Having been through the history you've been through do you feel like your approach to making music has changed drastically since when you began?
Well, I don't know notes or scores and I don't write songs by chords, I do all writing by ear. In this respect, it's all the same. I really have some more knowledge now about instrumentation, and I can play more than two chords for sure on the guitar! But generally I think I approach music the same as always, I approach each song as a blank slate.
So how do you usually write?
I start with something in my head... could be a sound, like my guitar falling down and making a cool noise. Then I tape it and play it back many times, trying out loops, until the noise starts to form a song. Sometimes it's by accident like this, and sometimes even I've had songs form in dreams. I've woken in the night with songs in my head, and then I get up and try to remember the notes. Sometimes I'll start with the sequencer or bass, it depends.
The sounds on In Dust Three, you kind of hear a sound like an "outer space" quality to the music.
I don't think there is anything sci-fi involved, but we really like the sounds. Don't know why, since when we started I played on guitar. As soon as I had some money I was buying effects and I really like these sounds. Our sound is not because we're obsessed with the new century or anything or that we want to have our bedrooms on the orbital, but that's not really going to happen anyway.
Speaking of these sounds, you've got a very distinctive sound as a producer. I mean, you can really just tell immediately if you've produced it — I heard a song by HERE on the radio, a remix that I didn't recognize at first but I knew that it was your work.
Every time somebody tells me that I'm shocked. I never want to sound the same in the work that I do. If I'm producing other people, I approach each individually, like first asking what is the best thing about this, and how can I bring that out? I never want to get stuck on, say, some bass sound so that I would use it on a Naceva album and also on HERE. I even don't like other peoples' records when theysound the same from the start to the end. I do as much different stuff on one record as I can. I guess it comes up somewhere from the subconscious to the EQing... anyhow, that always surprises me.
I think it's a positive thing, when a producer can find a voice, a clever signature in music.
Yeah, but not if it's overdone, like you have to say, "Oh, not again!"
Sure, there are bands who get stuck. Going back to the studio stuff, this studio that we are in now, it's yours?
Yes, my friend and I share it — he's a sound engineer. His name is Michal. He was studying trombone and then got into sound at film school, went on to engineer. We had made records together, he knows all of the theoretical musical stuff, which helps. We work together sometimes, and we also work individually. He actually has just produced this big Czech pop band, Chinaski.
So where did you start learning about studio work?
By the time we were in the studio with EoST, I had to know. I mean, there weren't any technical engineers at that time, and if there were they certainly didn't understand what we wanted. So, we ended up being really hands-on, standing right behind them at the desk and taking a look to see what we could do better in the mix. In '94 I was asked for the first time by a band to help them in the studio. I guess I felt by that time, "Yeah, I must know something about this by now." I learned just by doing it, by being a producer. There just weren't many or any people in the Czech Republic to learn from.
Your studio is called Balance, yes?
For now, yes, but we might change the name officially. I'm not very happy with this name.
What are some of the projects you've worked on recently here?
We've done here lots of stuff for films. Recently we worked with Petr Hopka, a well-known Czech name who was doing chansons for the National Theater here, for the hip-hop band Trotsky, the singer Lucie Bila, for OHM2, for HERE, and with Chinaski we've done some projects. The stuff we did with OHM2 was more acoustic, and it's not on the record because the rest of the record is more dancey.
What's your favorite gear that you work with?
My guitars excluded, probably the AKAI sampler. It's a tool that's really fun to play with. I also like the POD Pro by Line 6. For guitars it's great 'cause you can get lots of sound and you don't have to have like 8 amps, plus it's less noisy. I love Pro Tools in Mac, it's really handy for quicker work. Often I like to go to some bigger studio to record something on an instrument on tape, then I'll bring it back here to work on it off tape, if I have the time. I also really like my tape echo, it's a Roland 500 something.
What would you say about electronic music here in Czech right now?
Well, when we were recording in London, a guy who owned the studio came out and said to me, "Are you the guy from Prague?" I said yeah. And he said, "I finally got to hear you guys, and I swear I hear that Kafka weirdness in your music." I would say this is a bit typical for the Czech uncommercial scene. There is not like a typical dance band. All the bands are more complicated. There's no straight pop bands, they all like things more complicated, or maybe more unsure. For example, OHM2 are called a drum-n-bass band, but I don't think they are in fact — it's not jungle, it's something different. Like Liquid Harmony too, they were supposed to be a dance band, but it was more something between jazz/funk and a dance band. Sometimes it seems that Czechs complicate things too much, and we maybe get lost inside it like Kafka's in the zamek, the castle. It's like it's so unconcrete sometimes that there's nothing to grab onto. Or perhaps it's just my opinion, because I'm in the middle of it. But perhaps that's why we want to do our new record, if not simple then just not too complicated. I think sometimes there are too many notes or too much information in songs. Like in the English band Blur, they have simple ideas in the songs and then they fill it out in the uncomplicatedness of the choruses. It's somehow more understandable for listeners. And it's not bad this way.
There is a good sized scene here though, including the DJ scene.
Yeah, it's true but at the same time there are only a few who think beyond just basic party mixing — it's like they don't really think about it or something.
Why do you think this is?
Maybe it's a bit a question of self-confidence. I mean, we've never been that big of a nation, and maybe it's because of the 40 years under Communism, like you get trained to not step out of line. People maybe think, "If I go out and play those two chords straight ahead, it won't be enough," and so they complicate it more. Now I think, for example, like in Samotari I did almost as a joke on the guitar with three chords, the song "Lucky Boy". It ironically became a big hit. There are lots of other songs, but they are perhaps more complicated than they have to be.
There's another Ecstasy album coming soon?
Yes, a few songs are done already. We were planning the new album for April but we want to play some shows to see how we feel live before we go into the studio. Probably it will come out in the Fall.
