TEHRAPY? (Eng.)
– Hello, thanks for answering to our questions. What’s currently keeping THERAPY? busy?
Hi Tania We’re currently busy getting ready for a year touring and promoting the album. I’ve been busy practising trying to get the vocal and guitar parts right.
– You have just unleashed your new opus, “A Brief Crack of Light”, which is your 13th album. 13, the unlucky number, but that doesn’t seem to be your case. Anyway, what are your feelings on this new release?
Very pleased with the way the new album has been generally received so far. It’s hard to think that we’ve made 13 albums, it doesn’t seem like a long time.
– To start getting into this new album; where does its title come from? Are there any other literary references on the record?
The title comes from the writer Nabakov «the cradle hangs above an abyss and common sense tells us that our existence is just a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness» There are lots of literary references on the album, ‘Living in the Shadow of the Terrible thing’ quotes from Homer and Fernando Pessoa, ‘Before You, With You, After You’ from Samuel Beckett.
– And does this title describe your music in any way? As we can find some really sinister atmosphere surrounding some of the tracks.
I think although there is a dark side to the album we are very much into being on the side of the loner, the outsider, the broken and the lost. Hopefully by addressing these issues people can feel comfort.
– Going back to the lyrical side of the album, lyrics on this new effort seem to be more focused on philosophy. Would you mind to shed some light on what to some of the lyrics on “ABCOP” deal with?
Quite a lot of the lyrics of this album deal with the absurdity of the human condition. As creatures we do the strangest things. Status anxiety, the want of expensive things has led us into trouble and made us greedy, people fall out over possessions. To quote Chuck Palahniuk «the things that you own, end up owning you». Why do we get ourselves into these situations (Why Turbulence?) We arrive in this world with empty hands and we’ll leave this world with empty hands.
– Sound-wise I’d dare say this is one of your most experimental albums so far. Was this something you aimed for? As I think gives the whole album and even more enjoyable final result.
Thank you. We aimed to use space and sound effects a bit more, hopefully it’ll add more atmosphere to some of the tracks. On ‘Get your dead hand of my shoulder’ we wanted the sound of being lost in a big city between 3 and 5 AM, we used lots of echo and noise to suggest this.
– In fact there is a wide-range of new and different musical influences, and I think this is something you have shown with every album. Are you constantly listening to new music or does almost everything influences you in a certain way?
We listen to everything old and new but when we go in to approach a new album we listen to lots of new things for ideas. Sometimes inspiration can come in the most unexpected ways, the track ‘Marlow’ came about after i’d recorded some African street drummers on my phone. I went home and listened to the drumming and it made me come up with the guitar parts for the song.
– Once more, each song on this CD is different to the previous one. Is this something important for THERAPY?
I think it is important. It keeps us looking at every track individually and prevents us from writing to a formula.
– And is it easy to keep your own style still adding always new elements to your music?
It is easy as long as we keep our individual guitar drum and bass sounds. Part of the challenge is trying to adapt our three piece set up to testing new ideas.
– This being said; do you have any musical limitations?
I often which we had a female voice in the band as i think it could add more colour to the sound.
– Due to all this I would like to know how does the songwriting process tends to be like for THERAPY? and how did you approach this latest creation.
The more poppy-punk songs (Screamager, Die Laughing etc) were written the old fashioned way by me just writing them on a guitar. The last two albums have been written together in our rehearsal room by playing each other lots of different ideas.
– Finally, what are your near-future plans?
The plans are beginning to fall into place now. From March onwards we intend to be on the road touring the album until Christmas. After that we’ll be doing album number 14.
– That’s all from my side, thank you once again for your time. Now the famous last words are all yours.
Thanks for your support Tania, hopefully we will get to see our friends in Spain later this year, much love and respect to you all, Andy C
