sexta-feira, 9 de janeiro de 2015

Love in a Void with On The Wane - An Interview


De Kiev, Ucrânia, vem o caótico e destruidor On The Wane, uma avalanche em alta velocidade soterrada por barulhos sônicos e darks, algo como se Siouxsie Sioux e o Sonic Youth resolvessem fazer uma jam.

O resultado disso tudo esta gritando no debute Dry, lançando em novembro último. Notadamente com uma cozinha tipicamente pós punk, pesada e quebrada aliada as guitarras estridentes e sob tudo isso os vocais de Daria e Anna encorpam a massa sonora devastadora do disco.

Passou despercebido mas não por muito tempo, e o On The Wane virou querido destas páginas.

Música pra gente grande e perturbada.


***** Interview with On The Wane *****


Q. When did On the Wane started, tell us about the history...
We banded together just few weeks before the revolution in our country began – in autumn, 2013. However we weren't able to achieve any results for a few months. We've made a few tracks and didn't find a permanent drummer. We had our youngest member joined us in March 2014. Anna was approved as our drummer right away. Later on we found out that she can also sing, so responsibility for singing also came upon her shoulders. Now singing drummer is our schtick, although Daria (our bassist) and Alex (he's a guitarist) sing in few tracks as well. We decided to count our "living days" as a band starting from the first rehearsal in our current line-up – 9 March, 2014.

Once some material was gathered, we started to play live in clubs. Started over in suburban clubs, step-by-step we moved to well-known ones and even played on a contemporary art festival.

Our album was recorded in November 2014 during two sessions that lasted in total for 26 hours.

Q. Who are your influences?
It's not hard to guess who has influenced us the most. It's certainly Sonic Youth. However, we can name a lot of other alternative groups (mainly from 80's – 90's): The Cure, R.E.M, The Wire, Joy Division, Slowdive, My Bloody Valentine, Cocteau Twins, Pixies, Blonde Redhead, Morphine along with Velvet Underground and Iggy Pop.

Q. Make a list of 5 albums of all time…
We nearly fought while making this list, but finally came to some kind of consensus.

1. Sonic Youth – Washing Machine
2. Morphine – Yes
3. The Cure – Disintegration
4. Radiohead – In Rainbows
5. The Velvet Underground & Nico – The Velvet Underground & Nico

Q. How do you feel playing live?
The essential of playing live is that feeling of freedom. The freedom to do what you like and do it the way you like it. And if somebody else likes this too – this is happiness.

Q. How do you describe On the Wane's sounds?
Our sound is loud, noisy, sharp, scratchy and strained. But sometimes it can be relaxing and even meditative.

Q: Tell us about the process of recording the songs?
It was a real adventure! Our friend was recording us in his drums school. He had no guitar amp, so we had to search an amp in the day of recording. Luckily, we've found it. During recording process we've literally almost burned up our friend's sound card, which would put an end to our whole recording. Again, luckily, everything worked out all right. In such a way it is nearly a DIY record. Maybe alternative albums should be recorded in this way.

Q. Which new bands do you recommended?
Among comparatively new bands we like Savages, Ringo Deathstarr, A Place To Bury Strangers. Parquet Courts are pretty good too. If we talk about non-rock bands, Death Grips are just insane and cool.

We also love our Ukrainian band Ummagma. It is fantastically beautiful dream-pop! One of their tracks was even remixed by Robin Guthrie! By the power of their music they can be easily ranked together with Cocteau Twins.

Another of our favorite Ukrainian bands is "и Друг Мой Грузовик". These guys used to play a wild mix of funk, alt-rock, hardcore and a bunch of other genres having only rhythm-section in their line-up. Unfortunately it's been 2 years since they disbanded.

We also like Russian post-punk band Motorama and their side-project "Утро". We heard that these folks are fairly popular in South America.


Q: Which bands would you love to make a cover version of?
Frankly we are not big fans of cover-versions. We covered Joy Division's "Ceremony" on our album. But this song has a special meaning for us, we've become intimate with it. As for now we are not planning to make new covers. Anyways, if this happen it would be something fast and vigorous like Iggy Pop. It would also be interesting to reconceive old rock'n'roll songs of 60's in some unusual sound, like Japanese band Meeks did with Beatles songs.

Q: What's the plan for the future....
The nearest plans are continuous gigs in Kyiv and other Ukraine cities. We are quite young band and it's important for us to get known outside of the capital. In our long-term plans we have Western-Europe tours and even visiting the U.S. But these are rather dreams than plans.

As for new material, we are thinking that it is more worthwhile to make EPs than produce full-length albums. Nowadays people barely listening 30 or 40 minutes of play not digressing from it. 3-4 tracks are ideal. Such releases can be produced more frequently than LPs, so it wouldn't let our fans forget about us.

Q: Any parting words?
We want this world to have more true alternative bands. We like a lot of mainstream music groups, but people should always have a right to listen not only commercial, but experimental music, which is made by its own efforts.
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Thanks

https://onthewane.bandcamp.com
https://www.facebook.com/weareonthewane