The Living Fields - Velsmakende genrecocktail
Intervju - 21.04.2007 -
The Living Fields er for tiden aktuelle med sin første fullengder som jeg personlig har hatt store forhåpninger til, først og fremst på grunn av den eminente demoutgivelsen The Miseries Never Cease som ble utgitt i 2004. Skiva innfrir riktignok ikke i samme grad som nevnte demo, men byr like fullt på stødige og stemningsfulle doom/thrash komposisjoner som vokst overraskende mye siden plata kom i hus.
I forbindelse med skiveslippet har vi tatt en elektronisk prat med bandets primus motor, gitarist Jason Muxlow. En engasjert kar med mye på hjertet. Les om hva han har å si om det kommende presidentalget, musikkindustrien og ikke minst den brokete innspillingprosessen som naturlig nok har blitt en noe komplisert affære siden de tre bandmedlemmene holder til i henholdsvis Canada, Usa og New Zealand. Vi lar Muxlow innlede med en aldri så liten oppdatering. Det har gått 3 år siden den glimrende demoen The Miseries Never Cease så dagens lys. Hva har skjedd siden sist?
Yeah, it's been a while since the EP. We had a number of setbacks and time-sucks after we released the EP...
First, we got an offer from Lee Barret / Elitist Records three days after the demo was released. It was a complete shock to say the least, and when that happened, we woke up and realized that we'd better get all the money / ownership stuff talked out, agreed upon and put into writing. It took a couple of months to find an attorney, hash it all out between ourselves and get it signed.
Surrounding that, we spent 6-8 months talking to Earache about the contract. In the end, they went silent and after another 3 or 4 months, we got word that Earache had folded Elitist in the middle of the night. It was pretty devastating at the time because Lee's such a good guy, but in hindsight, we're probably lucky to have not signed anything.
While all that was happening, Jon was in the middle of a move from New Zealand to London and rebuilding his main band (Monsterworks – www.supermetal.net) in the UK and recording their last album. He still worked on TLF, but the new stuff was a lot more complex and time-consuming that he expected and it took him a while to sort out everything he wanted to do. Not the mention that he read an entire book I mentioned when discussing the theme of "The Overview Effect" to prepare for that song.
While Jon was working on his lyrics and vocals, Chad – who's not a computer guy at all – took it on himself to record his own drums. He bought a new computer and recording equipment, set up a home studio, learned how to operate everything himself and slowly worked his way through the album. I'm still amazed he got through that. I have a hard time recording guitar and drums are 10x more difficult to do by yourself: Go to the computer, arm the tracks, hit record, get back to the kit, put the headphones on, get your sticks, find the tempo of the click track, start playing – "Ah shit, I screwed up!" – sticks down, headphones off, back to the computer, stop, undo, restart. You can imagine how awful that must have been for him trying to get through 10 minutes songs in a single take...
But material from both Jon and Chad trickled in throughout 2005 and I finally had all the pieces by Feb 2006. Just in time for my wife and I to buy a house, move and – just as I got my stuff set up – my computer melted down...twice. On top of that, my ProTools rig was horribly buggy and it seemed that every time I tried to work on the songs, it was just an exercise in frustration and misery. I made the mistake of letting it get the best of me and the whole project sat for about six months because it was too depressing to work on.
Then one day I listened to the rough mixes and something clicked. I got back into it, fought through the remaining work and called it done around New Year's 2007. In January / February I sent out promo kits to a couple dozen record labels and now we're just trying to figure out what happens next.
The Miseries Never is still the best ep I've heard from 2004 and the overall critics were great. I was sure that this was material that soon would get you a contract. How is the hunt going? Have you been in touch with any labels lately?
I'm glad you like the EP that much! I never thought it'd get as much praise as it did, so it feels really good to hear stuff like that. As for labels, it's easy to find someone to put out an album for you, but it's hard to find trustworthy, capable people who are also offering a contract that doesn't completely strip you of your rights as an artist. I think we've found that person though, and hope to have some good news soon...
How did you record the album, and how long have the songs been ready?
Painfully. Slowly and painfully. Since we live all over the world – I'm in Chicago, Chad's from Tennessee but spends time with his wife in Canada, and Jon's from New Zealand but now lives in London – we don't have the luxury of rehearsals. Figuring out the best way to work together was another reason for the delay between the EP and the album.
