Location: Trnovo / Ljubljana / Slovenia
Interview date: 27.05.2009
Adam is a band that brings together guitarist Peter Dekleva, known as a member of Srečna mladina, and singer Damir Lisica of Anavrin, who’ll answer just as well if you call him by the short form of his name – Dado. Then there’s the rhythm section: Damir’s Anavrin comrade, bassist Anej Kočevar, who also plays in Gušti in Polona, and drummer Gregor Jakac from Tide. These are seasoned musicians who formed a new band to chase a few ideas they share, as individuals, in how they hear music! And that’s how Adam’s musical language is being written and born. Let’s take a closer look at what guitarist Peter Dekleva and singer Damir Lisica – Dado had to say about their new joint adventure, whose studio debut we’re all eagerly waiting for.
RockLine: Adam is a new name on the Slovenian music scene. Have bands like Srečna mladina and Anavrin been pushed onto the back burner now?
Peter: Srečna mladina is still my first band, but one of the reasons for starting Adam was so you can share something, some of your ideas, with other people too. Those are the ideas you can’t really share with the people in Srečna mladina.
RockLine: So those bands carry on as usual?
Peter: Of course. We’re working on a new Srečna mladina album right now.
Dado: We’ve actually just wrapped up recording a new Anavrin album too.
RockLine: It often happens that a new project demands 100% focus from an artist. That’s not necessarily the case here?
Peter: No. Not at all. But then, it all depends. It’s hard to decide in advance, before things start flowing on their own. Some people have several girlfriends, others just one. Some have one kid, others several, and some have one pet, others a whole bunch… I think if you try to stretch your versatility into other areas too, there shouldn’t be any obstacles to working with other musicians in other bands, other projects. It often happens that you hear other musicians’ opinions, and you may realize that an idea someone shows you is very compatible with how you see music. So it’s worth trying to share those ideas. But if you’re a musician who can only express yourself in one direction, then you have to stick to that direction.
Dado: I’d add that we didn’t start Adam to aim for something big or to create some kind of media pressure. We started working on the principle Peter touched on just now. We got together and said: “What if we wrote one song together? Let’s meet at a rehearsal and see what happens.” No plans, no planning, just to see how it works and whether it can grow into something. That was three years ago.
RockLine: Do you feel you’ve matured enough now for something more?
Dado: Definitely. Those spontaneous beginnings, with really no time pressure or obstacles, grew to the point where we’re ready for the stage, ready for a wider critical mass to tell us who and what we are. So we’re ready to introduce ourselves to the public.
RockLine: Is Gregor Jakac a permanent member?
Peter: Yes. About a year ago Andrej Zavašnik, who drummed before him, left us, because he couldn’t keep going with us due to commitments to other projects. He’s the drummer of Srečna mladina and Gušti in Polona.
RockLine: Gregor Jakac played brilliantly at Orto bar when you performed there on 04.04.2009.
Peter: Agreed. He also had a big impact on the team spirit of the band. When he joined us, Adam jumped to a new level of quality. We stepped up a notch.
Dado: Once Gregor joined us too, this project of ours kind of grew into a band. Suddenly we felt a stronger bond between us. That was half a year ago. He worked on the arrangements with us as well. We started every song from scratch together while writing them.
RockLine: You’ve built up quite a bit of original material by now. Is your studio debut in sight?
Peter: The album is very close. We go in to record at the end of June.
RockLine: In the summer. No vacations?
Peter: Of course not.
Dado: Vacations will be minimal.
Peter: We’ll record the album in our old studio, which has been renovated, so we can test how the sound works in it at the same time. The album will be self-produced.
RockLine: And the mix?
Dado: We’ll mostly do everything ourselves. We put our money into gear, into the things we were missing. We’re counting heavily on our bassist Anej here, who knows these waters, he’s a very good tech, so Anej will be involved first and foremost in the mixing, and the rest of us will help him.
Peter: I think what matters most when recording a record is how ready the material already is by the time you get to that stage, and how deep you’re willing to dive into the material you want to record. If you’re not willing to dive in, you need to bring in a producer. But if you’re ready to get on an intimate level with it, a producer isn’t as essential these days. Producers used to be a must, especially on the technical side. Today things are more accessible, they’re not so hard that you couldn’t master them and produce an album yourself.
RockLine: So basically, if you have the vision and the know-how, you don’t need a producer?
Peter: Right. But a producer matters for bands that, say, aren’t lacking a vision in general, but maybe get stuck on one specific project they want to record, and maybe don’t know how to approach it at that particular point in the best way. Then someone who gets the trick can steer the band more easily onto a path it would have taken sooner or later anyway. Basically, that way a producer can make things a lot easier for a band. That goes for bigger bands too. Depeche Mode, for example. They change producers, and then it’s not hard to tell the sound is different from album to album. That’s where the “third ear” matters, helping add that final touch so things don’t repeat themselves and sound different, fresh,…
Dado: As far as our material goes, the pre-production phase is behind us. The songs are very well prepared for recording. We tore the arrangements down completely more than once and put the songs back together. Everything was thoroughly shaped into finished forms…
Peter: Honestly, if we called in a sound engineer now, that person would unintentionally just make things harder, because the band has reached a level of intimacy with the very substance of our songs. If we now had to wait for someone extra to grasp our ideas, explaining the point of our songs to them from the very beginning, it would be a complete waste of time.
