post-rock, post-metal, progressive rock, instrumental / Novosibirsk
"This is the real level. The level of everything: material, sound, thinking. This is the
authentic, cool, brand Music, made with soul and love, here – in this city."
authentic, cool, brand Music, made with soul and love, here – in this city."
We can say that we write and perform instrumental music, but talking more seriously about genre limits of So Far As I Know, in general, we haven't any. We use all possible styles which we are interested in. Better to say, we just do not put boundaries. As a result we have post-rock and not post-rock, and progressive, and instrumental at the same time. Yes, all musicians are fond of saying that they don't have any particular genre and so forth, but it's true actually.
As journalists like to write SFAIK now has regular musical activities, including summer vacation, precisely vacation in sake of the work. This is not a project because a project always has a certain point at which it ends. We have passed this point, and now it's safe to say that it has grown into something more.
We don't improvise too much. Improvisation takes place, but usually it comes from something: initially we've got some theme from where everything is moving. It can be just some piece which turns into a complete song, and nothing remains of this piece.
Any music is an interaction between the performer and the listener. Art should make space for human fantasy, stimulate thinking and imagination.
In music, we put up only some chain of events, and a listener guesses everything else him(her)self. It's not the specifics, just the specified images that the listener has to respond somehow. You can't say that this music is about how, for example, elephants are running through the African plains.
When there are no lyrics in music, it's hard to grasp the idea that was originally put into. And the comments to tracks of our second piece of work 'Hidden Poetry' are a kind of clue. There's a certain concept, maybe a bit abstract, in our album. Comments read by listeners direct them and at the same they've got their personal images. And when they intercross with our idea, they get the needed interaction. We hope someone practice this.
We don't know why, but abroad our music is welcomed more readily than in Russia. We can judge it according to people's interaction, as we communicate with various media labels, send everything recorded wherever possible. Russian press and publics show no particular interest, because Russian labels, the majority of them, are targeted to what's popular at the moment. And abroad, on the contrary, there is the focus on some genre music; there are much more people who are not interested in what's in trend now, but in some specific and individual music. At least that's the impression.
The best variant you can get in the studio will take place if you gonna master it yourself. You need to spend a lot of time and need superskills for selfmade mastering. You need to be Steven Wilson, for example.
The second album could be released a year earlier if certain recording troubles hadn't appeared. It was created rather quickly, but the process was delayed. We were looking for dudes able to master material, and both abroad and in Ukraine they couldn't offer us something sensible. There was something sensible, but high cost, very high cost. Finally, everything stayed in Novosibirsk because at least you can come and oversee the process.
The lyrical hero of Hidden Poetry is the collective image of a human. The person is neither man nor woman, that is the hero could be both man and woman, it doesn't matter. The hero is located in a multiuniverse, traveling through the dimensions and appears there in different images and states. Each track is a separate state, a separate dimension. For example, the opening track Glowing represents the birth itself: there was nothing and suddenly something appears from the dark matter, something shining... And this may be the origin of life in the womb, and the origin of the Universe after the Big Bang. Further, in each track, the hero moves from one state to another. This can be interpreted as reincarnation, as a journey between the worlds or between different planets in space, if you think about distant future and so on.
Once we have noticed that people first stand and then take chairs and sit down, and they seem to get better. One should understand that our music is not built on breakdowns, if people like to sit – let them sit. You have the whole visibility: you see what happens, all the action, but still you perceive the music quietly, nothing distracts you. You don't even have to watch, you can just sit down, close your eyes, relax and listen if it's more comfortable so.
Talking about some kind of underground show business in Russia, we simply do not have it. Everything is being done through connections. If you have some contacts: if you know the right dudes organizing everything well, or local teams that can help you, you'll be able to make a good concert. But if you don't, you are likely to fail.
Expectations from the tour: cocaine, you're standing at the stadium, like Slash, you have a guitar hanging between your legs... And they all think, "Hell, the dude went on tour, he's a rock musician, he's a rock star." The reality: you're going on reserved seats with dudes you're ready to murder till the end of the tour. And much depends on the city and organization. For example, in Samara there were not so many people, but it was very sincere. In St. Petersburg everything was suddenly cool. In general we planned to visit seven or eight cities, but just before one day we were going to leave, the first three came off. Somewhere a club refused, somewhere an organizer gave us up, something like that.
We decided to issue the new album like a single visual and audial picture when only a couple of tracks had been ready. It was not such as we first had come up with the concept, and then worked out the details in accordance to it, everything happened in parallel. The first tracks had been made, and the last ones correlated with the general idea. Going back to our first record, initially there was no special concept: the tracks were made and compiled, and the concept was imposed above. And proceeding from this point we named the tracks, determined their ideas and so on. Now we are moving from the concept, let's see what will be in the result this time.
Let's be sincere – nobody buys CDs now. Nowadays disks are merch, you buy them not for listening. Relatively speaking, 10% of the audience want to buy merch, and the remaining 90% listen to music in Vkontakte service, download and so on. Therefore, we haven't got great runs of CDs. So, we come to the fact that people don't buy music worldwide. Even iTunes which was held on paid albums has got now the system of subscription – you pay just pennies, and you have the whole world online library available, including new albums. Now there is the reconstruction of the system, the industry is developing, and there's no need in hiding and no sense to be offended. We should understand that there's nothing wrong.
Music itself is depreciated now. If earlier, say, twenty years ago, you bought cassettes, trembled over each cassette, listened to the entire album, you knew by heart all the tracks, now you just flip the music-line and listen only five seconds of a track, skip it and list again to the next one and so on. And the generation of fifteen years old youngsters has a completely different perception of music and the world, that's why for them music is not an important art, as it was twenty years ago.
Music itself is depreciated now. If earlier, say, twenty years ago, you bought cassettes, trembled over each cassette, listened to the entire album, you knew by heart all the tracks, now you just flip the music-line and listen only five seconds of a track, skip it and list again to the next one and so on. And the generation of fifteen years old youngsters has a completely different perception of music and the world, that's why for them music is not an important art, as it was twenty years ago.
Not always you can realize how your creative works touch listeners. Once, after the concert in St. Petersburg, a guy came up and said, "Look, I copy the solo from Katie In The Forest, it's so cool, but I can't catch where's one note there". And you think: "Where's hell a solo there? I just sat down and played something". I mean, you never know what will come back in response to your music.
