August 08, 2005
Interview with Rolf-Erik Nyland of Winterstrain
While the name Winterstrain may at first evoke a feeling of cold and struggle those feelings will be fleeting as soon as you start to listen to the sounds from the band Winterstrain. The only comparison to the name will be as you experience chills from their extraordinary sound as they guys definitely know how to turn up the heat with their brand of music and the only struggle will be for you trying not to tap your toes!
Our featured artists today come from Norway and have been working and playing some of this years “coolest” music! I hope that you all enjoy this interview and stop by the Winterstrain site at: http://www.winterstrain.com Also be sure to check out samples from their new album “Return To The Mirror” in the Jukebox section!!
1. A stop by www.winterstrain.com is a great way to know you as a band but to help those reading this interview know more about you please introduce yourselves as if you were meeting a fan for the first time…
We’re five friends from north of the Arctic Circle, in the north of Norway. There’s G.H.Fredheim on vocals, A.Øvre (“The A”) on guitar, Karl G. Birkely (KGB!) on keys and Lars Kvaal on bass, in addition to yours truly on drums. About the same age, ranging from 32 to 33, we’ve been at it for a big chunk of years. I like to say “We’re just emerging from 16 years in a basement.”
Over these years, there’s been active and less active periods. We’ve played live several times, but I must admit it’s been a few years since last time. Because we live so far apart these days, we’ve concentrated on studio work, with the declared goal of completing an album.
2. I would also like to ask you to take a moment to introduce your album, “Return To The Mirror” and a little bit about the background for the songs.
Back in 1997, a few songs were demo’d, and put on this mini-disc I entitled “Return to the mirror”. It kinda stuck there, and as more songs were recorded, they went on the same md. Later, I realized that the title comes from a part of a concept I’d written earlier. So, the song “Return to the mirror” will appear on a future album. Very prog’y idea, but in all honesty just an accident!
The songs that make up this album are about vastly different aspects of life. There’s love, tragedy, mystery, basic instincts and philosophy. Presented in different moods, with a varying level of “teeth”, but always with a good melody. It ranges from a piano/acoustic guitar ballad called “Broken Defence” to a rather progmetal-ish force called “Rumours At Speak”. Before you even manage to ask: That title is a construction based on “Children At Play”. Let your mind toy with that one for a while… I take risks doing such things, ‘cause whenever you’re linguistically inventive or creative, and English is not your mother tongue, you’ll get the occasional “that’s not correct, you can tell he’s not English” and stuff… You haven’t got the cultural license to do that, it seems. Well, I want to!
3. On your website you talk in depth about the special way you create your songs, tell us about how things were working on the songs for this album and how you decided on the final track list.
We have an extensive back catalogue of songs, and we found that with few exceptions, they would still fit the band, given a facelift. We’re VERY song oriented, and the songs (i.e. the lyrics, chords and melodies) were all good. We decided against making this album a “Best Of”, ‘cause others have done that mistake. Hard to follow up, eh?
We established what songs we wanted to grant eternal life, before they died. Some newer stuff knocked and demanded to be let in. The rest we picked based on what the album needed. From my point of view, it didn’t need another huge epic. Even our keyboardist, who’s favourite songs usually are huge and epic, agreed that without some lighter stuff, it’d be hard work listening to the album.
There are different ways to how our songs are written. Basically, the lyrics are first, just about every time. They may come with our without melody. If the melody is there, the A will hear me sing them, and play guitar along with it. He’s pretty amazing that way. My wife witnessed such a session once, and couldn’t believe it was being written there and then. He just answers to the mood in the lyrics and the melody, and it seems second nature to him. “Sail” and “Another time” was written this way.
If there’s only words, Karl (keys) will get the lyrics, and if they move him, he’ll write some amazing music to (or from) it. When I hear the music he’s made, the melody that escaped me at first jumps at me. Any part that doesn’t come to me easily, I know Fredheim (singer) will nail! So I never struggle. “Another day” and “Leon” came about like this. –The latter actually had me writing more lyrics, from the inspiration of his music. And MAN, did Fredheim (vox) take that song to new places with his wild ideas!
Some songs start as music written by the A and/or the KGB (funny every time!), and when I hear it, I know I’ve got lyrics that fit the mood. One example is “Broken defence”. The moment they performed the piece to me, I knew I’d felt like that before, and I remembered sitting at a desk many years back, writing those lyrics. Just pulled it up from my stack of unused lyrics, and sang it over the music. First try was wonderful, and it’s pretty much the same thing that ended up on the album.
