Hey guys, the first part of the interview is ready so im pasting it here, will upload the rest as soon as i get it. Hope you enjoy!
1. Please tell us a Little bit about the months that followed August 2007, the Finland experience having tenths of fans from all over the world witnessing the departure of Anneke van Giersbergen, and the upcoming times of seclusion. Many of us thought would be the last chance to see the band live, how was it for you guys? Well, we never thought it was our last gig, for sure. But it was a weird period anyway. We were overwhelmed by all fans coming from all different countries witnessing our last gig with Anneke. But we were also happy it was our last day with Anneke, knowing she would quit with the band. We already knew for 6 months she would stop, so it was in a way a relief that this day finally happened. Of course we started thinking about the future of The Gathering immediately when we knew Anneke would leave (march 2007). After Finland we also concentrated on other things different from The Gathering, musically and personally: René started his own guitarshop and joined Drive By Wire, Frank worked as a courier and played live with his alter ego Grim Limbo, Marjolein did several things musically and found a new job, and I (Hans) worked in a children hospital. We needed this break to reload our batteries, and to get creative again.
2. Was there a moment for The Gathering in which you were unsure to continue as a band?We never played with the idea to quit the band for real. It would be such a huge dissapointment, especially for René, Frank and me, the guys who started this band, to quit because Anneke wanted to stop. We still had a good feeling about the four of us as a band and we know we still have a lot of inspiration and the drive to continue. The Gathering story simply couldn’t end with the departure of Anneke.
3. How difficult was it to come up with new song ideas? It was a bit tough in the very beginning, but at a certain point, around the beginning of 2008, especially René came up with a lot of very good ideas in a relatively short time. Of course, you can decide to keep on going with the band, but you need strong song material too. We knew it would happen, but it’s always the question when?.
This time we had a clear focus: we really wanted to make a rock orientated album, with a lot of guitars, and not too many layers. This was not a new idea, during the recordings of ‘Home’ we already wanted to make an album which had more guitars. But it didn’t happen in the end. That’s why it felt comfortable that René also produced the album, we knew exactly how we wanted to sound this time.
4. How could you know what was the right step to take regarding the “new voice”? did you have in mind something clear during the auditions? No, we stood open for everything. The most important thing we had in mind was that we, of course, would like the voice and if there was chemistry going on between the vocals and music. We had this Massive Attack idea: work with several male and female vocalist. We kept an eye and ear open, and as you already know we started an audition via email; vocalists could send their demo to us. We received a mere 250 demo’s in total. It was a heavy task listening carefully to all of them.
5. After many months of silence, the band gave news about finally having chosen a girl to front the band again, how did you choose Silje over the huge amounts of people auditioning? Well, we were not really in search finding a new permanent band member. We were already working with Anne on ‘Capital Of Nowhere’, and we were talking with Marcela to work on a couple of songs. When we listened to Silje we liked her immediately and we sent her a rough demo version of ‘Treasure’. She sent it back and we liked it a lot. ‘Treasure’ is not an easy song, but she did a fabulous job. Silje was very driven, she wanted to hear all our new material, and before we knew we worked with her on 6 new songs and after we met her last summer she was a Gathereer!
It just happened on a very natural way. We were not really in search, as we had this Massive Attack idea, but it happened anyway. A project is nice, but being in a real band with full bandmembers is better.
6. As far as Silje’s auditioning concerns, did she apply singing The Gathering songs, or her own material/Octavia Sperati? No, she sent us some material and links of several projects she did, including of course Octavia Sperati, but we decided to work on new Gathering material. We didn’t do a real audition with old Gathering songs, as we are focused on the new record.
7. In previous news, The Gathering was thinking of using a male voice, why did it not happen in the end? Can you give us some names of the guys you thought of? We had some guys in mind, the boys from Anathema for example, and I was in touch with Trickster G, but this album just wasn’t meant to be for male vocals. We were working with Silje and at a certain point we worked with her on all the other tracks of the new album. We were happy with the results, so we just went with the flow. We still think it is a good idea to work with guest (male) vocalists (and musicians) in the future though.
8. How are you handling the distance with Silje, as you have informed us, she’s currently living in the UK, how hard will it be to tour around with her? I don’t think this will be a problem. It’s just all about planning. We will do a couple of gigs in weekends instead of stand alone gigs. And I don’t think we will do an extensive tour like we did in the past.
9. What is the idea behind TWP? Is it a concept album? We have created a context in which we worked. When we were in the middle of the writing process it became clear this album is very ‘urban’. Most of the songs were fast, guitar driven, it felt like this album was ‘city’ orientated in a lot of ways. So we created a fictive kind of city, and gave this idea to the vocalists. It’s like walking in a city, in the park, the harbour, and imagine that people having dialogues, or monologues, and you have the ability to listen to those conversations. Everybody was free of course to make her own story, as long as it was connected to the context.
10. Where does the whole artwork come from? It was Gema (girlfiend of René) who was surfing the net and stumbled upon the artwork of Adam Abernethy, an artist living in New Zealand. He actually knew The Gathering and we liked his work a lot, it connected very well with our context and the atmosphere of the album.
