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Arcade Fire surprise gig at Primavera Sound Festival 2017. More pics here: https://fastforward-magazine.de/primavera-sound-2017-ueberraschungsparty-mit-arcade-fire/

#arcade fire #win butler #primavera #festival #barcelona #everything now

fallontonight

Looks like Jack White took his flight attendant’s recommendation to heart!

Win Butler seems to have way more fun standing next to Alicia Keys than Jack White next to Daft Punk.

#win butler #jack white #alicia keys #daft punk #tidal #tidalforall #live #launch

calitomnia

Okay well, can interviewers please follow all interviews tokio hotel have done so far after new album and ask different questions? I am already bored of reading the meaning of the tittle of album and how they feel after 5 years break. Thanks

fastforward-magazine

Here, for you ;) http://fastforward-magazine.de/interview-mit-tokio-hotel/

#tokio hotel #interview #tom kaulitz #bill kaulitz

Interview with Richard Reed Parry

Once again I’d like to share one of my favourite interviews with you in the original English version. I recently met Richard Reed Parry, best known as part of the Canadian Indierock Band Arcade Fire, during Hurricane Festival. The day before I had seen him perform his unusual solo project “Music For Heart And Breath” in Berlin and knew, I really wanted to talk with him about it. In “Music For Heart And Breath”, a collection of classical music pieces, the musicians perform by their own heart and breathing rhythm. Sounds complicated? Not at all. The listening experience is joyful and very physical and, one hour before going on stage with Arcade Fire, Richard was so kind to explain to me how it exactly works. So we met in the cosy vacuum of the tour bus and talked about music for heart, breath, soul and brain.

How was it for you yesterday?

It was great! It was really fun. It’s always a litte bit insane. Besides me and one of the musicians everybody else was learning all this music the same day. Which is crazy.

That was actually the first thing I wanted to ask. You probably had not time to meet before.

No, we did not (laughs). But it’s often that way. I played a bunch of these pieces in the UK at the Barbican before the record came out. And it was the same thing, show up at 2 pm, rehearse for two and a half hours and then play at 8 pm. That’s… phew. Unless you play with a band or with an ensemble, which is too expensive or logistically doesn’t make sense, then you get great, beautiful, versatile classical players and just get thrown in. Thankfully André de Ridder, the conducter of Stargaze Ensemble is kind of amazing. To have someone like that helps to make it come together much quicker. Even just to learn music that quickly and then have to play it in this awkward, physically very challenging way is a lot. It always feels very nerve wrecking to me, which is not the goal with this music (laughs).

So they see the sheet music before and that’s it? But it’s probably anyway difficult to prepare for that kind of performance.

Yeah, they can prepare a little bit. They can learn the notes. Sometimes people do, and sometimes they don’t (laughs).

I tried to glance on the sheet music during the performance, I was curious how it is written down, as I guess it doesn’t have the classical rhythm format.

It’s got bars, but it doesn’t have a tempo. For all purposes it looks like normal sheet music, except that you don’t see a time signature and there ’s little instructions along the way and different symbols and things. I use normal looking notes and treat them in specific ways. Every bar represents one breath cycle, one inhalation and one exhalation. Usually every quarter note represents one inhalation ore one exhalation. And a pair of eigth notes with a little arrow is a pair of heart beats. Boboom, boboom, boboom. It’s normal written music, but depending on the piece and depending on the part of the piece it doesn’t function in normal ways. It’s not a perfect system visually but… I’m working on it (laughs).

Hearing for the first time about your music I was really curious how it would work. I imagined that when different musicians play by their own heartbeat, it must sound like a total huddle. But it’s quite the opposite, it’s very harmonic.

Right. It works different ways all the time. Sometimes you have a passage where everyone will play at their own speed. But sometimes the cellist will play to their breath and everyone will follow the cellist. That makes it stay together. When I want it to be more blurry and mixed up, I write a short passage where they start together and then they drift apart in the end. And then sometimes they will all be together, but at the speed of one person’s breathing, who’s acting as the ensemble leader. And at other times, one person is following their breath and everybody else is following their heart beat.

My daughter plays the violin in the school orchestra. She was really surprised when she heard about your music. because she told me the first thing they learn in orchestra is to listen to each other as much as possible. She imagined it quite hard to play together, but at the same time to listen to yourself.

Yeah. It’s half and half. It’s trying to simultaneously bring out these individual qualities and make more allowances for individual, uncontrolled… letting the body be the dictator. How things are gonna work, letting the body be the conductor? It’s kind of out of your control and slightly unpredictable. But then you have the music set up so that it moves along nicely. You know, the pieces are meant to sound in a certain way. It’s different every time but it’s not 100 percent different, it’s 30 percent different or something.

