Interview с Secret Discovery : DARKSIDE.ru

Secret Discovery were absent from the scene for a few years in the beginning of this decade. In your opinion, how has the scene changed over this period of time?

The scene is becoming younger and younger, I think it’s a very trendy scene, actually. Gothic was a strange thing in the 1980s, it started getting more trendy in the 1990s, and in the beginning of this decade it’s a very big trend for the kids. Bands like HIM have a lot of success because the scene is getting bigger.

Your new album is called “Alternate”. Why did you choose this title – did you want to underline the changes in the band and in your music?

Yes, this was one of the reasons why we called the album “Alternate”. The lyrics alternate between the English and German lyrics, and some things changed in the band as well.

Your brother Falk (guitar) once said that the last song on the album is always the most important for you. Why is that? And was that the case with “Alternate” as well?

It’s because the last song is the one that you keep in mind after listening to the whole album. I don’t think it’s the most important song, but it is indeed an important song. On the new album the last song “Change” is very silent and dreamy. It’s not something for the dancefloor, it’s something really special, because when we were writing it we didn’t think about clubs or charts, it came from the heart.

Half of the lyrics on the new album are in German, and in the past you only recorded a couple of tracks in this language. Why did you integrate so much German lyrics this time?

We always wanted to integrate more German lyrics. It’s me who’s making the lyrics, and when we write songs, I always make a kind of pilot lyric. Very often it’s some English words, and sometimes when you sing them before finishing the text, you can’t write different words to this music – the music and lyrics are linked so hard. That’s why we used to leave so many songs in English, but for this album we decided to write some German lyrics and make even the pilot lyrics in German. By working this way we were able to write more German songs.

You also had a few songs in French

in the past. What made you do it? Was the meaning of those songs impossible to convey in German or English?

The French songs were a kind of tribute to our French friends. We were on tour in France, and we decided to write a song for our listeners in that country.

Speaking about languages – Secret Discovery are a very famous band, but you still don’t have an English version of your official web-site. What is the reason?

(laughs) A good question. There’s no real reason. We used to make the page ourselves, it was our bass player who was doing it, and he didn’t have enough time for it. And we all didn’t care about it that much. But now we have a company preparing this for us, so it’s gonna change.

More about lyrics and connected things – on your previous album in the song “Down” you sing “love is blue and the blue things never burn”. What did you mean by this phrase?

(laughs) When you get married, they say the bride should wear “something old, something new, something borrowed and something blue.” That’s where the phrase comes from. But it’s not real, I hope you understand, it has some sort of idealistic value.

Where do you get inspiration for writing music and lyrics? Are there any songs or lyrics that you are especially proud of?

My inspiration is my life, I’ve had some experience and I’m also a dreamer. Sometimes I write songs which are stories of my life, while other songs are based on something I dream about or I see on TV. All these factors inspire me to write songs. I don’t really have a favorite song by our band, but from the new album it’s “Mein kleiner Tod”.

In the beginning of this decade you had a project called Alice 2. Could you tell us a bit more about it? What kind of music did you play there?

We stopped Secret Discovery in 1999, and the reason was that we all wanted to make some other stuff. We had had Secret Discovery for about 10 years, and we just wanted to be free to write new songs, add new influences and make something new that we were not able to make under the name of Secret Discovery. We didn’t want to lie to our fans and friends, so we started a new

project. This one was a bit closer to the 1980s new wave stuff, there were not so much guitar, more electronics. It was fun for us, it was important to do some other stuff.

After the reunion you added second guitarist Ramses Razmjoo to the band. What was the reason for doing so? You always worked with only one guitarist...

We did have two guitarists before, in the 1990s. Then one of them left the band, and we tried to make more melodies on keyboards. Now we wanted to have the old sound and the old power of two guitars again, so we invited another guitarist.

How did you get Lisa from Xandria to do backing vocals for the album “Pray”?

Dirk Riegner, our keyboard player and producer, also produced the first Xandria album “Kill The Sun” (2003). I met Lisa in the studio and I thought her voice would fit perfectly well together with mine. We tried it, and it worked out nice.

And do you have any guests on the new record?

No.

Yet another question about collaborations – how was it like to work with an orchestra on the mini-album “Philharmonic Diseases” (1996)? Can you tell us a bit about this experience?