We jam a lot, and much of the instrumental parts come to life during jams. “Sail” is one song that just grew and grew out of playing through it in rehearsal, and the singer taking breaks where it was natural. Ideas were flying, and I think most are there in the song today.
4. Is there one song in particular that is a favorite on “Return To The Mirror” that you could share some of the history with us and share why it is special to you?
Oh, my favourite is beyond doubt “Mountain Inside The Stone”. Another weird title. But it’s my favourite song title, ever, by anyone. It really is just as monumental and yet hard to grasp as the situation I was in at the time I wrote it. That was a moment of complete surrender to my muse. I think it lasted 15 minutes, and this song was written. That is, the lyrics and the vocal melody. I told Arnulf (Gtr) that he had a song to write for me, and he showed up the next day, and did what you hear on the album. Fantastic. Which is the right word for Tony Mills’ contribution, too! Normally, he does his backing vocals for a song in about five or six hours. He spent three days on this one. And you can tell…
A curious thing is that this is the only song I’ve ever written in the summer. I’m emotionally barren from May to August. There’s just light and everything’s nice and… there’s no mood. Absolutely no mood. I’ve never heard of summer mood, come to think of it. 90% of what I’ve written came about during autumn, from August to December. The rest in winter or early spring. Apart from this one song, that will probably be my favourite forever… Hm.
The story behind the lyrics is too big and too personal to bring here, but imagine you’re in a position where you can only save one person, out of two. By saving one, you’re effectively killing the other. Both are dear to you. Complex enough to make the decision close to impossible. But, wait, there’s a third person involved! Yourself.
But it’s so much more complicated, it’s… well, the strongest must bear the burden. The weakest might need carrying.
5. You definitely do have a sound all your own but a strong classic/melodic influence is obvious. Who are your favorites that have inspired you and your music the most?
That’s a tough one to answer. We hardly agree on any band in this world. I’d say Rush would mean a lot to us, since we actually all like them. Lars and Karl are constantly arguing over whom of them is the biggest fanatic!! Personally, I’m most probably coloured by Magnum, Crimson Glory, Marillion, Europe, Yngwie Malmsteen, Asia (John Payne era, I must add!), Shadow Gallery and Journey. Abba and Chris de Burgh, too, believe it or not. Arnulf’s got so many cd’s of varying styles that I don’t know if I should start guessing. Led Zeppelin, The Beatles, XTC and Eric Johnson shouldn’t be far off the mark. The singer has the most chaotic cd collection I’ve ever seen, but I could venture to pinpoint Megadeth and Golden Earring. The bassist was an avid fan of Metallica in the good old days, and Primus mean a lot to him. The first thing I heard the keyboardist ever play was “Pseudo silk kimono” by Marillion, and I think he, too was into Led Z a lot. Lately, I’ve turned him into a great fan of Arena!
Collectively, I think Rush, Marillion, Queensrÿche and Shadow Gallery have made the greatest impact on our music.
6. As a band and as musicians individually you seem to have a thought to let the music carry you rather than force the music. How difficult is that, or is it liberating?
Thank you for the last word! That’s the one I needed! Let me give you an example: “Another time” started off as a chorus around something my mind had been playing with. The fact that nature seems to adjust, to find a way. I’d just read the book “Jurassic Park”, where the dino’s changed sex, so they could reproduce. They were originally only female. I’d also read somewhere about some bacteria that seemed to thrive on the cocktail of seawater and oil. How ‘bout that? It accounted for the “missing” oil that apparently had been a mystery to the scientists working on the “Exxon Valdez” type of environmental catastrophies. All of a sudden, while taking a walk, pondering these things, I started singing “In course of time, nature will find, how to make use of the poison inside.” –And immediately kept racing along the timeline of such a concept, thinking how there would be life again one day, even if just about all of it was wiped out one day. Thereby producing the next line: “Another time, something will rise, and make a weapon for hunting…” and so on, which also points ahead at the next big extinction. The first weapon is made. The rest will follow.
I wrote the lyrics and the melody mainly while walking around somewhere in Sweden, and sang it to Arnulf when I got back home. He wrote the music to it, and told me all four verses were different. Not the same chords, ‘cause the melody was different. Ok, nice! But not planned. The song moves along naturally, but is really strange, compared to your usual “hit” song. But not because we decided to be strange. It just came to be. Of course, we never considered “adjusting” it either. I love the keyboard/piano riff that Karl came up with between the opening riff and the first verse. Fantastic! Just typical of him to do something like that. The last part of the song is a bass solo called “Peace at last”, and is the result of telling Arnulf that I wanted a really beautiful calm ending to the song, and then putting Lars to the task of performing a solo over it, HIS way.