So the musicians do have the stethoscope in their ears.

In one ear. Otherwise it’s impossible to play.

Yeah! I remember me as a kid putting on headphones and recording myself singing to the music without hearing myself.

Right, sounds terrible! (laughs)

Still, even having the heartbeat only on one ear, I imagine it quite hard to concentrate.

It’s really hard. You have one ear only listening to your heart. But not everybody is always playing the heart. The sextett for example, there’s three people playing piano and three playing strings and so the strings are playing to breath and the pianos are playing to heart. So the strings don’t have to worry about the stethoscope. it’s easier for them (laughs). But yeah, you have to have one ear in, be reading the pages and listening to yourself and who is around you at the same time. It really devides your attention. That’s really, really challenging.

What I find amazing is that listening to your music, even though you can’t tell right away only by listening to it what is different about it, it seems to have an immediate effect on your body. Do you know what I mean? It effects you more directly than “normal” music.

Great. It’s meant to be that way. I hoped this would happen and I am always very happy to hear that. I have a friend who is an ostheopath. She had live recordings of the pieces years before I had the recording done. She swears by it! She always uses it when she does her sessions. She says the patients are lying down on the table and open up energetically. Most of the time she says she gets there patients energetically exactly the way she needs it to work on them. That’s great.

How do the musicians feel when they come out of doing it?

They get really into it, because they’re being asked to do something they have never done before. They are being challenged but in a really non aggressive way. In a very gentle way they are being asked to do something completely new. You have to sort of let go some musical intuition that you learn, as a classical trained musician especially. You have to follow your breath - uh, now the breath is short, then you play it short and then you play it long… So they are being asked to strip away some musical teaching. That is really hard, but it is also really liberating on a certain level. It wakes something up in your body/mind connection musically. Afterwards many of them say: Thank you so much, that was a very unique thing that I haven’t done before. It makes them think in a different way and a lot of vague, new possibility occur to people.

Have you ever met musicians refusing to get into it?

A few people. First time I did an orchestra piece a few of them weren’t having it. But that’s ok. If you need to fake it and not do it, that’s fine, just don’t fake it identical to your neighbour, because I guarantee your heartbeat is different (laughs).

I was also wondering what it would do to a group, if you play it together for a longer time…

Yeah, I wonder that too. Hopefully I will find that out in the fall, because I will probably be playing some shows with the same people or a couple of different groups repeatedly, I’m really excited to continue working with the same group. You will not have the stress every day of learning the thing and hoping that it hangs together. I’m curious to see what happens when you can rely on that you know the pieces well and then we get to let something deeper happen. I think that can be very special.

You do have to tell me now, as a last question, how did you come up with the idea anyway?

I had the idea like 12, 13 years ago. At the time I was really excited about John Cage, more about his ideas but also about some of his music. But about most of the pieces I felt like: I kind of like the idea behind it, but I’m not going to listen to it again. Some of the pieces I adore, but mostly there’s this beautiful idea and it’s a great artistic gesture, but in terms of the pure musicality of it I wouldn’t find myself coming back to it. When I was 20 I discovered Steve Reich. To me that felt so connected to the body in some way, this constant pulsing but without being aggressive. Those were two of my big influences. I was studying electro-acoustic music in school and felt like it was disconnected to a level of musicality that was very important to me. I felt like I can think about this, but I cannot feel it. I think the best music is something that your body understands and your brain understands. So I was listening to all this music that was just so brainy and not enough body. I lthought those were so beautiful ideas, how John Cages was looking for ways to find musical keys to unlock other parts of music, to invite elements of chaos, of random and of chance. The way I saw it he was inviting an ivisible hand into the music. That gesture, that idea meant a lot to me and I was thinking okay, what are other ways to add a quality to the music that is taking some decision making out of my hands. I found myself thinking about the body, as I was studying dance at the same time and I was thinking a lot about relationships between music and body, by writing music for dance. And then this idea popped into my head and I immediately had an aesthetic vision to it. If you connect random rhythm to very specific written notes, take a really beautiful melody and attach it to this slightly chaotic rhythm, that could have a really fragile, probably beautiful quality. I could see this vague framework for a different musical aesthetic that I hadn’t heard before. But then I didn’t do it for years. I was always like: oh, one day I’m gonna do it, please, nobody steal my idea before I do it! (laughs) And I’m still amazed that nobody stole my idea and this record is finally done. Somebody should have, but didn’t happen. So, thank you! (laughs)

Interview: Gabi Rudolph

Photo © Guillaume Simoneau

“Music For Heart And Breath” is out now on Deutsche Grammophon.