Dado: It was different with our first single Odnosi med srečnimi. We were fumbling around there, it wasn’t totally clear to us what we wanted, and then Žare Pak showed up at one of the rehearsals and gave us some advice. That helped us a lot, so we could build the song and take it further. Sometimes it’s enough for someone to just nudge you gently in the right direction.
RockLine: How is the audience receiving you? What’s the reaction to your music?
Dado: There’s a lot of enthusiasm. I’m not saying that to brag, it’s really true that the audience reactions to what we do have been extremely positive. People came out of curiosity, they didn’t know what to expect. They’d heard our first single. Then they saw that our stuff isn’t necessarily “mellow,” that they can hear “epic” things from us too, tracks over 7 minutes long, as well as plenty of stuff that smells of musical experiment. People are ready for our album, and they’re also curious to see when and where we’ll show up on stages.
RockLine: Where did the idea for the Odnosi med srečnimi video come from?
Dado: Peter’s good friend Urban Pekle had a hand in that. He and Peter had one of those very constructive conversations along those lines. Urban is a young and very promising director who wants to prove himself, and he already had the idea in his head that instead of the band members, the shots would feature girls playing Odnosi med srečnimi. I didn’t expect much myself, but it turned out to be a really neat video that we’re very happy with. Then it was fun reading through the forums to see how people reacted to the video, how they commented on it and understood it. There were actually questions about whether the girls really sing the song or not. Some people honestly thought the girls in the video were really performing the track.
RockLine: As musicians, where do you feel the biggest changes in artistic expression through the music Adam creates, compared with what you do in Anavrin or Srečna mladina and the other projects you’re involved in?
Dado: I’ve been into music for ten years now. Anavrin was my first high school band. We were 17 then. We all started from zero, grew and matured together. Then bassist Bernard Pajk joined the band. He took the whole thing up a level, so we started to think too. He guided me, I learned from him. Not as a bassist, but he had a big influence on how I think about music. As a musician you develop, you keep developing, you simply grow. You also reach a point where you can decide whether to go on from here or leave it all behind. There are moments of stagnation, moments when nothing moves anywhere, it just stands still. At a point like that I met Peter, who showed me his vision, and I liked it. That moment was very important for me, because it opened up my view of the world of music. It expanded in every way.
Rockline: How do your songs come together? Do you build them on lyrics, a riff, or something else?
Peter: It varies. With two songs we started with lyrics and wrote the music later, but generally the melody comes first, on acoustic guitar with a rough vocal line. The lyrics and arrangement follow. If a song already stands on its own, we don’t force a special arrangement on it.
Rockline: So you leave some room for chance too.
Peter: Of course. It’s called a “work accident,” and those accidents are often very interesting, they can be a real enrichment. When our drummer dropped a stick during a transition while we were recording, for example, the whole thing sounded so good that we didn’t change it. Those work accidents often complete a song in the best possible way.
Rockline: Do you ever start with the title, as some bands do?
Peter: No, but we’ll start thinking in that direction (laughs).
Dado: We usually change titles even after the song is done, when we’re looking for words that best sum up a musical idea. The title comes last.
Peter: Above all, you have to respect every song, let it flow undisturbed and subordinate everything to letting it fulfill its potential. I think a song is bigger than the person, so a musician often has to swallow their ego (play a more modest solo, for example, or if you’re a singer, forget about your vocal range) and step into the background. Honesty is the guiding principle of our band.
Rockline: So creativity and honesty over some kind of off-the-rack craftsmanship, of which there’s definitely too much on the home market.
Dado: Absolutely.
Rockline: You mentioned the album, so what can we expect from it?
Peter: I’d stress above all that the album will be recorded live. If we record anything afterwards, it’ll only be to build on that live feel in the right way, because we’re not fans of so-called filler.
Dado: The album should come out in the fall, and a club tour will probably follow. Anyway, as Peter already said, the creative process always comes first with our music. We’re spontaneous, but on the other hand we’re also thoughtful. That means we’re not afraid to experiment and use all kinds of gear, like the theremin (an electronic instrument you play without touching it), which you saw at Orto, but on the other hand we have to be absolutely happy with the result. That goes for the music as well as the lyrics.
Rockline: Do you plan to offer the album to foreign labels too?
Dado: We do have plans, but we’ve decided to finish it in peace first and present it in Slovenia. Of course, we’ll record English vocals for the foreign market later, but right now our minds are at home.
Peter: That’s right. We’ll take this slowly and thoughtfully. When you try to go through the wall headfirst, you usually find out later that there was a door right next to it. So the most elegant solution is to take the key and unlock the door.
Photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
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