Interview date: 26.01.2007
On Saturday evening, a little before ten, representatives of both sides met up, Matevž Grad – Melodrom, plus Jani Lah and yours truly – RockLine.Info, for the agreed interview in the then still empty Gala hala. At first it seemed like it would be just the three of us, but the music was way too loud, so we moved to the “backstage” area, where we were joined by Mina Špiler and Miha Žargi. That was the final lineup. The other two members of the band, Polona Janežič and Matej Nolda, showed up when the conversation was already over.
Davor: How’s school going after such an active musical and artistic life?
Mina: Honestly, it’s going a lot slower than it used to.
Matevž: I’m done.
Miha: Mine keeps getting longer. I just found that out. …Thanks to the Bologna Process.
Davor: For the most part you take care of the whole band image yourselves, the record sleeves, the music videos…
Mina: We haven’t made a video on this record ourselves yet, maybe we will for the third single. So far two have been made, the first by Dražen Štader, the second by Saša Podgoršek.
Davor: How do the music and lyrics come together in Melodrom?
Mina: That’s one of the things we keep under wraps and don’t like talking about. It’s nothing special though, we don’t have any secret recipe. It probably works no differently than it does for other creative people.
Davor: So does the music come first and then the lyrics, or the other way around?
Matevž: Mostly the music comes first. We haven’t managed to do it any other way so far, really. But right from the start we decided that we’d do everything we possibly could ourselves, so the sleeve, the videos at the beginning and so on. That’s why we sign the songs as Melodrom.
Davor: Do you think it’s important or necessary in Slovenia for local acts to release their albums in two versions, one in Slovenian and one in a foreign language?
Mina: Since we’re announcing another record, we don’t plan to release an identical one in Slovenian, because that’d be kind of pointless. We’re planning to release a remix album with a somewhat reworked concept, limited to the Slovenian market.
Davor: At a time when the physical album has lost almost all its value and is slowly making way for other, more modern formats, how do you see the CD itself, as an object?
Matevž: With this record we also made collages with an added computer track. Even the album promotion wasn’t a gig, it was a gallery presentation of those collages, and they were designed as multimedia pieces. They had a built-in mp3 player and headphones, so while you were looking at a collage you could listen to music at the same time. That way we played around a bit with the presentation of the record and with modern music distribution.
Otherwise, I think singles will be released more and more in the future. The more music sales go digital, the less the record and the CD will matter. When the CD came along, suddenly you could fit 60 minutes of music or more on it, whereas the time on a (vinyl) record was limited to about 40 minutes. The medium itself won’t dictate anymore how many songs it can carry. We made a record, but with those collages we specifically wanted to think differently too.
Davor: Beck, for example, came up with a totally unique album concept where everyone can make their own CD sleeve, every song comes with a music video, and so on.
Matevž: Yeah, Beck is… (Someone knocks on the door and interrupts the thought)
Miha: Yeah, design is probably one of the few reasons left why anyone still decides to buy a CD at all. If you offer something visually satisfying along with the music, that’s just one more reason, otherwise the mp3s you download are perfectly fine.
Mina: Yeah, that’s probably true, since records are already on their last legs.
Matevž: There probably is some kind of fetish there, a fetishistic reason to buy an original CD, because most people really don’t do it anymore. With some added value, the record is worth more.
Davor: In the past you worked a lot with various theater productions. Any plans in that direction at the moment?
Matevž: Yeah, we’re still doing it. Stage music was kind of the starting point for the band even existing, so we’re still keeping that line going. We recently worked on a production… It’s especially interesting to do stage music, because you’re making music in a different context, which can be a lot more interesting than just making a record.
Davor: Are you planning any escape into film waters?
Mina: Yeah, we’re not really looking for that right now, it’s not a priority, but if a good, interesting film comes along…
Matevž: …We’d be happy to do something.
Mina: Yeah.
Davor: Any supporting roles on the side?
Mina: Rather not.
Davor: On both albums you can spot a connection to the city of Berlin. On the first, one song is named after one of its streets (Prenzlauer Allee), and The Guide hides a picture of Alexander Platz in the sleeve. Does that tie in with the whole mythology of Berlin and the musicians who found inspiration there for some of their best work (David Bowie, Iggy Pop, Lou Reed, Nick Cave and so on)?
