Interview date: February 12, 2007
RockLine: I’m glad you’ve come to visit Slovenia and our capital again, where you’ll play tonight and introduce your material and the band itself to our Slovenian crowd, at a gig that’s also a warm-up for Eagles Of Death Metal’s show. How does it feel to be the ones testing how ready the Slovenian masses are for stoner sounds?
Nikola: I don’t know. Mostly we’re just really happy to be back here at Orto Bar, since this is our fifth or sixth time in your country, and my third time here with the band. You’ve got a whole sea of good gigs happening in this country. From what I heard, At The Drive-In played here, and Mars Volta not long after them. Personally, I think Orto is one of my favorite places to play. The club is small, the sound is great, and I hope a lot of people show up tonight. As for the EODM show, we were just talking about that band not long ago. I think they’re more roll than rock, but it’s not hard to get the point. I get the gag, and I’m glad they’re coming to the soil of the former shared country. I’m also glad that this is exactly what opened up the chance for us to play these two warm-up shows.
RockLine: Back to you guys. I tried to dig up something more concrete and, above all, thorough about you, but it was no use, since your site is pretty stingy with info. You’re still an enigma to me. How would you introduce Chang Ffos?
Nikola: As for the website: our main web presence right now is www.myspace.com/templeofchangffos. The main site isn’t quite ready to go public yet, because we replaced the original one, I don’t know if you caught it, the one that used to be…
RockLine: Yeah… It’s down now…
Nikola: It’s down, but I have to say it was a really good site. Now we want to overhaul the old one and bring it up to our level. We’re sorry it’s not quite ready yet, so we need to get a move on. I know there isn’t much info about us out there, but we can’t just present an idea that was born ten years ago. I joined the band a good three years ago. Right now, I think the original wish that’ll present the band best is, above all, loads of gigs. We want to play as much as possible. The guys in the band are also, let’s say, getting on in years, which makes it harder to line up our schedules. We live in 2007! It’s not easy for noisers to put together so many good and, above all, important gigs. I hope as many people as possible come see us and get to know us. In March, for example, we’re shooting a video. In April or May we’re planning to organize a tour. In the end, we just want to play as many shows as we can. By playing, we want to present our record, This Arcane Device, which we’re still promoting. On top of all that, like I said, we’ll be shooting music videos. We’re trying our best. Wherever they call us, we go and play. There are still lots of countries on the map we need to conquer. Before I forget, I’d like to thank our friends from Sweden, the band Suma. Not long ago you hosted them in Slovenia too. We’re planning a tour with them that’ll explode sometime in November. We’d intended to play together in May as well, but things got a bit complicated. You can find quite a few things about us on eMule, but until then, be patient and check out the address I mentioned. That should be enough for a first taste of us. Sale, our guitarist, is online all the time and we’re always updating the info, we like getting in touch with curious visitors and fans and so on… We’re from Croatia, where we don’t have a single serious music newspaper or magazine, we don’t have music shows… It’s tough.
RockLine: I believe it. So how would you introduce Chang Ffos and your basic philosophy to some random XY visitor, a total newbie who knows nothing about you and has practically never heard of you?
Nikola: Well, as Sale and I were just talking about, we play something that on the music palette I’d place somewhere between rock and metal. Where someone files us is a matter of what they listen to and how they’re feeling at the moment. In the band we bet on feeling, on vibes. We also listen to a huge variety of music, which already defines us musically at this stage. And we’re four totally different types of guys. The common ground is a love of noise. Given the wide range of influences, I think that’s a good foundation for becoming, and being, a good band. That’s how we set ourselves apart from the average, from the whole scene that rules the music landscape. I don’t know. We’re the sum of everything. Head through the wall! And every gig is an experience in itself. Fuck it! I play in the band, so it’s hard for me to describe something like this totally objectively.
RockLine: Personally, I hear a sexy mix of Neurosis, Tool, Soundgarden, stoner…
Nikola: Those bands you listed are really great. I get what you got out of what we do. But plenty of people have also come up to tell us we sound like Converge or some other band. I think everyone can find elements of whatever’s closest to them. If someone’s having a good day, great, and if not, it’s not exactly going to make them feel any better… (laughs)
RockLine: That’s the whole point, there’s so much music out there that we can always pick and choose… What about your debut? What were the main guidelines you followed while making the record?
