DANIEL
FLORES- MIND'S EYE
Interview by Monster Of Metal
Hello Daniel. Thank you for your time in
updating us with the happenings of Mind’s Eye. Ok, I’ve obviously got the
scoop about the latest Mind’s Eye CD from Fredrik, now id like yours. What do
you think of “…Waiting for the Tide”? Are you happy with it?
I’m very happy with it! Of course
there is always going be something you think you can do better when listening to
it afterwards. The vocals are much better this time, and we didn’t have any
trouble in the studio while recording them either. That’s new for us!! Our new
singer Andreas Novak is a blessing from the sky!
He has a wide range and he is a guitar player as well, so he understands what
the rest of the band is doing. Other singers we had in the past had trouble
hearing what we wanted to bring out from the song.
Fredrik (Guitars) and I, could be searching for the right mood for a particular
song, and the singer could be thinking about what pose was best for that part of
the song. That often made us angry! We’ve had about 8 singer in this band, if
not more! But Andreas is by far the best singer we have ever worked with. For
the sound, we went for a thinner and more solid spectrum, and I think it fitted
the songs pretty well. The booklet is awesome, Mattias Norén really did a great
job with it. He deserves allot of credit for that one.
Mostly I think that “…Waiting for the tide” is a face-lift for us. And as
long as we keep evolving, I’m happy. Recording this album was so much fun,
it’s was just beautiful. We recorded the drums in this studio in Stockholm,
Sweden were I went to school. We where recording and I remember thinking; -Man,
this is going fast? We recorded the drums for the album in three days. I guess
that when you are in love with what you do, time just stops, it’s crazy!
Anyway, the whole recording of this album was amazing. Fredrik is such a
talented guitar player and a talented musician! He did his rhythm guitars and
solos in just a couple of days. The feeling and the atmosphere we had in the
studio were just enchanting. We have great memories from the recordings. I’m
sure everyone in the band agrees with me .
Are you surprised at the success it has
resulted and received from many around the world?
This may sound arrogant but, not
really! We knew that we had done something good when we finished it
But you can never be prepared of how people are going to react on the
finished product. The results were pretty amazing. We never thought that it was going to be such a
success. I mean, here we are a prog-band band
from Sweden with our own label and with a former album that we are almost
ashamed of, and
everybody was hyping our new stuff! Like I said we didn’t have this fancy label
so there was no need for
kissing any asses. My opinion is that most of the bands out there get great
reviews just because they are on
a great label. It’s like people are fans of the label instead of being fans of
the band. That’s kind of weird!
We knew that songs like Calling (Father to son) and Circles in the sand where
going to strike right in the
heart of people. We were also going
for the hidden complexity, instead of what most prog bands out there
do today. Their technique is right on your face all the time, and these bands
often forget the meaning of
making a good melody or a good chorus. Who is going to remember a song for the
drum parts or the guitar
solos? Sure, those things are good elements for creating a rock song, but it’s
the song and the vocals that are
the main things that most people listen to before discovering that the drummer
or the guitar player is great.
That’s was the main problem with our first album. We thought:-This vocals are
ok, but they aren’t great!
- Who cares! Who is going to listen to the vocals anyway? Ha ha ha Boy! Were we
wrong, or what?
That kind of thinking is really primitive, even if the song is instrumental
there has to be a melody to remember or sing to, and if you don’t have that,
then chances are pretty big you are going to loose the listener. My guess is
that 50 % of the people that listen to this kind of music don’t play an
instrument them self’s. So it’s rather hard for these people to enjoy an
album filled with shops and jazzy chords. They just don’t have the skilled
ears and the outcome of it is that they simply don’t understand it.
I also want to take this opportunity to talk about the meaning of having strong
lyrics in a song.
It’s very important to have something to say in the lyrics. I know most
musicians don’t read lyrics, and don’t think they are important at all, but
trust me! The rest of the world enjoys reading lyrics, so if you have a Heavy
metal Jazz song filled with shops bad lyrics and a crappy singer. I can promise
you that most of the buyers are going to be musicians. That’s great but
that’s not enough, at least for us. We did an album (…Waiting for the tide)
for both of these creatures, and I think we got away with it.
