22 Şubat 2007

Easy Star All*Stars


Geçtiğimiz günlerde Bant dergisi için bir Easy Star All*Stars yazısı hazırladım. Grubu bilenler bilir (!?) ama bilmeyenler için bu ekip 2003'te Dark Side Of The Moon'u, geçtiğimiz yaz da Radiohead'in OK Computer albümünü dub ve reggae'ye uyarladı, hem de ne uyarlama! İkisi de çok başarılı olan bu albümler pek az bildiğim bir tarz olan reggae'yi de bana oldukça sevdirdi (ilk albüm Dub Side Of The Moon, ikincisi de Radiodread adı ile yayınlandı, belirtmeden geçmeyeyim).

Ama asıl önemlisi, Easy Star All*Stars Mart ayında Babylon'a konser vermeye geliyor, heyecanla 23-24 Mart tarihlerini bekliyorum şimdi (evet, iki gece). Hazır grup da geliyorken ufak bir röportaj da kopardım. Bant yazıma röportajı bire bir koyamadım tabi ama aşağıya iliştiriyorum. Ne yazıkki sadece ingilizce, tam tercümesini yapacak vaktim olmadı. Bir de soruları Easy Star plak şirketinin kurucularından ve grubun prodüktörü (ve fikir babası) Michael G.'ye hitaben yazmıştım ama o pek müsait olamadığından plak şirketinin ortaklarından ve uluslararası PR sorumlusu Eric Smith yanıtlamış.

Grup hakkındaki yazıyı Mart ayı Bant dergisinde okuyabilirsiniz. Daha bile sabırsız olanları da grubun myspace sayfasına alalım :)

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What are you (personally) up to these days? I heard that you are going to play in Israel just before Istanbul. What about this reggae group from Israel that I heard in an interview that you were producing?

Michael G, the cofounder of the Easy Star Record Label and the producer of Dubside and Radiodread will be playing in Israel with an Israeli Reggae group called Hope6(translated from hebrew)...but will not be coming to Istanbul.

Comparing Dub Side to Radiodread - Dub Side really feels more dubby and Radiodread has a more conventional reggae & ska touch and is more song-based. Is that just because of both albums' own characteristics or is there also a different approach on your side.

This is definitely due to the sourced material. Radiohead’s Ok Computer is much more of a song based album. There is not as much room in that album to let dub elements breathe, so even though Michael G really tracked Ok Computer much as he did Dub Side of the Moon, because of the material the result was different. As for the ska elements on Radiodread...that was definitely as a result of the original material.

Just roughly, how are the sales of Radiodread up till now?

Well way ahead of Dub Side of The Moon...

What were the most interesting reactions you got regarding Radiodread - especially from fans etc.? Was it accepted as easily as Dub Side or were there harsh critics?

Just like dub side before the album came out there were a lot of critics which we knew we would have, but with dub side there was no advance talk whereas for Radiodread there was a lot of talk before it was released and we were expecting a lot of criticism and we were definitely ready for backlash from radiohead fans.. I guess we were really surprised by how warm the reaction was from radiohead fans who talked about the album a lot online, on blogs and in chat rooms. A lot of radiohead fans were worried it was going to be horrible so I guess you could say we were surprised when it was well received. It also helped that Thom Yorke talked about the album when Radiohead kicked off their tour... that definitely got us noticed in a positive way.

What about future: Will we ever see original scores from East Star All*Stars (which I'd personally love to hear)? Or should we expect another concept album from the All*Stars? I know that you don't like to drop names for possible future candidates but can you at least give some hints maybe?

Well there is a lot of talk about putting out some original easy star all stars music. They play a lot of original material at their shows, and do not consider themselves a cover band, it’s just the cover material is what most people want to hear them play. To check out original material give a listen to the tracks on Easy Star Volumes 1 & 2....but that music predates Dubside...we hope to get something together for 2007....As for cover albums, we are looking to do a follow up to radiodread...because everyone is asking us to do that. We are currently looking at over every album that has been at the top 200 charts over the past 30 years. Problem is it is incredibly hard to find an album that fits all of the requirements. What we love about radiodread is that the progression from dubside was unexpected. Instead of doing something like The Wall as a follow-up we did a rock album from th 90s that is a classic from that decade. I’m not sure which era our next cover album will be from...but it will most probably be another classic.

Did you hear that Johnny Greenwood curated a reggae compilation for Trojan? What do you think about it? And Greenwood said to Uncut that they play a lot of reggae music at their concerts (between set changes etc), were you aware of Radiohead's reggae sensibilities when you were doing Radiodread?

Well going into it, when we decided to do Radiodread we knew that Radiohead were fans of reggae and we thought that would help us out. When we started the project we heard about Greenwood’s project. We also heard that he was thinking of calling his album Radiodread but then when Trojan heard we had entitled our album Radiodread they changed it. We had also heard that they liked reggae and when we sent them the original music we got good reactions from Johnny and his brother who is also a musician. I haven’t yet had a chance to listen to Greenwood’s album...but the track list looks really good.

1 yorum:

Adsız dedi ki...

last.fmde rastgele radiohead etiketi ile denk geldim, eğlenceli bir gruba benziyor. geç oldu ama, yazın için teşekkürler :)

// umut