Motorpsycho - You Gotta Hang On To The Trip You're On...

BENT SAETHER: The time between "Let them eat cake" and "Phanerothyme", it took such a long time for me that when we were working on "Phanerothyme" I really wanted to keep the momentum up, I really wanted keep going. Because I can feel a whole lot of music coming now. And I don't want to take a break; I don't want to chill out.

Bent Saether, die de meeste songs schrijft bij Motorpsycho. Live is hij de bassist, maar op plaat spelen elk van de drie leden zowat alle instrumenten.
Aanvankelijk was het niet de bedoeling om nu al een nieuwe cd op te nemen. Ze hadden een handvol songs over die niet op Phanerothyme pasten en die wilden ze gewoon afwerken. Maar voor ze het goed en wel beseften, waren ze met nieuwe nummers bezig en hadden ze It's a love cult voltooid.

BENT SAETHER: That's how these sessions started out, just to finish some of those songs. We did that and at the same time we obviously recorded some new ones. And then at the end of May we figured out "hey, there is an album here". And that was it. There are two or three songs on this Love cult-thing that were started during the Phanerothyme-sessions. We did some rearranging and some more work on them, just to finish them. And some new stuff.

It's a Love Cult is dus bijna spontaan gekomen, heel anders dan de erg georkestreerde Phanerothyme, waarvan elk arrangement tot de laatste noot was uitgeschreven.

BENT SAETHER: Last time everything was very written, very early. Nothing was really played live. There was not really a lot of band-energy or interaction. It was more about the composition and the orchestrations and about the songs. And it was something that we needed to do, the big orchestral album. And we did it. But it took such a long time, the pay off wasn't that instantaneous as you would like it to be.

Een orkestrale plaat maken, was fijn, maar de muzikanten van Motorpsycho misten de interactie tussen hun drieën. Vandaar dat ze er een punt van maakten om voor It's a love cult zo veel mogelijk samen te spelen.

BENT SAETHER: This time we figured okay, let's not arrange these songs too much, let's just go in there with sketches and see what comes out. And let's, most importantly of all, play together in the same room as much as we can. Just to get that band-thing happening, all those little mistakes that make a band its identity, I would almost say.

En toch staan er op It's a love cult ook enkele orkestrale songs met veel strijkers en blazers. Het verschil is dat die er achteraf zijn aan toegevoegd.

BENT SAETHER: Because it was not written as such. It was stuff that we'd put on afterwards. What does it need? Does it need any more? What would it be? Horns maybe? Let's see, let's try it.

Artiest: MOTORPSYCHO
Song: Neverland
CD: It's a Love Cult
Label / Referentie: Stickman / Konkurrent / 509599 2

Motorpsycho op bezoek in Michael Jacksons pretpark: Neverland.
Heavy metal en country, orkestrale pop of scheurende rocksongs, Motorpsycho heeft het allemaal op het repertoire staan. Maar niet op één plaat, natuurlijk. Bent Saether heeft gemerkt dat er onbewust een systeem zit in de werkwijze van de band: elke cd is een reactie tegen de vorige.

BENT SAETHER: We're starting to see some trends now in how we act. Every time we take some sort of distinctive action for a while, we have some sort of reaction after that. Just to try to torpedo everybody's expectations and also to learn something else, to try to express ourselves in a different way. And so it's back and forth between all these different ways of working. Some albums have big plans and big visions and big schemes, this is what it's supposed to be. And other records are more or less off the cuff.

En It's a love cult hoort dus in de tweede categorie!
Ook de titel is overduidelijk: dit is een plaat over liefde. En over de moeilijkheden die erbij horen.

BENT SAETHER: It's about searching for meaning and truth and at least at a somewhat quasi-philosophical level trying to figure out why and how, all those things, the normal stuff people write lyrics about, I guess. In one way the title sort of made sense. I don't really know if I can explain it, but what I liked about it on a sort of superficial level is that when you ask some people what a love cult is, then you get the answer that it is hippies happily living in the forest. And then on the other hand you get the people who only think of Charles Manson and Jim Jones and the sick side of that cult thing. It's a very intriguing title.

It's a love cult is inderdaad een intrigerende titel, maar nog meer bevreemdend zijn de vele verwijzingen naar cirkels. Denk aan de songtitels Circles of Carousel, maar ook in de teksten duiken vaak cirkels op. Ook dat was niet bewust.

BENT SAETHER: We started thinking about it after a while. There's a lot of circular imagery and a lot of lyric-content having to do with what goes around and comes around. We were thinking of calling it something with circles or "Revolver", if that wasn't taken. But we didn't feel like we needed to put it on a spoon and force-feed you. A lot of the words on this record make sense in comparison to each other. So if you turn the sequence of the songs around a little bit, you can have a little libretto, like an opera. It could be a concept album, but not necessarily. Most of the lyrics happen to be about the same things, which is odd, because we were three different people who wrote them.

Een conceptplaat over cirkels, het had gekund Een cirkels kan een symbool zijn voor eindeloosheid, maar ook voor beperkingen. En dat laatste geldt zeker voor de schitterende song Carousel.

BENT SAETHER: Carousel is definitely about the confinement of it. Back on that carousel again, you've been there before, you don't have to go back, but hey, it's your choice. Someday you might wake up; you might want to get off.

Artiest: Motorpsycho
Song: Carousel
CD: It's a Love Cult
Label / Referentie: Stickman / Konkurrent / 509599 2