I don’t believe in trying. I don’t believe in deciding to sound like this or that. I believe in the power of inspiration, of getting lost in the moment, and in just playing music the way your body wants to. I believe in naturality.
Of course, none of this would be possible without a certain level of talent or knowledge. To a certain extent, this is a craft. Any artist, be it a painter or whatever, uses techniques and skill. But those are tools of the soul. If you only use your mind, you’re gonna sound clever but soulless.
7. I liked what you say about the fact that with today’s technology you could have corrected every mistake, made sure every drumbeat was exactly in time etc… I love to hear the passion and purity of music! (even if that requires a mistake or two!) What helped you decide to follow through on this thought?
The philosophy of naturality. The album catches each of us on a good day, but not on our one single best day of our lives, which we’ll never see the like of again. Speaking for myself, I was happy to choose the take that rocked over the take that was correct. But that required one snare drum beat to be adjusted, for instance. Ok, by all means! The song is the most important thing. This is not a showcase for my drumming abilities, but a collection of songs.
Anyone taking this the wrong way should note that the most insane breaks are all the way I played them. There’s no way I’m going into that chaos of dots to move them around! It would take me 100 times as long as it would to just re-perform it and get it right the good old way!
It was a question of finding a balance between tightening up stuff so it would meet the expectations of today’s music fans, and keeping that natural vibe. I think some people will think we sound a bit loose, ‘cause they’ll be used to the modern stuff, where everything is absolutely pristine and in time. But I also believe that a lot of people find the same stuff very “digital”, if you get me. People are organic creatures, they should respond to organic music, so that’s why we dared to show it all. We skipped the auto tune function for that reason. I think he sings vaguely in tune, anyway!
8. Your music is making its way into a lot of speakers and a lot of countries around the world. What are your feelings about the internet and the shrinking world due to technology?
The internet is the reason why our music is played all over the world right now. In all things, you got to accept the whole deal. Light and shadow. Want food? Accept the rain. I’m not going to complain about the drawbacks. I expect the police to do their job. I do not download music, ‘cause it doesn’t feel right. Others must do what they think is right, and the police must enforce the law, to the extent we are willing to fund them. Society decides what’s legal and what’s not.
If people want music, they should support the artists they like. If not enough people pay for the music, less music will be made. A certain level of downloading is natural, healthy and helpful for spreading the word. Like the old cassette tapes and such. You ended up buying it if you liked it. The big difference is someone in your circles had to buy it first. Now, if someone in this world gets hold of a copy, usually for free, and publishes it through file share program, everyone in the cyberized world can get it for free. How ‘bout that, if the kids of today don’t care about the booklet and all that stuff that meant the world to me and my friends at their age? Then there’s no need to buy it, at all.
But the business is fighting this, so there’ll be balance. I’m not fond of these DRM whims and the copy protection that only is an issue for those who actually BOUGHT the album. Incredibly stupid idea! I hope neither side totally defeats the other. Some of the plans the business are presenting are frightening, no less.
Anyway, for WinterStrain, the internet is a wonderful thing! We’ve got fans in Singapore, Scotland, the US… Everywhere. It’s weird and wonderful!!!
9. I would love to see and hear more from you guys and wonder what your plans are after the release of “Return to the Mirror”? Are any live performances planned?
Not planned, but we are preparing for it. I guess a tour is out of the question. We live in a high cost country, and there’s houses, wives and kids that need a steady cash flow. That would mean some serious doe per month. Don’t see any wide open wallets in this business in its present stage! But an appearance here and there would be great, and doable. Maybe some festival or occasion. We’ll let you know!
While Tony is doing his best to spread the word, we’re doing whatever’s required, while already in pre-production for the next album! It was such an inspiration to have “Return…” mastered and put to bed once and for all, that we’ve gone bananas in the creativity department. It never really stopped, but we had to concentrate on this album while we worked on it.
10. Last but never least do you have a closing message for the fans?
Drop by our forum, or sign our guestbook! We love hearing from you all. Remember that we’re not wearing sunglasses in the dark yet!! And trust us to keep this up for many years.
Thanks for an interesting interview, Kathy. Great questions!!
Posted by Kathy at August 8, 2005 07:00 AM