Nikola: The band’s been around for a while. In that time we can boast three demos. We wanted to make an album and… We had material we thought was good and that could be recorded really well. So we set about recording it and polishing it up with friends at Kozmo Studio. The lion’s share of the work was done by Mio, the guitarist from Analena, we sent the recordings off to the US, and the mastering was masterfully handled by Steve Austin from Today Is The Day. The main aim was to capture on the album the energy we put out live. The material came out chaotic, which is what we want, since we’re a noise band. The album is a reflection of hanging out and playing together. It tells you about us, but seeing us live is an even bigger challenge. People say that what we do is something unique. We’re not blowing our own horn with that, we just want to squeeze out of it whatever makes the whole thing interesting to us, and we don’t settle for any cookie-cutter stereotypes.
RockLine: That’s exactly the paradox. On stage you radiate one kind of energy, while in the studio the situation is colder and more sterile. How was it getting used to that new climate?
Nikola: We wanted to avoid those problems right from the start, so we recorded the whole record not to a click but live, with all the instruments at once, just without vocals. It was similar to a rehearsal. When I was thinking about what kind of record I wanted to make, it was basically a string of the best moments from rehearsals. What we do is all about that moment of invincibility. When you play like that, the feeling is different. It carries you away. All of a sudden you’ve made forty minutes of something you can compare to sex. Capturing the reflection of that ecstasy was our goal. Catching an orgasm in the form of a recording. Then we recorded the vocals. What happened in between was a good time. Above all, we’re proud that Steve Austin put his fingers all over it.
RockLine: And there’s the result! The record is right in front of us! So since 1998 it’s been constant evolution. Now it’s 2007. What are the plans for the future?
Nikola: Above all, we’re hungry for tours and gigs, which is the point of any band anyway. The band really has existed since 1998. Now it’s 2007, and next year we’ll hit our tenth birthday. Chang Ffos played with Converge back in ’99. That’s a band that has already shared stages with legends like Crowbar. We’ve played with Suma, we know Today Is the Day, we know them, we talk to them and we’re in touch. All along, from day one, something was always going on in the band, but we never had the chance to record a record. Now the record is finally here. On top of that, we’re supposed to put out a compilation on a Swedish label. Right now we’re on MoonLee Records. We’re trying to do everything we can. Life is too short to make everything happen. Some things move, others just stay put. That’s how it is.
RockLine: A Swedish stoner band close to my heart is Lowrider. There are definitely more open-minded people in Sweden than here on Balkan soil. So how does the crowd receive you here, or back home in Croatia?
Nikola: The two bands taking the stage before us flirt quite a bit with stoner. All three of us, Chang Ffos, Good Day To Die and Stonebride, preach an open-borders philosophy. There’s no specialized menu for some hand-picked crowd only, we leave the choice open. I can’t speak for your gig tastes, even though I’ve played in Slovenia plenty of times, but I kind of get the chemistry on your stages and what you’re getting at. I can see when people come to gigs and when they don’t, how connected they are, how things stand on the music scene, what the magazines and shows are like… In Croatia that doesn’t exist right now, and I think things back home aren’t the way they are abroad. There’s no culture where you can have eight clubs within two hundred meters on the same street. Here there’s always some kind of pretending going on. Today is Tuesday and we don’t know how many people we can actually expect at the gig, or how much tonight will actually pay off, but I think it’s good that music grows and spreads in every direction.
RockLine: And the second-to-last one, before you go on stage and give everything you’ve got. Stormbride will be the first band we hear at tonight’s show, a compact whole, the fruit of collaboration between members of both of the other bands too. The elements mix. So what are you promising us for tonight? What are we in for?
Nikola: Both bands you’ll hear tonight are our friends from Zagreb. These are people we live alongside and share rehearsal space with. They’re two outstanding bands. I think the differences from what we do in Chang Ffos are huge. The whole package will be strange and quite different in character. But you’re in for a good gig.
RockLine: And the last one: what would you tell our readers?
Nikola: What would I tell them? Read as many forums as you can, go to as many gigs as you can, hang out and swap info. That’s it. Live this life. Enjoy!
RockLine: Thanks a lot for the chat.
Nikola: No problem. Thank you.
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