You find the German translation on our original publication FastForward Magazine.

#richard reed parry #music for heart and breath #Arcade Fire #hurricane festival #interview #music #john cage #steve reich

Interview with Kevin Drew (Broken Social Scene)

Magical things can happen on a friday night. Recently I hooked up with a friend in my kitchen to go out for some week-ending gin drinks, but before that I had to set up a skype line to Toronto, to talk with Kevin Drew, Frontman of Broken Social Scene, about his newly released solo album “Darlings”. And then you end up talking for almost one hour about the important things in life: love, sex, tenderness and, of course, music. I show him my double chin, he shows me his grey hair. That’s what I call breaking the ice.

Anyway, you find the interview in German on our publication FastForward Magazine, but for more people to read it I decided to put up the original version here. Have fun.

KD: That’s the first thing I noticed I’m getting older. Look at my beard, it’s getting lighter.

Only the beard?

No, I got some greys elsewhere… (takes of his cap and shows me the roots of his hair) Oh, I gotta be careful about that. But you know what? I like grey. I think people look sexy with grey hair, I’m not gonna lie.

Do you feel old at the moment?

Yeah, I got a lot of back problems. They are not going away, that’s driving me nuts. I work out a lot and saw an osteopath. And I quit drinking for a while, because I thought my liver might be a part of it. We’ll see. Quitting drinking is really boring, by the way. You realize you spend a lot of time at the drink’s table. But it’s good, I get a lot of other stuff done, even if it’s not that exciting.

So, Mr Drew. How are you workwise at the moment?

I feel good, I’m getting back into it. I haven’t done a lot of interviews, maybe three interviews in three years. I’m very happy with the record, I love it. It’s interesting because you’re only as good as your last effort. There’s a lot of conversation going on about how I’m going to get back into the game. With (Broken) Social Scene it’s kinda easy, you go back in, the people come. The only thing I find frustrating is that I wish I could just pick up where Social Scene left off. I am such a prominent factor of the band, but the guys from Social Scene, they make that band as well. I gotta go solo! See what happens! But it’s ok, it’s something that I love to do. I love making records. I love writing songs. I don’t do it often. It’s my first solo record in seven years and my third record in seven years. I try to make it count when I create these things. Right now I’m talking a lot about sex, love and tenderness. It’s not really something I dislike talking about. So, I’m good!

Your first solo record still stated “Broken Social Scene presents…” on the cover. This time it’s really only you, you and your “Darlings”.

Yap. When you have solo efforts, it’s all about you. You check with yourself. Also I always have a great team with me. But there is something about singing about sex all the time and the emotional aspect of it, about masturbation and loneliness… With Broken Social Scene I can only touch upon these subjects. The band is for the people and you can’t make everything so personal. You can’t make it all about you with Social Scene, that’s not the point. With this solo record I found it really easy to just sit down and sing about what I wanted. That’s when you know you’re in your element. Honesty is the only thing we have going for us in terms of innovation these days. I just wanted to sit down and feel like I’m having a conversation with a dear friend. You just get to be in your own element. That’s the major difference to working with the band.

What I like about “Darlings” is that it is obviously you. It’s totally Kevin Drew, your way to sing, your songwriting. But there is also a lot of new stuff in it. Especially the relaxed side of it, like in songs like “It’s Cool”.

We thought it was getting really mellow for a while. I was thinking wow, I’m making a really mellow, texturally ambient record. But then songs came like “Bullshit Ballad” and “You In Your Were”. The last thing we recorded was “Mexican Aftershow Party”. It started as a joke. My producer Dave Hamelin said: “This is ridiculous, why are we doing this?” And then an hour later he turned to me and went: “This could be your best work!” (laughs) I remember how Beck said years ago: “Your most embarassing songs usually end up becoming your best songs.” I am 37 years old. I am who I am. Self acceptance is a real strong energy to have, because you stop fighting yourself. When you’re growing up based upon making a business out of your emotions there’s a lot of anxiety and insecurities that come with that and that you have to deal with. But then you come to the point where you say: “Okay. This is who I am. Take it or leave it. I got nothing to prove, and I got nothing to lose.” I hope it works. I’m a gambler, Gabi, that’s what I do. I take my diaries, I go out and I gamble with them. What I’m doing right now is, I’m putting out a record I hope will create a road to go down and play in front of people. In doing so, I am going to sing about everything.

Everything?

