Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
Location: Ljubljana / Old Scottish Pub / Slovenia
Interview date: April 22, 2012
Tim Draksler is considered one of the boldest Slovenian guitarists striking out on a solo musical path early in their careers. They say some people ripen sooner than others. Not necessarily. Some people simply have talent, genius and, in the case of a guitarist like Tim Draksler, the right touch too! Tim quickly outgrew the confines of the old-school thrash metal cultivated by his original band Eliminator (later renamed Decilence). This April he recorded and released a solo EP called »Morbid Desire« – RockLine review HERE. It makes no secret of its musical audacity, and with it Tim has laid a solid foundation on which to build out and deepen the artistic reach of his many-layered musical language.
RockLine: After you wrapped up your time with Eliminator and then Decilence, did you go looking for a new band to join, or did you already have a vision of a solo project right away?
Tim: I always liked playing on my own. Lots of ideas kept coming up, even back in the Eliminator days. I showed those ideas to the others in the band, but they never went beyond ideas and sketches. So I ended up with around twenty tracks that I’d been writing for my own enjoyment. I did get a few offers from different bands to join them, but none of them grabbed me. Except for the Interceptor offer, that was a bit different. I was willing to join them, since they’re a crew of experienced musicians, which would undoubtedly help me as I keep honing my craft.
RockLine: So the road kind of naturally led you to the point of testing your creative talent. What your EP »Morbid Dreams« offers is a many-layered musical concept. You can really feel on the EP that you needed more freedom….
Tim: Eliminator was old-school thrash metal. When I create on my own, things are quite different. I can’t even define genre-wise what is what on my EP. I’m talking about what I created for the EP.
RockLine: But at the same time you can feel that thrash metal remains the foundation of that same EP.
Tim: Yes. But I’d broaden that out to progressive thrash metal. I also wrote the vocal lines and the drums for this EP myself. You can solve a lot of things with a program like »Q Base«.
RockLine: Walk us through the EP a bit. How much did you have planned in advance, how many ideas came up along the way, and so on…?
Tim: At the start I had nothing planned, not even how many songs I’d put on the EP. Let alone what the cover would look like. Everything came about as I went, while I was working. At first I wanted to just put the album online as a »download«. Then I decided on a physical CD, but I didn’t expect the whole thing to cost so much. Still, in this case even the financial investment wasn’t allowed to be an obstacle.
RockLine: There are quite a few interesting guests on the EP. How did you arrange the collaboration with them?
Tim: Vocalist Cezar Vigouroux, who’s a member of Rusted, is from Chile. We got in touch through YouTube. He was recording vocals for covers of Nevermore songs, I showed him sketches of the songs and he was thrilled, he threw himself completely into the material and surprised me with his wide vocal range. He contributed the vocals for the song Lucid Killer. I’ll keep this collaboration for the second album too. The problem is communication. Everything goes through email and it’s all incredibly slow. The EP could have been ready half a year ago, but everything got tangled up with the vocals. I patched those together myself. Sergej Vučer helped me with the lyrics. I never seriously thought about vocals, at first I even had the idea of a completely instrumental album. Then I came across Cezar on YouTube. I changed my mind, because I noticed the music on the EP burns a lot harder with vocals than it would without them. The songs were basically created for instrumentals. In the end I even used vocals on an eight-minute progressive track, where they come in after a minute and turn out really well, really compatible, the compatibility actually exceeded my expectations. I added the vocals to the songs afterwards. Luckily it all worked out, because at first the compositions weren’t even built from the ground up for singing.
RockLine: Do you think the whole thing, the EP, comes across as chaotic in places?
Tim: Actually, yes. Take the song Longing For Clarity. There’s quite a bit of confusion there. In the vocal chorus you’ll find solos, special effects, a »clean« guitar recorded backwards, so »little extras« that on the other hand add up to a pile of experimenting. I just have fun recording things »backwards«. I should even learn to do vocals that way and record them »backwards«, that would be awesome ha ha ha…
RockLine: How did you and Vučer work together on the lyrics?
Tim: I recorded the words I wanted in the lines for him. Randomly, in no particular order. I also recorded the vocal lines for him, I sang the rough melodies of the vocal lines myself. So Vučer sent me a trial set of full lyrics and vocal lines for the song Lucid Killer. I only changed it to my own taste where I felt it was important and necessary. Since Vučer also wrote lyrics for Interceptor, and since I was happy with Lucid Killer, I asked him if he’d keep helping me. He had a free hand. And I admit I don’t completely follow the messages in them myself. At times they’re just kind of, how should I put it, »spacey«…. And it works well. It’s not conventional, it doesn’t follow the rules, it doesn’t follow recognizable patterns, and I like that, because it gives the whole thing its own character.
