Entrevista #10 - com Blacklist
Os Blacklist são um quarteto de Nova York que esteve recentemente em Portugal para actuar no Super Bock em Stock e a Whisper aproveitou para
lhes fazer algumas perguntas. Fique a conhecer melhor esta banda e saiba o que podemos esperar deles no futuro.
lhes fazer algumas perguntas. Fique a conhecer melhor esta banda e saiba o que podemos esperar deles no futuro.
Whisper - How did the band Blacklist born?
Blacklist - Initially, Ryan approached me to be part of a project he had been formulating. We both loved Killing Joke and a lot of darker bands from Leeds as well as Iron Maiden, Ozzy Osbourne, and Motorhead. He heard me play guitar and I guess I passed the test. We started working on some stuff, then Glenn came into the picture and Glenn had been in a band with James previously so he suggested bringing James on for guitar. Glenn introduced us to a lot of the music that he was DJing at the Wierd party. James had a very textural style of playing that mixed nicely with my more riff-oriented style.
W - Which are your musical influences?
B - They come from all over. I recall a CD I gave all the band members at the beginning with songs that sort of embodied the kind of music I wanted to be making. It had ‘It’s A Boy’ by Wire on it. I’m sure it had something by The Sound on it, too, most likely ‘New Dark Age.’ But then of course there was always this underpinning of a very heavy kind of music, too. Glenn comes from a hardcore background, but he was bringing us records by Asylum Party and Modern Eon. And James doesn’t care a thing about metal, he was really into shoegaze. If there was one point of mutual taste, I’d say it was probably the fact that we all still insisted that ‘War’ by U2 was a great record.
W - What message do you try to transmit in your music?
B - I heard someone yesterday say that having a message kills great art. I don’t know that I agree with that, though I don’t know what singular ‘message’ is in our music. There are a lot of ideas running through it. It’s angry, yet not nihilistic. It’s melancholic but not mopey. I think anger and melancholy are strong emotions that one tends to experience when they try to approach the world as it is. I think this record is about trying to do that. I think it’s militantly humanistic, anti-nationalist, anti-totalitarian, anti-orthodoxy, and anti-superstition.
W - How was your passage for Portugal? Did you like the portuguese public?
B - The trip to Portugal was wonderful! We loved Lisbon, and we had a blast meeting the Portuguese people who really made us feel welcome. I have to say, too, I feel a certain closeness with the Portuguese aesthetic, musically. Clearly, this is a country with a tradition of very beautiful, haunting and often melancholy music. I have to think that this might be why bands like The Sound and Blacklist seem to have connected in a unique way with the Portuguese.
W - How was to work with Ed Buller (Suede, Slowdive, Pulp, White Lies) and Howie Weinberg (Muse, Jeff Buckley, Iron Maiden, U2, Nirvana) in the production of “Midnight of the Century”?
B - Working with Ed was a dream come true for me. Suede and The Psychedelic Furs for me are bands that live in the very highest ranks of rock and roll and his work both as producer and musician on those records and in everything else he’s done is amazing. He was really so patient with us--we’re perfectionists and we set a task for him that I don’t think anyone had ever given him. Ed is firmly rooted in the tradition of sophisticated British alternative pop and here we were asking him to make things sound like an AC/DC record. Although, that was a bit of the strategy. We knew after listening through all these different records and thinking about mixers and producers that, after listening to Suede’s ‘Coming Up,’ that if anyone could make this collision work, it was Ed. He did an absolutely amazing job. As for Howie, he does his work under cover of darkness--or at least he did ours that way. We sent along the mixes, Howie proceeded to make them sound like the most massive, loud thing anyone anywhere had ever made. They came back and we couldn’t help but grin childishly at how gigantic it had become. We wanted that though, which is obviously why we went to somebody like him who was known for making these huge rock masterpieces.
W - Why the title “Midnight of the Century”?
B - The title was taken from a novel by Victor Serge. I thought it was a very fitting description for this phenomenon when all of your most cherished ideas about how the world is are coming apart. Friends become enemies, what once looked true no longer looks true. It’s a bizarre, dark moment when you’re very much part of history but also very much ripped out of it.
W - Who was responsible for the artwork in your album?
B - Pieter Schoolwerth, who runs our record label is also a fine artist. He’s a painter. Pieter and I exchanged ideas for visuals. He spent a while with the record and the lyrics and then he just created this image. When we saw it we knew it was perfect. It’s this ideal combination, which I feel we try to strike in our music and I try to strike in my lyrics, of complexity and simplicity. As with my lyrics, there is a lot of meaning to be read from Pieter’s art for the record, if you want to de-code what’s there. If you don’t want to, you don’t have to. It’s not spelled out for you in either case, though.
W - How do a band survive and grows in New York, a city with so many great artists?
B - I think it’s a combination of things. There are lots of great artists, but with so many people making music there’s plenty of garbage, too. I think we thrive both on the love for the good and disgust for the bad. We’re lucky to be part of a community where there is a lot of mutual respect amongst the artists. That community is very devoted to a kind of participation in the world of modern music that is aggressive and resistant at the same time. We’re lovers and we’re haters--I think for most of us it’s that spectrum and the energy we derive from it that keeps us going. We don’t like everything but we don’t hate everything, either. It seems these days everyone is either a sort of liberal, boring, “to each his own” type who thinks that saying a band or a song is crap is automatically closed-minded. Then you have the sort of hardcore underground ideology of hating everything. I think for the most part Blacklist and the people we associate bring these two together and in doing so we forge an identity. After all identity is equal parts rejection and embrace. We believe strongly in both and you get different kinds of inspiration from both.
