New album and DVD

Nice interview from adressa.no:

Motorpsycho er tilbake

Står ikke verden til påske? Dette er Motorpsycho, og de smiler og ler!

Gitarist Snah kikker med jevne mellomrom ned på den nye custom-bygde gitaren han skal prøve ut på øving og smiler lurt til seg selv.

Trommeslager Kenneth Kapstad gliser og nikker på de rette tidspunkt og spiser skinkesandwicher for tre. Bent Sæther fekter og spøker og prater om livelyden på et eller annet Sonny Rollins-album fra 50-tallet.

For to år siden var samme band den mutteste, og for å være ærlige, den vanskeligste gjengen nord for Dovre.

- Det var ikke for å demonstrere at vi gjorde oss så utilgjengelige, sier Bent.

- Når vi selv var så i villrede om vår egen fremtid, hva skulle vi svare journalister?

Livet etter Gebhardt

Bakgrunnen for den anspente stemningen da de ga ut «Black Hole Blank Canvas» for to år siden hadde utgangspunkt i det som skjedde året før det igjen. Det ekstremt samspilte bandet mistet sitt ene fundament: Trommeslager Håkon Gebhardt.

- At Gebhardt sluttet var på et vis en lettelse. Det lå i kortene lenge at han var på vei ut - da avgjørelsen til slutt ble tatt var i hvert fall situasjonen avklart.

- Men vi var på det nivået at det ikke var noe vits å diskutere hva vi skulle gjøre. Vitsen var å gjøre noe. Hva som helst, smiler Bent Sæther.

- Har du noen låter liggende, Snah? Så tok vi det fra det.

- Alle instrumentene ble spilt av oss to. Det blir ikke mye improvisatorisk samspill da, sier Snah lakonisk.

Bent spilte trommer på plata, så leide de inn en nederlandsk kompis som turné-trommeslager. Han var ok han, men det føltes mer som et prosjekt enn et fungerende band. Da er det annerledes nå som de har funnet Kenneth - med bakgrunn fra blant andre Dadafon og Gåte.

Godlynt mobbing

- Kenneth er den teknisk beste trommeslageren jeg noen gang har spilt med, samtidig som han er en «spillende» trommis, som Gebhardt, sier Bent - som likevel ikke bare skryter. Han er påpasselig med å holde yngstemann nede. Henvisningene kommer stadig til andre kjente nykommere, for eksempel Ron Wood som ble akseptert som fullverdig medlem i Rolling Stones for bare noen år siden, 30 år etter at han ble med i bandet.

Deep Purple og Black Sabbath er musikken de tre virkelig har felles, men nykommeren har stor sans for alle musikalske kjernepunkt i Motorpsycho-universet: Tyngden til Purple, løsheten til John Coltrane og låtene til The Who.

Ikke akkurat radiovennlig

Motorpsycho er tilbake også i den forstand at de gjør det konsekvent vanskelig for seg. Det kommer ikke akkurat noen radiosingle i forkant av utgivelsen av «Little Lucid Moments». Den består av fire kutt, hvorav tittelkuttet er aller lengst, en suite på 24 minutter koblet sammen av det som først var tre enkeltlåter.

- Vi hadde ingen konkret plan i utgangspunktet, men slik ble det denne gang. Vi spilte inn seks kutt i studio, og de fire vi bruker var de sentrale og utgjør en naturlig helhet. Mens forrige album var låtorientert, er dette spilt inn med fokus på ensemblespillet.

- En kan trygt si vi går mot strømmen, dette passer ikke akkurat inn i den formaterte P3-hverdagen. Ingen av låtene er under ti minutter, og dermed kan vi heller ikke legge ut noen av kuttene på Itunes, konstaterer Bent om plata som utgis som enkel cd og dobbelt vinylalbum - i et cover laget av Kim Hiorthøy.

Etter utgivelse av albumet blir det turné. På den står de friere enn noen sinne til å velge låter, og de gamle låtene som blir valgt kommer til å få en annen valør. Mye i Motorpsycho er det samme, men samtidig er mye nytt.

- En tredjedel av bandet er jo byttet ut. Klart det har innvirkning, slår Bent Sæther fast.

translation please!

the new print-issue of the german magazine visions (www.visions.de) have a 3 pages feature about motorpsycho. and the new record is one of the highlights of the months!!! i cant wait to hear the new stuff!!! and there is a picture of the dvd, snah is on the cover. it looks like 1997! great motorpsycho year!

scans please? ;-) would be nice, norman.

Aaah hell yeah!!! Finally, it's "official"!! And with the new album, it's safe to say that this will be the year of the motorpsychos! Not to mention the psychonauts!! This will be sugar sweet!

