Interview с Colony 5 : DARKSIDE.ru

I’ve read on your website that both you and P-O Svensson (keyboardist and singer) had some health problems during the spring, and that doctors told P-O not to sing for months. What happened to the two of you?

In the beginning it was an ordinary flu, but we had some gigs planned, and even though we were not supposed to sing, we did them anyway, because we had to. That made our flu worse, and after those gigs it was not possible to do anymore.

And when can we expect the band’s return to full activity?

Right now, actually. Our next gigs are in Greece, the Czech Republic and Hungary.

Are you satisfied with the fans’ and critics’ response to your latest album “Fixed” (2005)? How much have this response and sales figures live up to your expectations?

We are very satisfied with the product, first of all. We have had some really good reviews, but I don’t really read reviews, P-O does that for me, and he only read the good ones for me. (laughs) I don’t like to read newspapers. And the fans have been really brilliant. We usually listen more to them, and they seem to like it. Some of them prefer the old stuff, but that’s always the case. That’s the case with me and other bands, too. That’s no problem. But we have made some new fans, and I don’t think we have lost too many of the old ones.

The cover of each of your albums has a new color: “Lifeline” (2002) was dark blue, “Structures” (2003) was light blue, and “Fixed” is red. Is it something that you do on purpose, is it a kind of concept?

Yeah, a little bit. We talk about these things with each other and with the designer. Blue is a kind of color that is strongly associated with electronic music, and we liked that in the beginning, but now it’s time to find some new roots. We also started with black and red stage outfits, but then we changed them into other things. Red is also supposed to be a bit like blood or something, and that also has a meaning.

The album starts with a very unusual song called “Fix” with heavy guitars on it. Why did you decide to incorporate such an element as heavy guitars in the song? Have you been listening to rock or metal music lately?

Yeah, we have. Actually we have always don

e that, but we didn’t want to include it in our songs. First, we didn’t do it in any good way before, we wanted to have the basic electronic sound before. We believed that it should be basic electronic and the fun stuff, the effects and all that. That’s brilliant for this style, that’s how electronics should be. And all those crossover bands with heavy metal guitars – we didn’t like them. But now there are some new good bands like Rammstein, and when they mix it, they do it quite good. There are some elements from rock music that are really good. When we originally did “Fix”, we didn’t have guitars in it in the beginning. But after a while P-O decided to try it out, and when we tried to remove the guitar, we didn’t like the song, so we kept them.

Could you say a few words about the songwriting process in the band? How do you work on songs – who comes up with the first idea for a song, and how do you develop it?

It’s so different for every song. Sometimes it’s just a new synthesizer you have bought that has a new sound, and you try it out, and it leads to the process where we really start making a song. But most of the times P-O comes up with some music, and I come up with some words, and then we put them together and produce it. That’s the normal thing, but that only happens perhaps 50 percent of the time. The other 50 percent of the time it’s totally different. (laughs)

How much has the situation in the band changed with the departure of Johan Nilsson? And why did he leave, by the way?

Oh, some personal stuff. He found other things in life. You see, it takes a lot of time being such a small band. You might think that a small band has less to do, but we are not a big organization, we have to do everything ourselves. It’s quite a lot of work, and we have not had as much success as people think, we haven’t earned any money. Johan thought it was not worth it anymore. He just wanted to be at home doing music for himself, like he has done for 10-15 years. So he left, because he couldn’t give us 100 percent. He wanted to be in the band, but only part of the time, and we can’t do that. So we decided to release him. Of course, his departure changed the process a little bit, because we always did all the productions at Johan’s place, he had a studio there, and then we had to move it to

P-O’s place. Apart from that, the situation hasn’t changed so much.

Will you search for a third member, or will you continue working as a duo?

In the beginning we discussed whether we should find a new member, but it’s very hard. The reason we were a band in the beginning is that we were friends. If we have to find a new boy, or a new girl (laughs), we have to be friends, we have to live with each other during this pressure of songwriting and touring. I don’t think it will work, so we will continue as a duo.

In the song “20th Century Plague” there’s a line “Poetry is dead”. Does it mean that you don’t see any good poets around you at the moment?

No, it’s not that. The song is about a guy who has AIDS. Perhaps the world is not so romantic anymore when this horrible disease is spreading through casual sex. You have to take care of yourself, and perhaps what we really wanted to say is that reality is harsher now, it’s not so romantic anymore.

And speaking about poetry, what poets do you like the most? What poets inspire you?

Mostly these are English poets, because that’s what I started with. Keats, Wordsworth and Byron, the classics. But on the Internet there’s a lot of amateur poetry, works of not so famous poets that are really really good. I’ve changed a little bit from old romantic love poems to more straight, not rhyming poems. It’s an everlasting journey to discover poetry, I think.

Speaking about inspiration – on the album “Structures” there’s a song called “The Zone”, which is obviously inspired by the “Stalker” movie. Are you a fan of Andrei Tarkovsky?

Yeah, really much. I think he’s one of the best movie makers ever.

What other movies do you regard as your favorites?

Oh, I’m a real film fanatic, so they are changing quite a lot. Apart from the classics like Finey and Hitchcock, those real classics, I like new stuff like “Requiem For A Dream”. It’s a very good movie, it’s like a music video sometimes, but very strong. (pause) Oh, there’s a thousand movies I love. I can send you an e-mail with a list if you want to.

No, thanks, that’s not necessary. (everybody laughs) Let’s go

on discussing some more songs. I’ve noticed that “Structures” ends with a very optimistic song, “Future”, but on “Fixed” the last song is “Phosphor”, which is not optimistic at all. Have you become more frustrated with life over these two years?

