Transcript of an interview I recorded with SIMONE SIMONS of EPICA - 20210108. Full article here. MAL-
Excellent album by the way. SIMONE- Thank you so much. Yeah, we're pretty pleased with it ourselves. MAL- Yeah, we'll get into that in a moment. Can I just start off by asking how you are? How's family life going? We've all had a bit more time at home in the last year. Tell me how have you gone. SIMONE- We're all doing fine. I have a seven-year-old son. So he loves that his mother is home more, and same for his father. I mean, we're both touring musicians and yeah we're healthy, it's kind of a challenging time but I'm trying to see the silver lining in all of this is that I can finally be home, so, how are you? MAL- Yeah doing well. I wonder how you go with you know both you and Oliver being touring musicians that was leading me to where I wanted to go. How do you juggle that? There must be times where you're both on the road at the same time but in different places. SIMONE- Well we live in the same place where his parents live and when we plan tours we make sure that they don't take place at the same time. There might sometimes be an overlap of two or three days but yeah we fully plan our tours and luckily Oliver's band is not touring as much as my band so, but there have been years that were very very difficult, but you know, we would just exchange house keys and then you know the other person go on tour or worse, if there was an overlap then we wouldn't see each other for almost two months. But we make it work and after the 'Holographic Principle', our previous album, we had a little break from touring which was nice and now we're having a second sabbatical so to say, we can catch up a little bit. MAL- Yeah, tell us about the recording of 'Omega'. How did you go with lockdown? I'm of the understanding that you got the orchestras in just before lockdown. Is that the case? SIMONE- Yes. Yes. We had everything recorded except the lead vocals and we had everything recorded up like beginning of March and middle of March was set for the vocals and then we were you know forced to search for an alternative. Mark lives in Sicily. I live in Germany and the studio where we record is in the Netherlands and I search for a studio nearby and recorded my vocals in the morning and got back in the afternoon because schools were closed and our son was home, but my husband is also a music teacher and needed to teach afternoons. So we would also exchange house keys, and Mark recorded in his home studio in Sicily and it worked out well thanks to modern technology. Joost, our producer was there during the recordings when I was in my vocal booth. I had him on the iPad. He was there on Zoom and he could communicate with me through the headphones. So yeah, I'm very, very happy that it worked out like that. MAL- Yeah, technology can be really wonderful sometimes. SIMONE- Yes. MAL- Right, tell us about this album. Tell us about some of the tracks you've got on there. Before we go any further I want to start off with 'Code of Life', which I think is the best Epica song ever, so tell us about that. SIMONE- Ah, you have great taste, because that's one of my favorite songs and also my son. He loves it. If we listen to the new EPICA album, he always request for the Egyptian song, that's how he calls it and yeah I love it too. It's a song where I can't wait to play live. The music's written by Coen. Coen is our keyboard player but also choir arranger and he's one of the composers also. I mean all 5 EPICA guys compose songs but all of us also have other duties within the band and he has been responsible for the choir since the beginning of EPICA, he is also one of the original band members, so to say, even though we haven't changed our lineup since many years and 'Code of Life' is some very beautiful,.. feels like it could be the soundtrack of another 'Mummy' movie. I love the intro, the male vocals that you hear in the intro are from the singer of the band MYRA, we toured with them and he has very beautiful vocals. So I'm singing with an intro. We're doing this atmospherical Oriental chanting and the lyrics are about the genome editing technique called crispr where scientists can cut and paste DNA and alter human DNA and yeah that can have a good outcome. You can cure incurable diseases, but you can also like what they've been doing in China create designer babies and people are basically playing God and it's a little bit of warning, you know that what we've been given by Nature, so to speak, should not be meddled with, and it's inspired by a Netflix documentary. I don't know if it's still available. But you said you might do some Netflix, I can recommend you the series called 'Unnatural Selection', after watching that I was like shocked and felt inspired to write the lyrics of this song. MAL- I'll be sure to check that one out, sounds scary, a timely warning. Now, 'Kingdom Of Heaven Part 3', 13 minutes long, tell us about that one. Are you looking forward to playing that one live or is it going to be too daunting? SIMONE- We are rehearsing the song because we do intend to play it live yeah. No, we were never shy for a little challenge. It might take a little longer to get it into our system but we are intending to play it, yeah 13 minutes movie soundtrack almost I would say. it's a beautiful story beginning to end with lots of unexpected twists. The origin, the beta song comes from Mark but Isaac has also joined him and of course the rest of