segunda-feira, 5 de janeiro de 2015

A Storm in Heaven with Great Black Night - An Interview




Já logo nos primeiros momentos de All My Lovely Days nota-se uma elegância, uma grandiosidade, o shoegazer esta implícito só que a sonoridade do Great Black Night é cheira e exuberante, vem em crescendo e uma sensação de frescor e felicidade acaba por tomar conta completamente de você.

The Smoke is Rising o primeiro ep deles é assim, a exaltação do amor em forma musical, nuances de Verve e Spiritualized aparecem aqui e ali, mas fica somente nisso, porque aqui o que ouvimos é Great Black Night.

I´ve got a lot of love fecha o ep sublimemente e não deixa a menor dúvida de que o GBN é facilmente uma das bandas mais promissoras que este que vos escreve tem escutado atualmente.

Ah o amor.....


***** Interview with Great Black Night *****


Q. When did Great Black Night start, tell us about the history…
Steve D, Anne and Patrick were in a darker gothier band awhile back. When that ended, Steve and Anne started playing more simple and melodic stuff. Over a couple years Patrick came back, Angel came around for vocals. She originally kept the rhythm a la Mimi Parker, and we played a lot of clean and quieter songs. But once Andy and Matthew happened by, it dawned on us that indulging the loud and still crafting songs around strings and guitars would be a really fun way to approach this band..

Q: Who are your influences?
All the heavy hitters like Slowdive and Spiritualized and the like. A lot of attitude driven has always been a source for our writing: Adorable, Flyying Colours, Verve. But we have soft hearts and definitely revere Low, Stina Nordenstam, Fauns.

Q. Make a list of 5 albums of all time…
I wish I was about to be more provocative but late 80’s and 1990’s stuff from the UK just makes my life complete:

Disintegration: Cure
Ladies and Gentlemen: Spiritualized
loveless: mbv
a storm in heaven: verve
Against Perfection: adorable

Q. How do you feel playing live?
I’m not sure if this is falsely attributed or not, but Richard Ashcroft is supposed to have said that he approaches every gig as if it’s the last night on earth. I’ve always thought that was just perfect. If I were in a huddled room for the last night on earth and the band playing had set out to make it worth our while to spend it with them...well that just sounds amazing. We’ve said to ourselves since we started rehearsing that every set we play should help people have the night of their lives. So, our shows are participatory and meant to provide space to simply let go and sing ones guts out.

Q. How do you describe Great Black Night´s sound?
loud, lush, thoughtful, singable, and honoring of our forebears.

Q: Tell us about the process of recording the songs?
We are blessed to have Matthew Eastman as our drummer. He’s a gifted audio Engineer and quite frankly seems to have endless energy for the most minute of details (Eastman Audio, Grand Rapids). We lay scratch guitar and a click track and then rehearse the tune until we’ve let it become it’s own living breathing entity. We’ll build off the scratch guitar until the recording sounds like what we hope our live performance to be. So things start very slowly and then wrap up quite nicely and tightly. There’s also quite a bit of free-style rapping over our otherwise very non-hip hop songs. No one will ever hear these raps, however.


Q. Which new bands do you recommended
I’m so excited about each of these bands:

Ghost Heart and Dear Tracks are both from our town and both bands, regardless of their proximity to me, are two of the biggest bands in the world.

Speaking of the world, I firmly believe Flyying Colours are the best band in the world right now.

Beliefs from Canada are a really important band for the scene. They just know how to gaze.

Q: Which bands would you love to make a cover version of?
That would be different for all of us, I’m sure, but we’ve talked about covering “When I go Deaf” by Low. It seems a bit blasphemous to cover some of the classics. For instance, it would probably be a bad idea to cover Vapour Trail, right? There’s some stuff you just leave be because it’s perfect as is. But if I had the guts, I’d love a shot at “Shine a Light” by Spiritualized or “Sugarcube” by Yo La Tengo.

Q: What´s the plan for the future....
February we’ll release a second e.p. The songs on the second will have grit and some of that attitude I mentioned earlier. We do want to pay the necessary dues in order to make a difference in our own city. Anything that will promote shoegazer in general is of interest to our band. An all expense paid trip to play Brazil sounds nice, so whenever you can hook that up, let us know.

Q: Any parting words?
GBN loves you. Let’s have the time of our lives
*
*
*
Thanks

https://gbnlovesyou.bandcamp.com