(laughs) Yes, I think you do it when you’re becoming older. You care less a bit, because when you’re young, you’re trying to find yourself a life, you’re struggling with society and everything, but when you’re becoming older, you get a little bit less political, but also a bit more cynical. You understand that the world is not so good as you hoped when you were younger, and it’s very little you can do about it.

Listening to the new album, I get an impression that you no longer care that much whether people will be able to dance to your new songs. You care more whether the song is good or not, not whether it’s going to be a dancefloor smasher…

Yeah, that’s right. I don’t regret that we did dance hits in the beginning, because we had to find ourselves a name, and the easiest way is through clubs and discos. After that we did a little bit more usual songwriting on “Structures”, and now we try to do songs as they should be, not having to put them in a dance beat. That’s how it is.

By the way, do you agree when fans or critics call your style “future pop”? Do you think it’s a fitting definition for Colony 5?

For me it’s very hard. They say that future pop was invented by VNV Nation and Covenant, and I can’t see similarities between us and those two. They are really good bands, but I don’t think we sound like them at all. You know, it’s always papers and critics that put labels on bands. If we are a future pop band, does that mean that whatever we do in the future is future pop? I don’t know, probably the label was fitting for the first dance-oriented album, but now I don’t think we’re still in that genre. (laughs) For me it’s a waste of time to try to sort us under something. Usually I say that it’s electronic pop music, because that’s what it is – ordinary pop songs, but done electronically, because they are more effective that way.

How much autobiographic are your songs? Do you write about the things that happened to yourself, or do you mostly use imagination to create these stories?

Mostly it’s imagination, what happens to others or what could have happened to others, but it’s filtered through ourselves, as we see it. It’s not so much the things that have happened to us, it’s more of the things that could have happened or that happened to a friend or someone in a movie or whatever. But I describe the way I feel about it. The songs are autobiographical, but from the point of view of an outsider, not the person who experiences all this.

I’ve heard that apart from lyrics, you write short stories. Do you publish them anywhere? Is it possible to get hold of them?

Only poems have been published so far, and that was before Colony 5. It takes too much energy to write lyrics for a new album, so I haven’t had time to really try to publish anything. It’s not possible to read them yet, but I hope it will be, both short and long stories.

It’s probably a very trivial question, but how did you become a member of Colony 5? When and how did you first meet P-O?

I was very good friends with Johan, we had a band together. I was also friends with P-O before that, but we didn’t spend so much time together. When P-O asked Johan to be a member (it was yet before “Lifeline” – ed.), he had to quit my band, and that was OK, because Colony 5 were doing better. I was acting as a consultant from the beginning, you can say so. When they wrote lyrics, they sometimes asked me about words, and when they produced the record, they sometimes asked me about melody lines and stuff. They even asked me about the title “Lifeline”. I didn’t suggest them the name “Lifeline”, they came up with it themselves, but they asked me what I thought about it, so I gave them some ideas. After that they had some criticism about the lyrics, not about the music, because everybody said that the music was good. And that was my feeling too: I thought that the music was really good, but the lyrics not so good. So P-O asked me if I could be in the band, help them with the lyrics and also be the third member live. Being a fan of the band, of course I agreed.

I’ve heard that before joining Colony 5 you played in a project that mixed electronic and classical music. Can you tell me more about it?

I’ve always been very interested in Celtic music. That’s why I’m

in Scotland now. (laughs) I tried to find a bridge between people like Jean Michel Jarre – that’s classical music, but done only electronically, and people like Mike Oldfield, that have a bit of both. They always inspired me, and I wanted to find my own recipe for doing it. It was my band, but I had different people come in at different times and bring new sources of inspiration.

Can you tell me the name of the band?

It changed a lot. (laughs) It was a very long process, sometimes we would exist under a certain name for a while, and then we thought, “No, now there’s a new friend giving us something,” so we changed it. I called myself Moonboy, so the name of the band was composed of Moonboy and something else which always changed.

Now it’s time to discuss your Russian connections. Colony 5 played in Russia about a year ago. What are your impressions from Moscow? Did you like the show, the audience and the city?

Oh, it was really good. We never thought it was supposed to be that good. A lot of people, a really good club, everything was arranged really well, so we were totally mystified. The only bad thing is that we did it in February, when it was very cold in Moscow. (everybody laughs) We couldn’t really experience the city. We had a gig in Moscow planned for two weeks from now, but it didn’t work out. We’re not going there, which is a pity, because I really want to enjoy Moscow in the summer as well.

How did you get together with Russian DJ RAM? What kind of a common project do you have with him?

I think DJ RAM was doing a remix for us in the beginning. It was with Lawrence Mack (unsure about the spelling – ed.) in Germany – DJ RAM has a contract with him, and we have a contract with him, too, so he was a mutual friend, so to speak. And then DJ RAM had this big project, where he made music and different bands put on vocals with their own lyrics (the project is called Virtual Server – ed.). We were one of these bands. When we went to Moscow, he wanted to do a project with us live and to play this song. Also when we heard that he had made a remix for tATu, we thought it was really good, because they were at the top then. (laughs) You have to use every connection you have.

And the final question: can you say a few words to your Russian fans? Is there any chance to see you back in Moscow any time soon?

I really hope so, because it should be no problem to come back there. For us, we would come whenever we are asked to. I hope the Russian fans like the new album and they will continue to support us in whichever way they can. They are always in our hearts, the Russian connection is always there.

Special thanks to Elena Ufimtseva (Art Music Group) for arranging this interview

Roman Patrashov
July 24, 2005
1 авг 2005 the End

Colony 5

New World Arise