amps, mics etc. too. I often try many recording technics to see what works and what doesn’t. I look up to old-time genius producers like Phil Spector, George "Shadow" Morton, Norman Smith, George Martin and etc. and I wanted to get such brilliant sounds on Octopus Syng's records as they got on their records they produced, but I know I have a long way to go.
-Which new bands you recommend?
I mostly listen to old stuff, so I don't know very much about nowadays music, but some good new bands I have heard are example Jacco Gardner and Crystal Thoughts. I know the world is full of good bands nowadays too, but I don't have time to search for the new good bands so I listen to the old ones.
-What band would you love to make a cover version by?
We don’t have any special bands that we’d like to cover. We mostly want to make our own material. If there sometimes is a good song for cover, why not, but it's about good songs and not about the band.
-What's the plan for future?
We are going to release one 10-inch mini LP what will include our two EP’s that we originally planned to release as two 7" EP’s, but then we realized that we could put them both for one 10-inche mini LP. One EP on A-side and another EP on B-side. Maybe it comes out next spring/summer. Then we have our next album half ready too. If we got it out at the end of next summer it would be great, but we haven't talked about it with Mega Dodo yet.
-Any parting words?
As I used to say " Love yourself and Love each other!" Cosmic kisses for everyone!
Jaire/ Octopus Syng
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Thanks
