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Nice one.
As of not touring until late 2021, I wonder how much of The All is One we'd actually get to hear. They'll have two more albums written by then.
Nice interview. But I was a bit sad when I read this paragraph:
Quote:– How has Covid-19 affected the band?“Well, when it hit, Snah had to babysit his 5- and 7-year-olds for a couple of months, so everything basically just stopped. Tomas had an operation on his foot, I wrote a bunch of new tunes, we mixed the record … Our usual summer airport running around didn’t happen since all the festivals were cancelled, so we had an actual summer holiday for the first time in two decades. That was refreshing. But we have also not had any income, so we are on the dole and financially not having much of a good time. It’s difficult to say the least.â€
Thanks for the interview. But I don't get Bent's "We suck at repeating ourselves" line. MP have been repeating themselves for the last ten years. He probably feels different because for him there is just so much to explore in the heavy psych / prog rock realm, but I really feel the last few MP albums have been variations on a theme, regarding the music. MP have always been a hard rock hippie band at heart, that part of their sound has been present since the very first album. The metal groove riffing, the jangling indie rock guitars, the postman rock parts have come and gone, while the Sabbath has always been strong with the guys. They've only decided to dig deeper and have been able to explore their prog leanings a little further as they've become better musicians over the years. I'm not trying to denigrate the guys, I still love their work. But it simply isn't very surprising to me anymore. That is not necessarily a bad thing. The music has to be good, the style is secondary (if that makes any sense). But the constantly evolving MP is a thing of the past to me. Maybe they'll surprise us in the future with their first reggae/ska album, now that would be something!
By the way, the new album is (as expected) really good!
Well, although I sort of agree that saying «we suck at repeating ourselves» smells a little of self-mythologizing, I have to disagree that they are not continuing to change or develop. Especially the last three albums have taken them to some new places IMHO. Take a song like Ship of Fools – where did that come from? And N.O.X. really sounds like nothing else they’ve done before.
I think the Kenneth years did show some signs of stagnation – there was a lot of energy in those first few albums, but stylistically not much new came out of those years except maybe The Death Defying Unicorn, and even that was a fairly overt nod to prog conventions.
Honestly, I think the addition of Tomas is a godsend. He has more of an avant garde outlook it seems. Both Bent and Snah are over 50, and it is extremely rare for any artist to truly develop into new areas at that age. Usually it’s more a case of ever refining the «formula» that they have arrived at.
I love Thomas as well, he seems to be somewhere right in the middle between Geb and Kenneth, he can just groove along but he's also got those crazy jazz chops.
I've never felt that MP were stagnating, at least not in terms of their devotion to their craft. Like I said, one does not have to develop musically to continue to make great music. And I do indeed have the impression that MP have been "refining their formula", as you put it. That's a very good expression and perfectly sums up what I was thinking about.
But that's simply my very subjective impression…
"We suck at repeating ourselves"
…I understand this in two ways.
One: as a conscious decision. They don't want to ride the same train over the years. If two or three consecutive albums sound similar, then I assume there were too many good ideas for one album. See SLWE and BTS for example. LLM and HMF maybe, too. Or this Gulvag trilogy. You wouldn't want to throw away great stuff just because you did somewhat similar last year. Also didn't they say once they usually pan out the next 2 or 3 years?
Two: Spontaneity. Band meets, jams, throws ideas around, has a certain sense for asthetics and – despite exceptional musicianship – limitations due to musical persona. Meaning, you might play all kinds of stuff but it's always YOU playing YOUR way according to YOUR taste. Of course styles and riffs of days and songs long gone pop up again. It's natural.
MP don't stagnate, nor is their journey a straight line never looking back. It's a wild ride all over the place, looping, catapulting, with the occasional backflips. So there's no will to repeat, but also no stubborn determination to never ever do the same thing again. Hey let's do an acoustic number again, an epic, a jazzy thing, a rocker. Let's get in guests we've worked with before. It's the psychoverse, living and breathing. What happens, happens. So yes, I see Bent's point.
It’s kind of interesting to see Bent’s statements on the matter over the years. From «we could have made Demon Box 2, but that would be the easiest thing in the world» (from 1994ish) and «every album is a counter-reaction to the previous one» (from late 90s and onwards) to «we tend to dig deeply into things for 2-3 albums, and then we’re done with that» (recent years). The last really radical change of direction and way of composing from one album to the next, I think, was with Little Lucid Moments. But within the «frames» of what they’ve been doing since 2008, they’re still able to surprise me at least (the single didn’t at all, as I’ve said before). Not by going trance or reggae or any such, but simply by making awesome new stuff within those frames. I dont’t love it all to death, but then again neither did I 20+ years ago.
Ehm, where was I? I think I was trying to say that us old psychonauts are kinda used to drastic changes from one year to the next. I don’t really think we’ll have much more of that, but of course: they’re more than welcome to surprise me in that department as well. And yeah, changing the drummer from time to time honestly seems kind of necessary in retrospect.
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