"The thing is that when we do Lords Of Acid, it's like a corporation between myself, Nikki Van Lierop, and Oliver Adams. And at the end of the day, when it comes down to the ideas and the songs and musical direction it's a decision that we make between the 3 of us. For the solo album, the Praga Khan material, it's more coming out of my own experiences, my own musical direction. It's something more personal." Is there any overlap? For example, do ideas rejected by other members ever end up in your solo work? "The thing is that Lords Of Acid, we've worked for the last 10 years, it's a more sex-oriented thing. Sex with lots of humor in there, and I try to keep it separated from the Praga Kahn material. And I always make sure that it's not close to each other musically, in style and all that. I think there's a big different between the two projects. Because also Lords Of Acid is more heavy and more grungy. Praga Khan is more dance- oriented." How did you initially get into this type of music? "I was working with bands like The Neon Judgment and in those days, in the mid 80's, there was a style called electronic body music. It was very popular in Belgium and Germany and Europe. And I was really involved with that scene. That's where it all started for me. In '87, that was the moment that the computers really got their music programs and all that, and that's when I started to write music myself.." Do you keep up with the latest musical technology? "Yeah, the thing is that I always make sure that I have the latest gear, the newest equipment and the newest technology that is around. Using this technology, it's very important because when you hear the filtering in the music and you hear loops that we do with drums and all that, you cannot do it with just normal gear. You need sampling and to turn around sounds, so it's very important it my music. Also when you have the breakbeat scene and drum and bass, if there was not this technology there would never be the drum and bass and all that. Because you cannot play it." Does having to learn to use new equipment ever get in the way of actually creating music? "The thing is that I'm always working with engineers. When new equipment comes into the studio, I want to unpack it and start working with it. But most of the time when you do that, the machine can do so much more if you go over the manuals. But I don't have the patience to do that , and that is why I work with all these engineers who read the manuals for me. And then I come into the studio and they explain 'yeah, let's do this and that..' So it makes it so much more easy for me, because I don't want to spend all my day reading manuals!" Is it a problem playing live, with all the equipment used in making the
CDs? "What we do live is work also with tapes. We have the basic rhythm on tape, and then all the extra that comes on top, like the basslines, the guitars, the vocals, and some keyboard lines we play on top of the tape. That's even much more than most of the bands do! Most of the bands nowadays just have 2 lines out. Ok, we have this tape running with the basic rhythm, but everything on top of it we do it live." Are you satisfied with the current state of musical technology? Are there any ways you'd like to see it improve? "It's changing like every day. And everyday I'm really surprised by what the new machines can do. And I don't think that we can ever have a limit because there's so much more coming. When this new technology and sampling came onto the market, it's only 10 years ago and in those days we had like 1 second of sampling time and now we have like maybe a 1/2 an hour. So I don't know what the limits are going to be. I just go with it, I go with the flow." Have you been performing the solo material live at all? "Yes, we did a European tour, starting at Glastonbury. That's one of the biggest European festivals, it's in England. We hope to do America soon, because there's so many people asking 'when are you coming over'!" Do you use a full band? "At this moment we're a 5 piece on stage. It's myself doing vocals and keyboards, and there is Oliver Adams playing the drums, and a guitarist, bass, and a backing vocalist." How would you compare it to the way the CD sounds? "It sounds very, very different. The thing is that when you play this type of music, when we play we sometimes have to compete with other bands that are on the same bill and all that. And sometimes we get people coming to us after the show saying 'your music sounds way too different from your cd' because there's a lot of bands who just play the cd and shout on top of it and whatever. I think what we do is take it in a completely different direction. Because on the cd, there's not too many guitars, but when we're playing live, when we're playing rock festivals we add a lot of guitar and different beats and synth lines. Also, the vocals are quite a bit different from what's on the cd." Are you thinking about live performance at all while creating music in the studio? "No, when I'm in the studio I'm just thinking about what it's going to be like on CD. But then when we play live, I'm really surprised by how it turns out on stage. Most of the time I'm surprised in a good way!" There's a new Lords of Acid remix CD (with a few new songs) - why do an album like that now? "Because of the success of Praga Khan in Europe I had to do another album this year. I discussed it with Never Records, and we decided to just do a remix album with Lords Of Acid. And the plan is that I'm doing the next Lords Of Acid studio album, that I start working on it in September. I want it to be ready in February or March for spring release in America." "Yeah, I really like the one of 'Pussy' because it sounds so different from the original. That's the one that I remember the most, I like what they did with the vocals. I really like it." Do you ever do remixes for other artists? "I did some in the past. I remixed Alice In Chains. I remixed White Zombie, Gravity Kills, and more bands that I forgot about. I don't really like doing remixes because what I like is to put my own ideas in my own music. When I do a remix, I want to do it good because a lot of people just do it for the money and deliver a bad remix. I really want to do it very, very good, put my best ideas in it, and when you want to do it like that it takes a lot of time and energy. At this moment,. I'd rather put the energy into my own music or Lords Of Acid." ©1999 Bob Gourley |
How
is doing a solo album different from you work within Lords Of Acid?
Are
there any particular mixes that you really like? Or that you were surprised
by?