RockLine: Grega Habič also appears on the EP.
Tim: I treat Grega as one of the best Slovenian guitarists. He’s excellent at putting together instrumental compositions. He helped me glue the lead motifs together, and Grega’s arranging talent turned out to be a very welcome help on the EP. Habič contributed some interesting things and found his way around very well, considering the music on the EP isn’t exactly his genre. Then there are Sušnik (Metalsteel, author’s note) and Bagarič (Interceptor, author’s note), both bassists, both excellent musicians. Bagarič impressed me back when I was rehearsing with Interceptor. And my girlfriend’s guy friend also pitched in on the bass lines.
RockLine: Then there’s also Josh Christian from Toxic….
Tim: We got in touch through Facebook. Our conversation drifted to the fact that I was planning to record, among other things, and Josh offered his services on his own. Of course I agreed right away. But then the problem came up elsewhere. Josh is a professional musician and just couldn’t find any free time for my material. In the end I gave up myself, recorded everything on my own and posted it on YouTube. Josh was dealing with serious family matters at the time, but he still expressed a big wish to contribute his share, and he finally did. Afterwards. Now we’re agreeing that Josh will also play on my second album.
RockLine: Where does the idea for the EP title »Morbid Desire« come from?
Tim: At first the idea was for the title of the song Despair. When Vučer contributed the verses, though, it no longer matched the title. Then I thought, why not use the idea as the title of the EP. I really like the title. Atmosphere-wise too, the album feels to me like it develops in just the way the title sums up.
RockLine: But you recorded and produced everything yourself.
Tim: Yes. The low-budget version, it cost me 50.00€. There was a lot of improvising, a lot of adapting. A lot of learning, getting to grips with the software. At first I recorded the songs just because I wanted to have them, not because I’d release a CD later.
RockLine: Where do you draw inspiration when creating your music?
Tim: I can’t say. At night, when I’m in Maribor, when I’m done with school obligations, when late night sets in, somewhere between one and four in the morning, everything »opens up« in my head. I pick up the guitar like I’m practicing and play, and play,.. and new things start to come. And I write things down right away, all the ideas. Because you can forget everything the next day. The foundation is always a riff. Of course, sometimes an idea pops into my head that I use for some intro part. Sometimes it happens while driving. Then I record myself on my phone, sing a melody, record it. There’s no rule, it’s just, how should I put it… a kind of »jam«.
RockLine: You’ve actually slalomed very skillfully through this mosaic of guest musicians, ideas and the whole spontaneous nature of how this EP came to be.
Tim: Many times the musicians who took part influenced me with their own ideas to develop or steer a certain song differently from how it was originally conceived. In fact, in terms of musical art I grew along with other people’s ideas on this EP. It’s a kind of mini final exam, how should I put it…. a first test of maturity. Hence also some departures that perhaps don’t exactly fit arranging theory, but I don’t want to follow theory anyway. Many of my solos are written to jump over those boundaries of harmonized minor, to leap to a dimension that doesn’t follow the rules. Like Marty Friedman does, for example, or what you can hear on the collaborations between Jason Becker and Marty Friedman. I approached the solo for D-Y-Z’s solo album in a similar way. He only gave me the basic cue to play something in the style of the solos you can hear in Negligence, and I basically built an upgrade on that. But you two have to hear the EP material live. It cuts at full blast!
RockLine: Besides Friedman and Becker, is there anyone else you’d count among your role models?
Tim: Hmmm…. Jeff Loomis (Nevermore, author’s note), Tim Calvert (Forbidden, author’s note), Chuck Schuldiner (Death, author’s note), Dimebag Darrell (Pantera, author’s note), while for me the best rhythm guitarist is Mike Thompson from Slipknot. And of course, when it comes to being »off the wall«, Paul Masvidal (Cynic, author’s note) is definitely number one. Among Slovenian acts, Kaoz impressed me. They were different.
RockLine: You’ve stressed your next album a few times. How is the framework for it taking shape?
Tim: The ideas are there, the material is being prepared. I’m in talks with Forbidden members Craig Locicero and Steve Smyth about collaborating. Josh Christian will be back too, just like on the EP »Morbid Desire«, and so will Rick Rozz (Death, author’s note). I’m also in touch with a barely seventeen-year-old »wunderkind« from Germany named Nick, who’s supposed to play something on my next release too. As for Slovenian musicians, I haven’t thought yet about who to include, but it definitely won’t go without them on the new album either. I already have Grega Habič in mind, and D-Y-Z too. I’ll use Bagarič for the bass guitars. And Cezar will sing all the vocals. Among all the new songs there will be three instrumentals at most, the rest will be vocal tracks.
interview conducted by: Rok Klemše
text edited by: Aleš Podbrežnik
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