The Bear Quartet(Mes chers compatriotes, pas de traduction en français pour ce billet afin qu'il conserve une taille correcte. Apprenez l'anglais ou écrivez-moi si vous avez besoin d'une traduction)
I told you the
Bear Quartet would be back on the 9th of September with a new record called
89, produced by their new label
Adrian Recordings and not the previous one
A Westside Fabrication. Excited ? I sent Mattias Alkberg and Jari Haapalainen (singer and guitar) some little questions. They answered back with some little answers. Here is the result : a not that little Q&A about
BQ's
89.
Usually, BQ is quite prolific, but it's been three years since the release of your latest record (now I understand its title "Eternity Now"...). It's the first time in BQ career since you spend that much time without releasing a record. What happened?
Matti : we were busy and a little bit sick of each other I suppose. But nothing a three year hiatus couldn't fix.
Jari : my production work (for other artists) got in the way, it was difficult to find the time... also, A Westside Fabrication couldn't any longer give us the money (which isn't much) we needed to be able to record in the way we felt we wanted to.
Why signing to Adrian Recordings? A re-born? The will to touch a wider audience?
Matti : No, the audience-part is still not that interesting to us, though if Adrian is trying to reach a wider audience it's totally ok by us. The main reason is that A Westside Fabrication couldn' t afford to spend enough money on a Bear Quartet album. I know they tried, we did too, but it just couldn't be done. So we had to part ways really. And we're very grateful Adrian contacted us in our time of despair. And for the record we're still friends with Westside. I'm releasing my solo album on Westside and Jari still does some work for them as well.
Jari : see above. Plus they contacted us and were really interested in releasing a BQ album.
How were the recording sessions? What had you in mind when you went into the studio?
Matti : The sessions were great. We all had bits and pieces that we jammed together into songs. We were going for that big, luxurious sound of records like Kate Bush, Simple Minds and Talk Talk. We recorded it more or less live in six days. And we're all satisfied with the results.
Jari : very creative. We spent 6 days recording + 7 days mixing. We had 7 songs finished before we went into the studio. We'd been rehearsing for five days + played a show in Denmark, playing the 7 songs we had finished. In the studio we wrote/arranged three more songs.
As always, I wanted to make music that was heading somewhere, maybe not always knowing where, but somewhere...
According to the four songs you put as free listen (AbsNoise : they're not as free listen anymore), it seems to be more heterogeneous than your previous records. More "pop/rock". More accessible. Do you agree?
Matti : no, not really. We've never set out to NOT be accessible, no more than we tried to be more so. We've always tried to make records we would like to listen to, that felt new to us. We never had listeners in mind. It's just records to us. We got tired of writing indierock some 15 years ago, but that's it really. In Sweden this has been somewhat of a problem for some people who were hoping for us to keep releasing
Mom And Dad or
It Only Takes A Flashlight To Create A Monster time and time again. But that's never been a concern of ours. But if your question is whether we made this album with more traditional instruments (in the "pop/rock" context) compared to how we made
Eternity Now the answer is obviously yes. But it's of absolutely no importance to us. If we wanna make the next record playing on tins and cans and furniture instead of guitars we will do so.
Jari : heterogeneous, yes, at least sound wise... more pop/rock? Don't know, don't think so... but we wanted a legible, clear sound, and I guess that makes it more accessible.
How would you sum this record up ?
Matti : a classic.
Jari : I don't want to sum it up.
Why this title "89"? 89 like 1989 (the Berlin wall, fell, Internet was created)? 89 like 1789 and the French Revolution ?
Matti : Yeah. The fall of communism, the rise of libertanism. The birth of The Bear Quartet. All things of historical matter that caused more problems than solutions although the intentions were good. And still are.
Jari : a lot of things happened in -89, the Berlin wall yes, and that was also the year when BQ started, as a band. 20 years ago.
What can we expect from BQ now? A tour? Will you play outside Sweden?
Matti : I can't really see us touring Sweden like in the "good" old days. But if we can get enough money to survive and continue to support our families we want to play abroad, yes.
Jari : I don't know. Maybe we won't play live ever again. If someone wants us to come and play, where ever it is, we will consider it, but I don't know. It would be great to record another album, I have some ideas...