It sounds more promising than ever, can't wait to get my hands on the record !

no leak this time...

Can't believe that I'm stuck in Australia when the LLM tour will commence . I'll have to rely on bootlegs and concert reports. I really envy you guys! Hopefully they'll play a couple of gigs in autumn when I return to Norway (maybe a “UKE” gig of some sort?).

I wonder whether "Phoots Phlower" will appear on LLM with a different title? The interview claim that six tracks were recorded, but only four chosen for the album.


Gustav (impatiently waiting for pre-ordered LLM)

Crosspost from G35 (thanks to Volker):

Visions article on LLM

[url]http://img530.imageshack.us/img530/7711/page1zy1.jpg[/url]
[url]http://img206.imageshack.us/img206/3481/page2me6.jpg[/url]
[url]http://img206.imageshack.us/img206/1883/page3te1.jpg[/url]
[url]http://img206.imageshack.us/img206/6007/page4xa1.jpg[/url]

Oh well, my scanner is like 13 years old, so the result is not quite the same.
Is anyone here interested in translating this? I would probably help.
But frankly, I don't think that article brings in anything new anyway, especially not for us nerds here. It's all about time changes: new drummer, families, departure of long time accompaniments (they didn't mention that the fans never left), new record label, etc. The record review itself(not scanned) is over all very good but not much revealing as well.

Tho, on page 4 Bent gives some insight into those subheads. Saying, Consciousness Causes Collapse would be a term from quantum physics with a link to Schrödinger's cat. Working title for Confusion is Kjeks was "Biscuit", and that transmutation is some work the Alchemist is practising, fallen pennies=comprehension & the luminiferous aether is based on the theory that there is an invisible space (dimension) which is connecting everything with each other.

and this is what the DVD seems to look like:
(it was just a small thumb)
[url]http://img139.imageshack.us/img139/5619/dvdch0.jpg[/url]

greetings,
Volker

Fantastic, otherdemon

thank you so very much!

kind of translation of the interview (the introduction is "only" a celebrations with the usual superlatives music writers love to use ):

VISIONS:
It seems as if nobody wants a good record anymore, right?
BENT:
Yes. We're back in the 60ties. Surely you had one of these recordplayers w/batteries too? I killed dozens of 7"s on mine.
We went in a circle and are back in a time when people listen to songs instead of whole albums. Interesting, but I can't say that I like it. I'm an album kid, of the 70ties. But that's how things pass.

VISIONS:
So you're outside the scene with your new record. (...) Nobody will put out a single from it.
BENT:
No, and on purpose. It's probably suicidal to do a record like this. Then again it's our odd albums that were succesful and stood the test of time. The ones we went a step further with as we thought we could. We always took the opportunity to make a statement by releasing these records anyway. This one feels the same again. We say: TV, celebrity-crap and fame are of no meaning to us, as long as we make aliving of our music and are able to do the next album. We're stubborn there, just making music, for the hell of it. It worked so often. In the last 20 years we often took risks and in the end we won. We'll see.

VISIONS:
Not every MP-album is timeless. The new one will probably be way up on an imaginary hit list, but there are some others...
BENT:
If you're talking musical stylistics...
The last albums we made with Gebhardt were genre exrecises. We said "Let's do an orchestrated 60ties pop record, like no one has done since." It was... I don't know, a plan, a task, which dictated all the songs.

VISIONS:
Conceptalbums?
BENT:
Very. Some songs worked, some not quite. But you always hear their backstory or the point in time they relate to. No concept this time. We went into the studio, recorded what we could, about 2 hours of music, and cut out all the hits and popsongs in the end. The 4 songs are a summary of the session's feel and so it feels natural. The record shows pretty much what we did since Kenneth's in.

VISIONS:
To me it sounds like MP becoming a new band.
BENT:
Absolutely. It's the first album in ten years we made with a devoted drummer. When Geb started to play banjo, that was his interest. Drumming became more of a job, at least this was my perception. Kenneth lives around the corner, has a grade from the jazz conservatorium and has tried every style. Metal, jazz, improvisation, anything.He knows exactly what he does. Drumming is his only interest, nothing else. We asked him to play some keyboards during quiet parts but he absolutely wouldn't. We always had a fourth guy for harmonies and colours within the sound, but there's no need anymore due to Kenneth. There's already enough happening.

VISIONS:
The energy is back, too. Lacked a bit on BH/BC.
BENT:
On this album we managed to fuse a band's live energy with a studio's perfection. You can say that LLM shows us as a live band. BH/BC is rather a collection of songs, not an "album-album". We couldn't have done it any other way back then. It was a means for us to realize what exactly MP is.