Yeah. Stop right there. Everything (laughs). So here we are! And people keep asking me: “When are you coming to Vienna?” I have no idea! For me to come to Europe costs an extreme amount of money. I can’t go there and play to a half empty room. I gotta make it count. Life is emotional. It’s difficult out there. It’s hard out there. It’s cold out there. Social media is overtaking everyone’s brain and their head space. People take it outside, they take it into their bedrooms, they take it to work with them. The availability to not have eye contact, the availability of being cowardly is so easily accessible these days. Yeah, you should ask me some questions, this is going into a monologue…

No please, go on. It’s nice to listen to you.

Yeah, but guide me by your questions. So we can both do our jobs here (laughs).

In summer you will be playing Field Trip with Broken Social Scene as headliner and you solo. That might be interesting.

Yeah. We played it last year for the tenth anniversary of “You Forgot It In People”. And we had such a great time that we thought we should do it again. The whole aspect of Social Scene and why the whole thing stopped was because we did hit a ceiling with what we were doing and never really completely broke through like some of our peers did. We never got a bigger production team to get more people out to just keep going. I didn’t want to exhaust it. The spirit of it was so important to me that I wanted to protect it. And this Field Trip Shows last year and the one coming up is really evoking the spirit of why we did it in the first place. We get together as friends, we play one show in our home town, that has been key to our success.

I have to say it now, seeing Broken Social Scene live has been a very deeply moving experience for me. I saw you in Berlin a couple of years ago and you played this wonderful, slowed down version of “Superconnected” for a friend…

Will Munro. Huge man in this city. He died the day before. That was a tough one. For Toronto, within his scene, he was such a prominent, huge influence on the gay art scene in Toronto. I very much loved Will. He was one of these guys that walk in the room and the lights just turn brighter. I remember that show and this version of “Superconnected”. It was a raw one, but a good one and before we went on stage we said we were gonna do this show for Will. That’s why I knew I will never forget that one.

But that’s the special thing with Broken Social Scene to me anyway. And with your solo record the same. This huge energy, combined with a deep emotionality. I don’t know how to explain it, but it hits me deeply inside. How do you do it?

How do I do it?

Yeah, you wanted me to ask questions, so how do you do it?

(Laughs) Well, you have to be real with everything you do. I think if people feel something honest and they feel they can include themselves in the work, in the art that they are either listening to or looking at or reading about, that’s the connection that you wanna have with people. I’ve always been a supporter of enjoy your life, rip your life open. It’s really, really emotional out there, and you gotta connect with it. There are chords, certain keys, that you can chose when you’re writing songs to emulate certain emotions. Especially with Social Scene it was this idea of we’re all here together and we’re all uniting these energies to come at you and try to rip you open and get straight to the point. With “Darlings”… when I was writing “You Gotta Feel It” I was thinking about you. I was thinking about your friend, I was thinking about Friday night gin drinks, I was thinking about people who’ve gone through pain and had amazing wins, and about those who failed. You’ve got to feel your life! That’s why I feel there is so much disconnection. The song “Good Sex” is about lust versus love, tenderness, it’s about the connection. There is all the sex that goes around, there is all that dirt. I just wanna sing about it, put it on the table. Music is meant to remind you you’re being alive. It’s meant to remind you to feel something, to want you to keep going. And if you say to me “how do you do it?” then I’ve already won. I’m only trying to accomplish for you to feel fucking better.

Mission accomplished!

(Laughs) Let’s do this! Why don’t you bring me on Face Time and we go party tonight.

It’s not gonna be an all night thing, there are kids involved in our friday night planning.

All night? I can’t do all night anymore. Since I stopped drinking I’m just exhausted. 10.30 rolls around and I’m so… and then you go out and have dinner and go to a bar and I’m just like… Jesus! People talk a lot of shit! Normally when I have a drink I don’t care, I get involved in a conversation for the sake of my buzz. But when you’re drinking soda water and you’re listening to these people you are like: “What the fuck are you talking about? Get to the point!” And it takes them so long to get to the point. And when they get to the point I’m like… I forgot what the hell you were talking about! (laughter) And then I go home and rent a movie, and I last like 20 minutes while I watch a movie before I fall asleep. And I don’t even have children!

You actually did a quite impressive video for “Good Sex”. I think it’s difficult nowadays to show intimacy in a way that it’s attractive, not over exposed…

I’m not into the disgusting aspects of sex anymore. I think the easy accessibility of porn nowadays is a becoming a major problem to the kids today. When I wanted to watch porn as a teenager I had to have the fucking balls to go into a video store. Go behind these curtains, pick some kind of weird Roccos Anal Adventure, go to the counter, look the woman in the eye and say: “Yep, I’m renting it! And I’m going home now masturbating. I know it, you know it, we all know it. We gotta move on!”