When I received it and heard it, I enjoyed
it very much. It is actually better than the first Mind’s Eye release
(as you
may have read my review), but from others point of view they think it is too
laid back and soft. I think some people
expected it to follow the same European progression as bands today are tampering
with. What is your view?
Well, there are allot of bands coming
from Europe right now. Most of the bands that do prog metal decide to focus on
the heavy guitar riffs and the instrumental parts. They sound heavy but without
feeling.
We discovered this short after releasing our first album. We didn’t want to do
another album with heavy riffs and super shops. Frankly, we where getting sick
of playing the same stuff over and over again, and when you are an artist you
want to evolve. And so we did! There is allot of complexity in “Waiting for
the tide” but you have to read and listen between the lines to find these
elements. I’ve said this before, there are too many bands with allot of
muscle, sadly these bands often don’t use their brain. So we used 20% muscle
and 80% brain. This album may sound laid back, and believe me… this was our
intention! In fact, this album is far more complicated than “Into the
unknown”, the first album. I agree that this album is not for the typical
metal, fist pumping, headbanger, this was never our intention. We always wanted
to do something for the fans of the old school prog like Genesis, Rush or Yes
but with a fresh sound on top of it.
Our first album “Into the unknown” was just a phase for us to go through, in
a quest of finding ourselves.
Personally, I think that this so-called “European progression” will turn out
to be just a phase for most of these bands too. We’ll have to see who of these
bands will survive the next character change of this business. By then we’ll
also know what was real and what was fake. Just look at Pain of Salvation, they
too are approaching a less muscle and a more brain, song writing kind of vibe.
Really, it’s kind of sad that there is a trend that most of these bands follow
just to sell a couple of hundred more records.
You have to ask yourself if this is really what you want to do. If it is,
then fine! you’ll survive. If it isn’t, then you’ll slowly fade out with
the trend. Just ask those “Grunge” guys. Where are they now?
Every CD I’m sure has its flaws,
but what would you change and not do the same for the next Mind’s Eye release?
The next album will have better
songs. Our sound and song composing has matured immensely since
“Waiting for the tide”, we will also focus on the vocals this time. The
sound is going to be heavy but
without sounding dark and profound. Mind’s Eye has evolved in a way we never
thought it would. We are
better producers this time and we know just what fits the song. We also have
allot of vocal harmonies in there. Those are fun to arrange. I mainly think that
people are going to be surprised of what Mind’s Eye is capable of. I know I
am! Ha ha ha We listen to a wide variety of different music styles, and this
will be reflected in our new album. Honestly There will be something for
everyone in the new album.
That’s a promise!!
Now you mentioned in your email, that
you guys have done another 14 songs for the next release. Tell us a bit
about that. I can’t believe you are still constantly working on new material
so soon. Any special guests on the next release?
It’s a very productive time for us right
now. We are making songs like a factory. I just don’t know how we
keep this pace. All I know is that 98 % of what we do has the Mind’s Eye
trademark sound on it. If it
sounds like someone else then we simply won’t work on it. Sometimes we work on
songs for months just
to capture the right vibe and arrangement for the song. We don’t take advice
from producers or engineers
outside the band either, because right now we are the only ones who know what we
want to hear from the
song in the mix. There will be some special guests on our new release (if the
label permits it, off course). I
can’t reveal them right now because then the surprise will be ruined, so you
just have to wait for the actual
release. The idea is to put 12 songs on the European release, throw in a bonus
track for the American
release and a bonus track for the Japanese release. Who knows, we might put all
these songs on one album
and see how it goes. Here are the names of the songs:
01. Courage within
; 02. Roll the dice
; 03. A moment of honor; 04. Room with a view
; 05. Shallow water
; 06. My kindred soul
; 07. The shape of salvation
; 08. These open arms
; 09. An eye for an eye
; 10. Hands of time
; 11. Your world
; 12. Domino (in a maze of glass)
; 13. End of the line (Japanese release)
14. I will remember
(cover) - (U.S. release). The
name of the new album will be “On
a personal voyage”, but we’ll have to see if the new label approves it. The
whole album is exactly 73 minutes and 57 seconds. So there is allot of stuff in
there.