Mina: No, this record covers 12 tourist spots and Berlin is one of them. The song “Prenzlauer Allee” came together, at least as a rough sketch, in Berlin, maybe slightly under the influence of the actual Prenzlauer Allee.
Davor: There was a lot of talk about you changing your sound quite a bit with the new record?
Matevž: Yeah, we definitely changed the sound a bit, we moved forward. We wanted to make a sonically more specific record. The two records also differ a lot in how we went about them. On the first one we made all the songs for theater productions and gathered them later, so it’s kind of a compilation of many years of work. For this one (The Guide) we only had two years, so right at the start we defined what we wanted to say with it and how things should sound. That makes it easier to make that turn forward, or off in some other direction.
Mina: Although it would be completely over the top to claim the first record is totally different from the second. We can’t lose some basic sound, and even if we wanted to, both records were made by the same people. There’s no radical departure, but we try to build on things. We’re striving for a sound we’d already imagined before.
Davor: So there weren’t any outside musical influences from collaborating with musicians like Rotor, DJ Umek and so on?
Mina: No, those collaborations were on a friendship level. These are people we know who make very different music, which was a kind of challenge for us, a detour into another musical genre. But we’ll work with them again, and with others too, on the remix album, because we won’t be remixing our own songs ourselves, so some of the tracks might end up very un-Melodrom.
Davor: Is there anyone you’d really love to work with?
Mina: Yeah, it’d be easiest to find someone for film. David Lynch, for example, probably nobody would say no to. He’s kind of the first name that comes to mind if I could really pick anyone.
Davor: What about in the music world?
Mina: For now there are always some collaborations on the horizon, so we’re not even thinking about it, at least I’m not.
Matevž: Yeah, we should really think about that. We listen to a ton of music, so… With Strauss!
Davor: The song “Counting Days” was picked as song of the year on CROSS RADIO. Are new live territories opening up for you now?
Mina: Yeah, we’ve had our songs on that station before, but none of them ever made it to number one. We’d already expanded into the former Yugoslavia earlier and got a label there, which put out our first record, and the second one will come out there too. We also played at Exit Festival, which we’ll most likely repeat this year, and there’ll probably be other shows too.
Davor: How about a tour in Slovenia?
Matevž: Yeah, Slovenia is small and there aren’t many clubs where you can put on a proper gig. But there will definitely be more shows, especially once we release the “Slovenian” version of the album, when we plan to play a few Slovenian clubs. So far we’ve only played in Maribor and Ljubljana, and in Izola at Šoto Club, which is kind of the coastal hangout for all things alternative. We’ll definitely play more, but we don’t plan to set up a tour, which doesn’t even pay off here, since you can always be in Ljubljana within two hours.
Davor: Is it harder to even get a gig these days?
Mina: It really depends on the clubs. A lot of clubs are student-run and have pretty limited funds, so they can either focus on landing big names that draw more people, or they might prefer to promote local, young, up-and-coming bands, which are cheaper.
Matevž: Some clubs have more on-the-ball management and there’s more going on there, while others don’t care as much, and then you just don’t go there.
Davor: Is anything opening up abroad, especially in the West?
Mina: We’re only just starting to talk about going abroad, nothing’s been arranged yet.
Matevž: We’ve already played in Austria and Germany. I think going abroad with just a concert tour, without any promotion or a PR rep, can be kind of pointless. What matters is getting a label abroad that then takes care of everything that needs taking care of.
Davor: Does it help that MTV plays your music?
Matevž: That’s just MTV Adria, which only covers a certain region, and there are tons of MTVs. So it doesn’t really help much.
Davor: Years ago I caught you at the promo gig for the first album, and I found it interesting that you didn’t go for a single cover, despite the limited number of your own songs.
Mina: We played a cover 5, 6 years ago, at our second or third gig, but in principle we focus on original music.
Davor: Albums where a musician puts out nothing but covers are really popular. Does that interest you?
Matevž: I hope we’ll never have to go for a cover just because we’d be lacking enough good songs of our own. It could happen that we’d really want to do some song, just for a change, but it wouldn’t be the backbone of the album. Going for a cover from some commercial angle, because the song is a hit, seems kind of out of place to me for us.
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