|
|||||
Marcus Jidell
|
I N T E R V I E W
Interview Marcus Jidell (by email)Hi Marcus and thank you for giving us a few minutes of your time for this interview.The title of the album as well as the song titles cast some doubt on the source of inspiration of the content. Can you tell us more about their origins?Every song has its own story that has inspired the compositions. When I write I see a lot of pictures and colors and that´s what I´ve been trying to make the listener feel. The music is also very emotional and dramatic. Some songs are heavy and some are soft and romantic. If you set your imagination free you will see a lot of different images inside your head, while listening to the album. If you listen carefully at "Arctica" for example you might feel the cold wind, the ice and snow, the silence of the Arcitc winter that suddenly breaks when you discover the big polar bear that has been sneaking upon you... and you start to run! I believe that some of the songs are issued from strange stories. Can you give us an example for one of the titles?"El-Amarna (Ruins Of Akhetaton)": I read this book about Pharaoh Echnaton and the city he built by a great Finnish author named Mika Waltari. Pharaoh Echnaton tried to build a place where peace should reign but of course it didn't work out the way he planned. There's a lot going on story-wise in this song (as in the others) but I don't want to tell too much since I want the listener to make his/her own pictures and stories. Referring to the promo documents, it took ten years for you to realize this project. Why did you wait so long and will we have to wait until you celebrate your 50th birthday to have the next solo album?Yes, this album has been written and recorded under a long period of time. I started to write the songs and do the demos about ten years ago. Five years ago I started to record the drums for the songs with Andreas Johansson, right after that I worked for a month with the songs but didn't get the feel and sound that I was looking for. I was working by myself and didn't have the knowledge and studio equipment that I needed. So I just got tired of it and stopped the process. In between touring I continued to work with other studio productions such as Royal Hunt and Evergrey and I got better at how to record and mix music. One year ago I found the old recordings and listened to the songs and felt that, wow this is good!! So I started to work on the songs again to finish the recordings that Andreas had played drums on. We used the drums we recorded five years ago on three of the songs but we had to re-record drums on "Huldra" to get the grow right. That had nothing to do with how Andreas played but how it was recorded. While on tour with Evergrey, Hannes Van Dahl and I talked about if maybe he could play on some songs on the album to, so when we found the time we did. Hannes played drums on two of the songs and did a great job! I really hope that I can start to work on a new album soon! I think it will take three or four months of full time work to write and record a good album and of course I need to afford to take the time to do it. But if this album sells decent I'll start right away! :-) I really want to write new music and I have a lot of new ideas! The album is full of songs that we do not expect to hear on a metal musician record. Is this because a solo project allows more freedom in terms of creativity?When I write this music I start with a "blank paper" there are no boundaries and I just play whatever comes out of me. If I like what I hear I start to compose music out of the melodies or rhythms I came up with. For me the most important thing is that the music is emotional. I don´t see myself as a "metal musician" in that way and don't think like that when I write this music. I think that it would be a bad thing to limit myself by just trying to make metal music when I do this. Of course I love metal and hard rock but there is so much more music around that I also love listening to. Since I started to learn music I have always been writing music and the reason I started this project was beacuse I wanted to see if could write instrumental music and make it interesting for me to listen to. With only thirty-four minutes, the album is relatively short. This is, in my opinion, one of its strength but is this a choice or a finding resulting from the available material?I don't see a reason to make an album longer just for the sake of it. This album is around thirty-four minutes. The next one might be fifteen minutes or maybe sixty-five minutes. It is what's on the thirty minutes that counts don't you think? ;-) In this album you have several guests and especially your father. Is he proud of your musical career, and how did playing with him make you feel?You'll have to ask him, I guess, but he tells me that it sounds nice when I play it for him. But then again he is a very nice and humble man so maybe he just doesn't want to hurt my feelings. ;-) No seriously, my father has always been interested in my music since I became a pro and we talk a lot about different music when we meet. For me it has been great to be able to work with my father on this album and I hope that he can participate on the next one as well. He was the one that took me to classical and jazz concerts as a kid and talked to me about the music afterwards. He has been a big inspiration for me of course. As I grew older I played hard rock, blues and metal for him and he started to enjoy that kind of music too. We can feel several influences in your playing. What are your models and why?Here's a bunch of people that have inspired me: Johnny Cash, Yngwie Malmsteen, Les Paul, Leslie West ,Chuck Berry, Ritchie Blackmore, Johnny Winter, Jimi Hendrix, Carl Perkins, Mark Knopfler, Joe Satriani, Muddy Waters, Miles Davis, David Gilmour, Gary Moore, Angus Young, Albert King, B.B.King, Jerry Douglas and Dan Tyminski. I also love to listen to instrumental classical music from composers like Debussy, Stravinsky, Mozart amongst others and I got inspired by the way these guys arrange music. When I was a kid I read that Yngwie Malmsteen practiced 8-10 hours a day and then I realized that if I wanted to be close to as good as him I had to do the same so I practiced a lot. But music is not just about learning scales and chords. It is important to grow both as a human and as musician. Music is at the end of the day about trying to reach something bigger than yourself, to be able to express what words can't. For me it is a journey that I hope will continue for a long time. The cello is very present throughout the album. Why did you choose to incorporate this instrument rather than another?I love the cello as an instrument and since I play it myself, a little bit, it came naturally to do it. When the album was almost done I felt that I wanted someone else to do some leads so I contacted one of the greatest cello players around, Svante Henryson, to add his feeling to the album. I am very glad I did that!! :-) Are these songs doomed to remain only in electronic format or are they expected to be played once live?I really want to play this music live and my plan is to make more albums like this and to tour with the material. Can you tell us what your occupations will be by the end of the year for the solo project as well as for any other group activities?Well there's a lot going on right now. Evergrey will start to write new material soon and I am also releasing an album in November with a new band called Avatarium. I will also do a professional video on one of the songs from "Pictures From a Time Traveller". Thank you for your participating to this interview. Do you have any additional message to our readers?I want to thank Lion Music for releasing this album and please check out my Facebook and homepage if you want more infos. Also a big thank you to the people that are buying albums and keep on supporting good music! Marcus Venez donc discuter de cette interview, sur notre forum ! |
||||