W - else do you wanna tell us, future projects, messages to fans, etc?
B - We look forward to a return to Portugal in 2010 and to playing a lot of new songs for our Portuguese fans!
Blacklist - Initially, Ryan approached me to be part of a project he had been formulating. We both loved Killing Joke and a lot of darker bands from Leeds as well as Iron Maiden, Ozzy Osbourne, and Motorhead. He heard me play guitar and I guess I passed the test. We started working on some stuff, then Glenn came into the picture and Glenn had been in a band with James previously so he suggested bringing James on for guitar. Glenn introduced us to a lot of the music that he was DJing at the Wierd party. James had a very textural style of playing that mixed nicely with my more riff-oriented style.
W - Which are your musical influences?
B - They come from all over. I recall a CD I gave all the band members at the beginning with songs that sort of embodied the kind of music I wanted to be making. It had ‘It’s A Boy’ by Wire on it. I’m sure it had something by The Sound on it, too, most likely ‘New Dark Age.’ But then of course there was always this underpinning of a very heavy kind of music, too. Glenn comes from a hardcore background, but he was bringing us records by Asylum Party and Modern Eon. And James doesn’t care a thing about metal, he was really into shoegaze. If there was one point of mutual taste, I’d say it was probably the fact that we all still insisted that ‘War’ by U2 was a great record.
W - What message do you try to transmit in your music?
B - I heard someone yesterday say that having a message kills great art. I don’t know that I agree with that, though I don’t know what singular ‘message’ is in our music. There are a lot of ideas running through it. It’s angry, yet not nihilistic. It’s melancholic but not mopey. I think anger and melancholy are strong emotions that one tends to experience when they try to approach the world as it is. I think this record is about trying to do that. I think it’s militantly humanistic, anti-nationalist, anti-totalitarian, anti-orthodoxy, and anti-superstition.
W - How was your passage for Portugal? Did you like the portuguese public?
B - The trip to Portugal was wonderful! We loved Lisbon, and we had a blast meeting the Portuguese people who really made us feel welcome. I have to say, too, I feel a certain closeness with the Portuguese aesthetic, musically. Clearly, this is a country with a tradition of very beautiful, haunting and often melancholy music. I have to think that this might be why bands like The Sound and Blacklist seem to have connected in a unique way with the Portuguese.
W - How was to work with Ed Buller (Suede, Slowdive, Pulp, White Lies) and Howie Weinberg (Muse, Jeff Buckley, Iron Maiden, U2, Nirvana) in the production of “Midnight of the Century”?
B - Working with Ed was a dream come true for me. Suede and The Psychedelic Furs for me are bands that live in the very highest ranks of rock and roll and his work both as producer and musician on those records and in everything else he’s done is amazing. He was really so patient with us--we’re perfectionists and we set a task for him that I don’t think anyone had ever given him. Ed is firmly rooted in the tradition of sophisticated British alternative pop and here we were asking him to make things sound like an AC/DC record. Although, that was a bit of the strategy. We knew after listening through all these different records and thinking about mixers and producers that, after listening to Suede’s ‘Coming Up,’ that if anyone could make this collision work, it was Ed. He did an absolutely amazing job. As for Howie, he does his work under cover of darkness--or at least he did ours that way. We sent along the mixes, Howie proceeded to make them sound like the most massive, loud thing anyone anywhere had ever made. They came back and we couldn’t help but grin childishly at how gigantic it had become. We wanted that though, which is obviously why we went to somebody like him who was known for making these huge rock masterpieces.
W - Why the title “Midnight of the Century”?
B - The title was taken from a novel by Victor Serge. I thought it was a very fitting description for this phenomenon when all of your most cherished ideas about how the world is are coming apart. Friends become enemies, what once looked true no longer looks true. It’s a bizarre, dark moment when you’re very much part of history but also very much ripped out of it.
W - Who was responsible for the artwork in your album?
B - Pieter Schoolwerth, who runs our record label is also a fine artist. He’s a painter. Pieter and I exchanged ideas for visuals. He spent a while with the record and the lyrics and then he just created this image. When we saw it we knew it was perfect. It’s this ideal combination, which I feel we try to strike in our music and I try to strike in my lyrics, of complexity and simplicity. As with my lyrics, there is a lot of meaning to be read from Pieter’s art for the record, if you want to de-code what’s there. If you don’t want to, you don’t have to. It’s not spelled out for you in either case, though.
W - How do a band survive and grows in New York, a city with so many great artists?
B - I think it’s a combination of things. There are lots of great artists, but with so many people making music there’s plenty of garbage, too. I think we thrive both on the love for the good and disgust for the bad. We’re lucky to be part of a community where there is a lot of mutual respect amongst the artists. That community is very devoted to a kind of participation in the world of modern music that is aggressive and resistant at the same time. We’re lovers and we’re haters--I think for most of us it’s that spectrum and the energy we derive from it that keeps us going. We don’t like everything but we don’t hate everything, either. It seems these days everyone is either a sort of liberal, boring, “to each his own” type who thinks that saying a band or a song is crap is automatically closed-minded. Then you have the sort of hardcore underground ideology of hating everything. I think for the most part Blacklist and the people we associate bring these two together and in doing so we forge an identity. After all identity is equal parts rejection and embrace. We believe strongly in both and you get different kinds of inspiration from both.
W - else do you wanna tell us, future projects, messages to fans, etc?
B - We look forward to a return to Portugal in 2010 and to playing a lot of new songs for our Portuguese fans!
A Whisper apoia:
ESTREIAS DE CINEMA