(giggles) It was very strange in the beginning. Especially live it was very difficult stuff. We had to play with a conductor, and it was very strange for us as a band. We made it at the time when nearly no rock band tried to do this. We played a few concerts together with Rage, who also played with orchestra at that time, and it was a very nice experience for us.

Speaking about sources of inspiration – were you inspired by this Finnish wave of love metal bands like Charon or the 69 Eyes when you were writing the song “Down”?

(sighs) Sometimes I don’t really know where I get my inspiration. I like some of these bands, I listen to them, and perhaps it could be, but not so much, I think.

Some reviewers even accused you of following trends because of that song…

(laughs) I think you should look at it from the other side: Secret Discovery were on the music scene yet before bands like HIM or The 69 Eyes,

even before Paradise Lost became popular. Perhaps it is these bands who were inspired by Secret Discovery. (laughs)

In general, do you follow what is happening on the music scene nowadays? Do you check out new styles and new CDs, or do you prefer to listen to the old classics?

I like listening to new bands and new sounds, I listen to a lot of different music. I sometimes listen to old musicians of the 1980s and 1990s, but I go with the time. I think music lives, so I have to listen to contemporary music, and I’m very interested in it.

You have done a few cover versions of pop songs throughout your career, for instance, “I Turn To You” and “You Spin Me Round”. What makes you do it? Do you really like the music that Mel C, for instance, is playing?

“I Turn To You” is a pop song, but it’s a very good song, so we tried to put it into a rock sound. That worked with “I Turn To You” and with “Slave To The Rhythm”, we still sometimes play those songs. I find it very interesting to transform songs from other type of music into our style.

Secret Discovery has an official compilation, but you’ve never had a live record or a live DVD. Do you have anything like this in your plans?

We had a live record, but it was limited to a few copies. I don’t even have one myself. We do plan to release a live DVD or CD, but “Alternate” is only our second album after the reunion, and we don’t want to give the people a live CD earlier, because we don’t want them to think we have no ideas to write new songs. This live CD is in our minds, but not for the immediate release.

By the way, how do you put together the setlist for your liveshows nowadays? You have so many songs to choose from…

Yeah, it’s really a problem. We have six musicians in the band, and everybody has his own favorites to play. There are some songs we simply have to play, some singles. Sometimes we ask our fanclub about the songs they want to hear, and we try to integrate these songs in our set. But it’s not simple.

In the mid-1990s you played about 50 shows a year. In 2004, for instance, you only did 14 shows. Are you comfortable with

the amount of live shows you are playing?

I would like to play more shows. But we want to play not only in Germany, for me it would be interesting to go to other countries, to Russia, perhaps, Italy or Sweden. In Germany we play some shows, but we don’t want to play too much.

It’s probably a very common question, but still we’d like to ask it. Your first release “Way To Salvation” (1989) was sold out a long time ago and is now a rarity. What do you feel when you see people on E-bay offering it for hundreds of euros?

(laughs) It’s funny! I don’t understand it, it’s fantastic, I would say! (cracks) I think this record is not worth such an amount of money, but there are people who collect everything.

How has your audience changed over the years? Are you still in contact with any of your fans or fellow musicians who were part of the scene in the late 1980s or early 1990s?

The audience is changing just like the scene is changing – we have a lot of very young people in the audience. In the 1980s our audience was very black, very gothic, there were a lot of punk people. But now you can’t say that there are only goths or punks in the audience, a lot of normal people are there, too.

You have been playing with your brother Falk throughout the entire history of Secret Discovery. Is it an advantage or a disadvantage having a member of your family in the band?

(giggles) I would say it’s an advantage over the other band members. And he’s my twin brother, that’s another advantage. I have always done a lot of things together with my brother, I see him very often, every day, and for me it’s something really normal. And I like it.

By the way, how much the person you are on stage is different from the person you are at home?

(laughs) I think I’m the same on stage and at home.

Now it’s time to ask you for your future plans. What’s next for Secret Discovery – a tour, a new record, or anything else?

We are going to play some live shows and festivals, we will play three shows in Kosovo, and we even play to go to Russia and play a show in Moscow and probably in some other cities. And we think about playing in Latin America – Mexico and Brazil. After this we plan to start working on new record. We will write new songs and in autumn or at the end of the year we will go to the studio to start recording the album that will come out next year.

Special thanks to Marius Kopec (Artepublica) for arranging this interview

Roman “Maniac” Patrashov, Ksenia “Wolfin” Khorina
March 30, 2006
24 апр 2006 the End


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