I expected that I could just record my parts to a click track and have Chad record his drums beneath them. While that worked for the most part, Chad's drums were so much better than I expected, I ended up re-recording all the rhythm guitars and most of the bass to get the beds tied a bit tighter to what he was doing. It was worth it, but it was time-consuming as I had to relearn a lot of stuff I'd written a year or two earlier and not played since. The upside was the I rewrote some parts (notably the verse bits of "The Overview Effect") that turned out far stronger.
The songs on the album were all written around or shortly after the EP. I'm a fairly prolific writer so it was torture for me to work on 2-3 year old songs when I have about 4 albums worth of new material that I'm dying to work on. Another reason why I just couldn't do it after a while.
What gets me excited, though is that I have a brand new Digital Performer rig that's been working VERY well for me so far and now that we have our workflow down and I'm more comfortable mixing, the albums should come out much faster and easier that this first one.
Have The Living Fields ever played live, or do you rather prefer to be a studio band?
I never thought we'd play live, but when we got an offer to play at Heathen Crusade II in Minnesota this winter, we started talking about it. We're all too old and mean to do the 5-guys-in-a-van poverty tour thing, but we'd like to play some festivals in the future if anyone will have us.
The logistics and cost are the killers, though. We'd have to find at least two more musicians to fill out the band, then figure out how to handle the string arrangements (tapes? keyboard player? violinist?). Then Chad and I would have to assemble all these people somewhere, get a rehearsal space and work out the set. A day before the gig, we'd have fly everyone in, find another rehearsal spot and go over the set with Jon.
It sounds like a lot of fun, but to spend that kind of time, money and energy just to play a 3-song set on borrowed equipment for 50 dudes that aren't even fully awake (we'd undoubtedly be one of the first bands to play) just doesn't make sense.
Sadly, we're not yet in a position to command the kind spot in a bill that would make all the time and expense worthwhile, but hopefully we'll sell some records soon and get that opportunity in the future.
The ep was in many ways a easier to get to know than the album in my ears. I feel that the riffing plays a bigger part in it's structure than on the debut album where the vocals are even more varying (in a good way), there are more of the epic and emotional parts, and it's even harder to discover the many layered details by the first listening-sessions. What do you think are the biggest differences between the ep and the album?
You just listed them. The EP was a very simple listen with straightforward orchestration and arrangements. The album is far more complex both vertically (orchestration) and horizontally (arrangements) with a lot of tempo shifts, bizarre time signatures ("The Soil Giveth" opens with a 9/4 beat, "Monument" has a 21/8 rhythm – we didn't even realize it was so complex until we counted it out), instrumental layering, etc.
Then on top of that, the vocals are just over the top. Every track has anywhere from 4-16 tracks of vocals and Jon does just about everything imaginable: clean singing, choral arrangements, thrashy rasps, death roars, black metal shrieks, Halford-esque wailing…
Needless to say, mixing it all was a challenge. I eventually gave up trying to make every instrument clearly distinguishable and just went for blunt-force impact. With headphones, you can still pick out each instrument, but over speakers, it's just a massive wall of sound when everything kicks in (check the chorus of "The Overview Effect" for the best example of this). I don't know if that's the best way to do it, but most of my favorite albums are rather murky (old Anathema, My Dying Bride, Paradise Lost, Black Sabbath, etc.).<
The music-industry has been crying about the lack of income because "everyone" is downloading all the music they want illegally. But some bands like you promote themselves on myspace, and sell single-tracks through their websites. This was also the way I found the demo 3 years ago. Have illegally downloads been a problem for you personally or is it possible to get enough attention from the metal crowd in this way to survive as a band in the long run?
We've benefitted greatly from the internet, so for us - so far - any freeloaders have been far outweighed by the good folks that found us online, bought the demo, wrote reviews, etc. Still, I know I'll feel a twinge of irritation if I ever see our stuff up for grabs because for that split second, I'll see it as money lost that could have been put towards a better production, better equipment, better packaging, etc. But then I'll remember that I've downloaded other bands album and that this is just the old karmic circle coming around to bite me in the ass. So long as someone hears it and supports us in SOME way - review our stuff, interviews like this, talk about it in a forum, anything - it's all good in the end.
As for downloading as a whole, nothing is ever black & white, including how I feel about it. On one hand, I download stuff from time to time, especially if it's out-of-print or something I never would have bought. But there's a distinction between the major label mainstream and the independent underground.
It's hard to feel sorry for major labels and their artists because Britny's "singing" career is just part of her income and neither her nor her big multi-national media corporation are really going to feel anything if you steal her album.