When do you envision the next CD to come
out, late 2001?
If everything goes as we have
planned, then I guess it will be out sometime between June and August next
year 2001. That also depends on what the label has in mind.
So now Johan Niemann is back in the
band. How did that come about and why did he really leave in the first
place? You mentioned that he recorded and stuff but why is he a temporary fill
in for the band? He doesn’t want to remain in Mind’s
Eye?
This issue is very complicated. Johan
and me have played together since the beginning of Mind’s Eye. Maybe we got
tired of each other and we both need some space to clear our heads.
It has been very clouded lately. We decided to ask Johan if he was
willing to play on the demo songs. And he said, YES! With a big smile! That made
me ask him if he was willing to play on the album. That is if we couldn’t find
another bass player. To my surprise he said YES again. I think it all started
with him
going on tour with “Therion”. He was away for almost three months and we had
to work night and day to
finish our demos. We were a bit disappointed when he went on tour with them,
because we knew that this
would really slow us down. We also understood that this was something he needed
to do. When he came
back he was tired of touring and playing, plus he had some pain in his back.
Just a few days after he came
back from the tour we called him up to ask him if we was willing to rehearse the
new songs. He was like,
fine……. Let’s rehearse! I could hear him take a big breath on the other
side on the line before he answered
me. That made us ask him if he wanted out of the band. The rest is history.
To find a bass player who has
lived and breathed a parallel life with us is almost impossible. It has to be a
guy who has the crunch of
Eddie Jackson (Queensrÿche) and
has musically ideas of Mike Porcaro (Toto) and those kinds of people
are impossible to find. The only reason, I can think of, that stands in the way
of Johan joining Mind’s Eye
full time again, is that he has so much to do with Therion. We respect that, and
that’s no problem for us
anymore. We just have to see what the future will bring in this matter. Who
knows! Maybe we’ll all just
look back at this time and laugh at it later.
Now you say that the Queensryche tribute
from Siegen Records will soon be out? Which
song are you guys doing?
The tribute to Queensrÿche from
Siegen Records was delayed, and it just came out. The song we did was “I
will remember”. That song was chosen because we thought it was the only song
we could do better than
Queensrÿche. We are proud of what we did with, and it came out beautiful as
well. When we got the
invitation to do the tribute we thought: -What a joke!!! -Nobody can do Queensrÿche
better. It’s almost
impossible!! So we took this ballad witch we thought that we could improve. If
you are going to do a cover,
you have to make sure it’s better than the original. I recently saw somebody
write something stupid on the
PM board about this, and I quote: -If you can’t do a cover song better than the original,
then it’s better to
screw it up!!! And well, we are not screw ups, so we made it better.
Have you toured for “ …Waiting for the Tide”? And if so
where and where else in the next couple of months.
We have not played a gig since the
release party back in February. There is no sense in playing gigs if you are not
going to make a profit on them. What’s the point of loosing money?? It’s fun
to play live! But not that fun!! We are simply not healthy enough as a company
to take that risk. I know a prog
band here in Stockholm that plays almost every week in this local pub. I mean,
it’s the same people in, the same place, listening to the same music every
damn week. Man! You got to be like a zombie to not notice your brain melting
down into liquid from giging in the same places over and over again. I’m
afraid to tell you that we won’t gig with “…waiting for the tide”
anymore this year, we’ll concentrate on finding a proper label for the new
album first, and then we’ll see what happens. Also, the fact that we have not
found a bass player yet has kept us off stage and working in the studio. If we
had to choose between playing live gigs or recording albums, then we’ll always
take the second choice. Rehearsing, arranging, producing and recording are what
we love the most. We hope someday to get the opportunity to gig overseas. That
would be something to look forward to.
OK Daniel, I think this is enough, I
can keep going and going .. So I hope that’s enough for ya and I hope covered
most of what’s been going on in the past few months with Mind’s Eye. I’ll
talk to you soon
Thanks Monster Until next time then!
Daniel Flores / Mind’s Eye
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