I know exactly what you mean. I’ve worked in a video store for a long time, I’ve been one of those women…

Remember how I said in the beginning: “Have I met you before?” (laughter) No, seriously. In today’s day and age, we got the accessibility to see everything and it shapes what sex is. Love making doesn’t play much of a factor anymore. Tenderness has become a second thought. And the connection of it all has been washed away. There’s a million dollar industry breaking people up. And there’s a billion dollar industry getting them to break up and to remarry. They don’t fucking care! It’s so hard nowadays to stay together with someone. They are always stating you the aspect: “There’s something else. There’s something else…” Sex is meant to be about tenderness. About the connection. And YES, it’s hot. It’s dirty. It’s nice. It’s fucking beautiful! It’s supposed to be a place where you can listen to a breath and love it. Somebody can say something extremely dirty to you and it completely turns you on and it makes your heart fucking pound. But that’s not what’s being taught. But as long as I have a voice and I have distribution I will do my best to say I think it’s bullshit! Oh my God we’ve been chatting for 45 minutes. I have to go in five. Do you have a golden question for me, Gabi? Come on Gabi, give me the golden one!

Oh my god, I can’t handle the pressure! (laughter) No, but speaking about your record again for a change. Are all the songs on it your “Darlings”? Did you all conceive them the same way or were some of them harder to come across than others?

You know what, you’re right. If I have to struggle hard to achieve something, it’s not working for me. There are a lot of songs that aren’t on here. So the ones that are there really naturally just happened. In the mix things took time, but I think in the creation of writing, to be honest with you, most of them happened on the spot. “Body Butter” I just sat on this very desk and pressed record. “Good Sex” I wanted to rewrite “Lover’s Spit” and just spent an afternoon humming the chords. “It’s cool” I made up on the spot. “Mexican Aftershow Party” as I said was a joke that turned into something really cool… “Bullshit Ballad” we were done at one point in the studio, then I got mad and went into the studio and screamed: “Give me a drum beat!” Yeah, they were all really spontaneous moments that you then get to work on for a while. The takes of some of the vocals took a while because I’m just trying to find my voice…

What I find really interesting… sorry, I’ve been interrupting you.

That’s fine. Go ahead. I talk too much.

With your first project KC Accidental you started out with instrumental music, and also the first Broken Social Scene record was mainly instrumental stuff. How much does that influence you nowadays? Is it sometimes still hard when you work on the vocals?

It’s not hard to sing. Just the recording sometimes. If you were to put a gun at my head and ask me what’s my favorite music, I’d say instrumental music. I love soundtracks. And so many bands that I love are instrumental bands. I can listen to the Spa Channel. Put the Spa Channel on and I’m chilling out and I’m good (laughs). When I listen to songs that have lyrical value, I want to sing along with them, I want to feel the power of the words. But when I want to feel what I need to feel I put on soundtrack music, I put on instrumental music. At the end of the day, Gabi, it’s your movie. You’re the director. This is your film. Do what you want! Direct it the way that you want to do it. It’s called your life. And I think that having soundtracks to that notion is very, very important. That’s me. That’s what I do.

You nailed it, Mr Drew! Nothing to add to that (laughter). Thank you for this conversation, it was a sheer pleasure.

Thank you! Take care. Be safe. Don’t drink to much, ladies (laughs).

Interview: Gabi Rudolph

#kevin drew #interview #broken social scene #good sex #music #canada #toronto

Little Dragon, Heimathafen Berlin, 24.02.2014

#litte dragon #concert #Berlin #yukimi nagano #music

Win Butler last night in Berlin. So close...

#arcade fire #win butler #the reflektors #berlin #concert #reflektor #oh orpheus

Fettes Brot haben sich mit uns zum Interview getroffen und uns bei der Gelegenheit ihr neues Album "3 is ne Party" in der Limited Premium Fan Edition da gelassen. Wer will die Box gewinnen? Hier lang bitte:

http://fastforward-magazine.de/?p=19896

#fettes brot #3 is ne party #interview #könig boris #björn beton #dokter renz #hip hop #musik #gewinnen #Gewinnspiel #limited edition #album #CD #hamburg

We are pretty proud to be amongst the first in Germany to listen to Arcade Fire's wonderful new album "Reflekfor". The review is in German but we hope some of you enjoy it. Feel free to share!

#arcade fire #reflektor #review #album #music #win butler #regine chassagne