On the other hand, Cannibal Corpse and Metal Blade DO feel it when you steal their releases, and the smaller the band / label, the more painful it is. The people that suck are the metal "fans" that steal everything they listen to, put albums on the net before their release dates, never buy CDs, never buy merchandise, never go to shows, never give anything back to the scene as a whole. They're parasites and should be treated as such. Them and that Russian site that's selling our EP for 59¢! I'm insulted!! ;)
Dim Prospects from the demo is a track where Ward Churchill and Noam Chomsky gets more attention than the music through their quotes. Most of the lyrics in the extreme-metal scene don't really deal with political themes. I understand that you personally belongs far out on the left side politically yourselves? Does The Living Fields also serve as a channel to promote your political view or is it simply an overstatement from my side?
I was raised Protestant and it's the sort of religion that says "You either believe in God and live a certain way or you don't." There's no magic man in a funny hat who lets you off the hook in exchange for a confession and some Hail Maries. In the wrong hands, that kind of Fundamentalism turns into things like "God Hates Fags" politics and jets crashing into buildings, but that's just how my brain's been wired: If you believe something, you live by it, and if you can't live by it, you're a traitor to yourself.
When I got out of college and moved to Chicago, I had a lot of time on my hands and ended up reading a lot of books and listening to a lot of audio lectures. At some point, I stumbled onto Chomsky and he pulled all the disparate things that were bothering me (advertising, foreign & domestic policy, consumer culture, the Middle East, religion, war, corporate power, human rights, etc.) into a cohesive worldview. He made connections I'd sensed but never seen and to this day, he's the only one I've read that seems to understand the big picture.
While all this stuff is going through my head at night, I spent my days working at advertising company. We weren't selling cigarettes to children or anything, but I was part of this machine that I detested and I had a lot of internal conflict because couldn't live up to the ideals that I believed in. One of the best days of my life was being downsized from that place because it forced me to start freelancing and by some luck, my clients have all turned out to be good people doing - if not explicitly "good" things - at least no harm.
At some point a few years back, I found this lecture by Howard Zinn called "Artists in a Time of War" and it was the first time I'd heard anyone suggest that cultural movements aren't always spurred on by academics or even activists, but more often by musicians, poets, authors, painters, writers, etc.
The average person won't listen to Chomsky give a lecture on corporate tyranny, but a whole lot of people listened to Woody Guthrie. The same can be said for countless others artists in countless other movements, good and bad. Look at the role art played in Communist Russia or Nazi Germany. Look at what music did for the Civil Rights and anti-war movements in the US. An artist can cut through the facts and rhetoric and get right to the heart of a matter in a way that an academic can't and an activist shouldn't.
At that point, I accepted that I'm not brave enough to be an activist or smart enough to be an academic or pure enough to be an idealist, but I can write music and I can get certain things done. So, that led to The Living Fields being an outlet of sorts for my personal politics. I don't want to beat people over the head with a "message" but lyrical themes are definitely steered in a general direction.
I have to say, though, that any lefty stuff is mine alone. I can't speak for Jon or Chad...
In The Living Fields biography you are saying that you become really fed up with the (directe quote) near-fascist, right-wing idiocy pouring out of the metal community after September 11th. Exactely what bands are you pointing to here (I must admit that what I first thought about was Iced Earth)?
Thankfullly, that seems to have passed, but after 9/11, there was a lot of very "patriotic" talk by bands and fans on forums and stuff. That sort of stuff was everywhere at the time, but it surprised and saddened me to see our community fall in line with the status quo so easily, because metal is what taught me to question authority in the first place (not blindly challenge it, but question it).
Even though that's mostly blown over, there's another group of people who have warped metal's core philosophies of "to each his own" and "be proud of yourself" into a really ugly elitist attitude. I don't fear the messengers or even the message, but the unquestioning acceptance of such blatant, arrogant conservatism is rather disturbing. One day you're "misanthropic," the next you're "NSBM," and from there it's a short downward spiral into myopic Aryan "supremacy."
Here in Norway the news from USA nowadays is about the election between Clinton and Obama. Who do you think has the best chance to win and why?
I wish I knew. Obama seems the better candidate, but what we know of politicians at that level is only slightly more "real" than what we know of actors from watching their films. I just hope that one of them wins and puts end to what the extreme right wing of this country has been doing the past 7 years.
It's important to remember, though that Democrats are only marginally better than Republicans. They are both business parties first and foremost and any connection to the lives of real people are secondary and mostly for show.
In What is Left Behind on the new album you have included another sample, this time an energetic discussion where I doesn't seem to figure out what the heart of the discussion really is about. Could you tell me a bit more about this?