VISIONS:
On earlier records there was a MP-family with Lars Lien, Deathprod, Morten Fagervik, Kim Hiorthoy and more. Does it still exist in any way?
BENT:
No. It was a vital scene. Lots of people around the band made their own thing in their own pace and it all fit. But it changed. Kim moved '94 to Oslo, then Berlin, and cares for his own career. Deathprod moved 97 to Oslo. Lars got way too busy with his studio. So it fell apart. But that's ok, we weren't obligated to each other. Everyone had input for a while. When Geb left, Snah and I did a housecleaning and wiped away anything that is of no use for us. So we were left with Kim who was always there for us and always did good work, and Pidah, our good and affordable soundguy. That was it.
Another important step for us was to leave Sony Norway. We lacked the energy for this on our last record. Now we do it. We want to make sure that everyone around us is there only because of us. To feel like being a milked cow isn't great. Lots of oldtimers are gone. But we did drive to Haldern again to record with Helge and Kai (to athletic sound, AADAP 97), because they got the best room to record a band live.

VISIONS:
It must be a challenge to join an experienced trio as the third guy. Does Kenneth have any backstory with MP?
BENT:
Hardly. He's ten years younger. We got to know him a few years back on a project lead by Oyvind Brandtsegg. A comission (?) of the jazz festival Trondheim. Oyvind did jazz versions of his favourite songs, looking for drums, bass and guitar. 2006 we were on stage together for the first time. So what do musicians do when they get to know each other? Talking music. You could tell hardrock was Kenneth's thing by looking at him. So Snah asked for fun about his favourite drummer, and he said the magic words: "Ian Paice". That was an raised eyebrow moment for Snah and me. We probably both thought "okay, maybe this guy isn't as stupid as we think he is". So we asked him to play Deep Purple's "Burn" with us. You have to be a real good drummer for this one. We played it straight through and it felt great. When the Jacco thing turned out to be more of a project than a proper band, Kenneth was the better alternative. Now he's in to stay and we're his priority.

VISIONS:
What sets a 3min song apart from a 20min song?
BENT:
When we worked on that jazz thing, we ended up with a medley of pieces lasting one hour. Interesting experience. To maintain full concentration for an hour forces your head to go somewhere else. The psychedelic effect of being for a long time within the music does something to the head of the musician and the listener. I find this very exciting right now and of great value for our music. And it's what we're best at. If you don't get it, leave it. But that's where we are right now.


(ooff, took longer than i thought. should be understandable. my guerilla english... )

ah goldenblissard already did the subtitle thing. lucky me.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/19/2008 06:46PM by supernaut.

btw i don't like the interviewer. doesn't seem to know a lot about the band. and no word about the dvd. sheeesh...

What Supernaut? What subtitle thungy??

the interviewer is the singer of the german band pendikel. i think the interview is quite ok, but i'd had some more interesting questions.

btw: typo on the first page: hAkan gebhardt...haha, bet he would'nt laugh

The Golden Blissard Demon Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> What Supernaut? What subtitle thungy??


oops, otherdemon it was.


---

even worse if Visions hasn't even a staff interviewer ready. they've treated the greatest band on earth - and are they indie alternative or what? - like some unimportant everyband for over 12 years now. they never got them. shame.

not true or? supernaut? you don´t know even one song of legendary noise (and later indie rock/prog) band Pendikel, or??? If Pendikel doesn´t know about motorpsycho who else...
sure, everybody here would have his own special questions to MP. Wait until the other mags interview them... but don´t throw stones here...

BTW: [url]http://www.pendikel.de[/url]
great: with musicplayer

I used to read Visions alot (I still have a HUGE pile of issues on my shelve) but at some point (like 5 years ago?) I didn´t like it anymore. It had got a little too commercial and I think they changed alot of their journalists. It surely had also to do with the fact that I wasn´t too much into the bands they were writing about then.
But I pretty much liked that MP interview. There´s one old issue were MP is on the cover (I think when they released LTEC) and they always had a very good status in the Visions mag.
Check the box in the new interview where he writes about TM and TU, they are treated pretty nicely there!

i meant that on one hand Visions always were favourable with MP when they put an album out, but on the other they ignored them mostly. other artists get mentioned as gods in every other issue just because they spill another drink.
ok, maybe it's a good sign. it only shows that Motorpsycho isn't there for spilling drinks but for making records.

@Chris
i never heard of Pendikel before (legendary? ermm...?). and if i did "throw a stone", then obviously not in their/the interviewer's direction. it's just the mag's attitude about it i questioned. whatever. let's not be so picky.
but listening to them now. and i don't like it. sorry.