Location: Rock Cafe / Postojna / Slovenia
Interview date: 18.03.2010
M.U.D.D. are a young, almost alt-rock-leaning quartet who boldly build their identity on the punch of a female voice. Sounds familiar, but watch out! M.U.D.D. are an oddball bunch who won’t bend to popular music trends. Right after they climbed off the stage at Postojna’s Rock Cafe, a pair of (strapping) RockLine youngsters caught them and got tangled up in a pretty interesting chat.
RockLine: What made you enter the Epic RockLine contest?
Urban: For us it’s mostly just one more experience. New gig, new adventure! I think we played pretty decently today.
Doris Natalija: I feel good after the show, though it can always be better.
RockLine: Any stage fright?
Doris Natalija: A bit, yeah. On my side, honestly, a ton.
Urban: We feel great on stage, even though you can tell we’re still missing some mileage.
RockLine: But you’re not exactly a brand-new band, are you?
Urban: We got together around September, October 2008. In a lineup similar to what you saw today. We tracked Doris down later through the internet.
RockLine: So the band was originally planned without a female vocalist?
Urban: At the start we were looking for a male vocalist. For a while Andrej filled that role, a great singer otherwise, but unfortunately he was a decade apart from the rest of the band in terms of ideas, maybe even more. We simply weren’t on the same wavelength. Luckily, we later “met” Doris by pure chance. But we were open to all options from the start, male or female vocals.
Doris Natalija: Well, I’m 60% guy anyway, so… (laughs)
RockLine: How does that saying go: “may the best man win”! (laughs)
RockLine: You can even feel a touch of black soul in your voice. Can you single out any role model or musical figure who inspires you when you sing?
Doris Natalija: It’s what you might call the very basic influences, like Aretha Franklin, for example. Solo singing lessons come in handy too, even though that’s a completely different way of performing, starting with how you switch up the colors of your voice.
RockLine: A female voice in rock is already pretty standard practice. On one side we’ve got a flood of bands with a more commercially accessible stamp, and on the other the ones with a heavier, properly rock backbone. Which side would you like people to “meet” you on, so to speak?
Urban: Absolutely the latter! Commercial stuff never interested us, not even in the long run. It’s mostly about saying in music what you really think, what comes from within. There’s no room for shallow fluff here. I feel like Slovenia is short on bands like that, there are negligibly few of them really, especially ones with a female vocalist who’s got balls.
RockLine: The aces are undoubtedly in your hands, especially with such a characterful voice. Which isn’t surprising if you consider that Doris is actually more than half guy, so as a band you’ve got at least a good half more balls! (laughs). The girl already surprised us at the soundcheck…
Doris Natalija: Thanks! My problem is still stage fright, which often makes me hoarse. At rehearsals, for example, there’s no such problem, everything goes like clockwork. Performing live can be a story of its own.
Rockline: Do you feel that by joining the band you’ve brought the guys some more sensitive shades?
Doris Natalija: Definitely. They’ve gone a bit soft, in their own way. (laughs)
Rockline: What are your ambitions for recording a debut? You’ve already put out some demo recordings..
Doris Natalija: On our Myspace there’s a kind of quick-and-dirty demo, it’s actually three songs.
Urban: For an album we’re still short on some material for now. But I’m sure things will fall into place over time.
RockLine: So what are the plans for the future?
Urban: Enjoying the music, as many gigs as possible, and racking up the mileage! And finally getting another driver, because I’m always the one stuck behind the wheel! (laughs)
interview by: Daniel Pavlica & Rok Klemše
photos by: Mojca Perdih
text edited by: Daniel Pavlica
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