That's taken from an old film called "You Can't Take It With You." It's a cute movie, but that speech comes out of the blue at the end and is quite a dramatic bit of cinema. Here's the setup: A family of free-spirited artists led by an aging patriarch are having their house bought out by a ruthless local businessman. To complicate matters, the son of the businessman is in love with the daughter of the house. That scene comes near the end when the father of the house, the business man, his son and a few other characters have all been tossed in jail for disturbing the peace. The clip comes in just as the businessman starts to berate his son for being soft. The father of the house comes to the son's defense and gives the big speech...
What's so strange is that it not only fit perfectly with the theme we had going for the song, but also with that big empty section near the end. I'd been trying to fill it with something and tried that just for fun. It was rather eerie how seamlessly it laid in the space and how perfectly it builds up to the end. I'm probably the only one, but I still get chills on the last lines: "When your time comes I doubt if a single tear will shed over you. The world will probably cry, "Good riddance!" That's a nice prospect, Mr. Kirby. I hope you'll enjoy it. I hope you'll get some comfort out of all this coin you've been sweating over then."
All the string-instruments are still programmed? Do you feel that it works absolutely fine the way it is today or have you talked about the possibility to find someone who can play the strings?
Yeah, they're all still programmed. I invested in a better library, but you just can't replace the real thing. I doubt we'll have the luxury of hiring a real string quartet any time soon, but at some point I hope we do. I'm kind of curious what people will say about the strings. I'm constantly debating whether it's too much. I'll find out soon enough, I guess...
Which bands have inspired you the most as a musician?
One of my over-arching critiques of metal today is that most bands establish a sound and never deviate from it. For example, I love what Chad did with Brodequin, but if you put any of their albums on, each song is exactly like the one before it and the one that follows. They all sound like Brodequin – which is awesome – but by the third record, there really wasn't anything left to say.
In contrast, I grew up on bands like Sabbath, who not only wrote albums that sounded different from each other (compare "Paranoid" to "Sabotage" to "Dehumanizer"), but each song had its own unique identity. You could pick up an album and say "I like this one and that one but that one sucks!" and it was okay because the bands were taking chances with their material. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't, and what didn't sound good to you would sound good to someone else. The end result was far more diversity by far fewer bands. Today, we have the same diversity but only because there's a million bands putting out records. Unfortunately, few of them say anything beyond their first album.
So, with that said, who inspires me? Off the top of my head – and this is in no way either definitive or complete – Black Sabbath, Motorhead, Bathory, Hypocrisy, the first four Metallica albums, Megadeth, Testament, Solitude Aeturnus, Skyclad, Solefald, Tyr, Morbid Angel, Borknagar, Vintersorg, Anathema, My Dying Bride, Paradise Lost, Officium Triste, Hollenthon, Nortt, Hills of Sefiroth, Ruins of Beverast... The list just goes on and on.
Because of your own webzine Deadtide I'm sure you're pretty updated about what is happening in the metal-scene nowadays. What have you been listened to recently, and what albums have been the best so far in 2007?
The last really good albums I discovered were "The Locust Years" by Hammers of Misfortune and "Maniacal Renderings" by Jon Oliva's Pain, but those are both 2006 releases. There hasn't been much that really sucked me in so far in 2007 but it usually takes me a few months to "get" a lot of stuff that other people latch onto immediately.
That said, here are a few highlights:
Solefald's new one is quite good, but Cornelius' vocals are wearing thin. Thank god Lars is in that band because he's blessed some of the best pipes in metal.
Love the new Novembers Doom. Very good release and easily my favorite of theirs.
Therion's new one is quite good and the first of theirs that I've liked in a long time.
Swallow the Sun's new one just came in and I'm liking it a lot more than the last one. They're a great band, but I like my doom dirty and they're very clean. This is good stuff, though...
They aren't out yet, but I'm really looking forward to the new Megadeth, Testament and Entombed releases...
Thank a lot for the interview, and good luck with The Living Fields in the future. If you want to add some final words, here is the chance to do so.
Not much to add beyond a sincere thank you to both yourself and Metal Norge for supporting us. We're not to everyone's liking, so we always appreciate those that keep an open mind and take the time to understand what we're doing.
If anyone's interested hearing our stuff, please visit us at TheLivingFields.com and download the songs and samples. With any luck, we'll have our self-titled debut album available as a CD by summer. For now, you can purchase it as a download on our website or myspace page (www.myspace.com/thelivingfields)...
Thank you!
Skrevet av Rita