11. There are two beautiful contributions by guest singers Anna Rosa & Marcela Bovio, how did you choose the tracks they would be singing in? Who wrote the lyrics of those tracks? They all wrote their own lyrics. It was more a feeling rather than choosing, really. We had the feeling Anne’s voice would fit on Capital of Nowhere, and the same goes for Marcela with Pale Traces.
12. Originally TWP was planned to include only 9 songs, why did you choose to make it a 10 song CD, and which track was the last to be added? René came up with the idea to include a song of Silje on this album (You Promised Me A Symphony). The album is quite ‘dense’, so it was a good idea to break up the album a bit, with a piano orientated song. Silje was already working on this song for a while, she recorded this song I think it was in February this year in Norway.
13. Were there any songs left out of the album? Will they be included in a further release? All the ‘left-overs’ will appear on the EP ‘City From Above’. This EP also includes the 13 minute title track which was written for a dance piece we contributed music to.
14. How has it been to work with a totally different personality in the vocals? Anneke and TG had been together from way back, it is to be assumed you had already a very specific method in the writing process… Most of the songs (in the past and on The West Pole) were written by René and/or Frank. Later on we took these rough ideas to the rehearsal room or René’s studio and worked on arrangements together. When we had a rough demo we sent it to the vocalists. We have always worked like this so this didn’t change, it has been our way of writting for many albums.
15. Which bands would you say are the biggest influence for The Gathering right now? Every bandmember has his or her own influence. We all like bands such as Doves, Dredg, Archive, The Arcade Fire, Elbow, and you can always hear a bit of influences, without losing our typical Gathering sound.
16. What are your favourite tracks in the album, and why? I like Pale Traces, Treasure, No Bird Call and No One Spoke a lot. This can change of course. I can’t explain exactly why I like them. When I hear them I am touched a bit more then the other ones.
17. TWP is somehow a double release because of the EP "City From Above" which includes an instrumental track, TWP itself opens energetically with “When Trust Becomes Sound”. Are we seeing the rebirth of the epic atmospheres in ways of the tracks “How to measure a planet?”, “Black Light District” &” Sand and Mercury”??? Who knows? It depends on the material we have and the mood we are in. I myself love bands who are able to write long, interesting tracks, such as Godspeed You! Black Emperor.
18. “Treasure” is for sure one of the happiest songs The Gathering has ever written if not the happiest. I find a very strong influence from Arcade Fire in the drums, would you say the band is heading to a more “indie” sound rather than alternative rock?I am not sure if I know the difference between ‘indie’ and ‘alternative’. They are more or less the same for me. I think albums like ‘How to measure...’ are more alternative already, so it is not really new for us. I think we still have this typical Gathering atmosphere, only the approach is a bit different.
I think we wrote a lot of uplifting songs lately, more extravert. If this is what’s coming out of the minds of René and Frank, then so be it. We are not going to force to write a ‘dark’ or ‘gloomy’ album. We were full of confidence when we wrote The West Pole. I think we also felt a relief. In the past, more and more the band became The Gathering + Anneke. There’s nobody to blame, it just happened. Right now it feels like we have the band right back where it belongs. It’s a band again. That’s what you hear.
19. “All you are” sounded at first listen like very generic female fronted metal, now i fully dig it and like it lots, makes sense inside all the stories told in the album. Nevertheless one cannnot deny it’s a very easy going track, is this the band’s attempt to get radio play in the Netherlands due to the huge success this genre has had in the past years? No, this is not our main goal when we write a song. It just turned out more catchy than we thought. There is no masterplan to conquer the world
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20. One of the master tracks for myself in TWP is the self-titled track, the chorus line is catchy and dreamy as hell. Would you say/agree this is perhaps the track that mostly has the band’s signature in the album? Follows in the vein of classic tracks such as “Travel” & “A Noise Severe from your past releases”?René wrote all music, Silje wrote lyrics and vocal lines, and Frank, René and me arranged the song as it is right now. It is a typical Gathering song. René came up with these riffs and instinctively we all knew exactly what to do. It is a very strong indeed. We will see if this song will end up being a Gathering classic
21. “No Bird Call” & “You promised me a symphony” sound as the most intímate & personal tracks in TWP, how much did Silje contribute in the music and melodies writing process? YPMEA was entirely written, arranged and played by Silje so i would say it is very intimate. No Bird Call is a song Frank wrote, and Silje wrote lyrics and vocal lines. Nevertheless, almost every song was already written and roughly arranged when Silje (and Marcela and Anne of course) joined us to finish the songs as they are right now. This is how we work for years now, and it’s the way of working we like best. Of course in the future things can chance. Maybe we will invent a whole new way of writing songs.
22. In “Capital of Nowhere”, it’s easy to find a very high influence from Cocteau Twins in the voice and Pink Floyd in the music, it’s incredibly fresh and atmospheric, should we expect The Gathering to wander around this kind of songs in the future? I should add that i believe Anna Rosa did a WONDERFUL job on this one. We think so too!
Well, we enjoy to play dreamy, shoegaze orientated music a lot, and YES, we are thinking of writing more songs like Capital of Nowhere. We are huge Cocteau Twins and Slowdive addicts. But we didn’t really talk about new songs yet. First we need to take some distance from TWP and let it develop as it should.
END OF PART 1
Cheers!!!!!