the band in order to give the song more structure, to make it all, to have it make all sense because to create such a long song takes a lot of work, but it's a beautiful song. It's also one of my favorites though, so it's 'Code Of Life' and 'Kingdom Of Heaven' and the ballad, 'Rivers'. They are my three favorites. But of course I love all the songs. MAL- You've pretty much agreed with my favorites too. I've got a song listing here and I'm putting ticks next to them, 2 for this one, 3 for that one, 5 for 'Code Of Life', etc. etc. And you've matched my favourites. So we've both got excellent taste. SIMONE- Yes.Haha. MAL- What else can you tell us about the album? SIMONE- I think it's definitely the most mature and profound album up-to-date. I think you can hear that we are all in a good place in our lives personally, professionally. It's a sincere album we put so much blood, sweat and tears into it. We made sure that our calendars were cleared of any other obligations so we could fully concentrate on the creation of this album and in the past we've been tempted by, you know wanting to do everything and that was sometimes a little bit too much. Touring while writing and recording an album is actually very good for exhausting yourself and it can also kind of have an effect on your creative process. So that's something we learned in the last couple of years. We've been in the business for almost 20 years and we try to improve wherever we can and for this album we wanted to step back from the touring, to recharge our batteries and feel fully motivated and inspired to write this record. And then 'Omega' came out. We didn't have any deadlines at first. Everybody could just write music at his or her own pace and then we got together in 2019 November and a lot of music was already there. And when you take away the pressure of with all the deadlines and stuff and you get a little time to breathe, catch up, you can come up with great results and we got together in this house in the Netherlands. We had time and energy to travel because we didn't have any other tours and we sat down and worked on all the musical ideas and had like an immediate exchange of Creative Energy and in the past since we live in four different countries we would always just remain in our home studios and send ideas back and forth and I personally enjoyed the process of being there and singing with the guys so they could hear how my voice sounds to their songs and how we could get the best result out of it and give my vocals a lot of room to I guess fly over the music. EPICA is a, our music is very full. It has so many layers and now we wanted to give the vocals a little bit more headroom, and I love the fact that we use a real Orchestra and the children choir has added so much to it. We also had a lot of other instruments recorded. I think we did also have professional musicians in India record some instruments for us, especially also the ones you hear in 'Seal Of Solomon' and 'Code Of Life' and I think that adds so much to the vibe of the songs, using real instruments and not samples. Samples can be amazing as well, and we also still use those, but the little imperfections you have when you use an orchestra when you have a choir, especially a children's choir, they have like this eerie touch to them, and it kind of lifted the whole album to another level I think. MAL- Yeah, exactly right. Going to go a bit off track here. What's the best EPICA moment for you? Either in the studio, in a live setting, or on tour, in the bus or whatever. What's the best EPICA memory for you? SIMONE- I have a lot but we recently released like on Spotify our most memorable set lists, and I'll talk a little bit about that because everybody could choose their own show and it's hard to pick from so many wonderful memories, but last year in January, we were on the '70,000 Tons Of Metal' cruise, and we had 2 shows, one in one of the theaters inside and also one on the deck, and we've had shows on the deck and they were horrible because of the wind, you know and the humidity in the air is not particularly good for the instruments. For my instrument it's okay. I prefer humidity instead of dry air. But yeah, if the winds from the wrong direction you got hair in your eye, nose, mouth everywhere. So for this particular show, I was prepared. I thought I'm going to pull my hair back up, in a ponytail and I've never done that during a live show. I was unfortunately struck with a nasty cold the whole tour, but that was one of the nicest shows for me up-to-date because the ambience, it was right. It's not a huge show. I mean the audience it was full but it's not like a big Festival show in front of 30,000 people, but it's all about the vibe of the evening and it was like a clear night sky, you could see the stars, the wind was it was challenging, but I was prepared and I was laughing because the the guys were trying to bang their head and the wind was like full coming from the front. So it was not working at all. Like 'what are you doing? Just give up and do something else like why fight the wind? Go with it', and my voice was really well. I mean, I was in great shape despite being sick, playing the 'Design Your Universe' set because we were touring to promote the anniversary edition, the Gold Edition and it was just a magical evening and I could somehow hear how the music was floating on to the ocean and I thinking like can all the animals in the sea hear my voice. I felt like I was kind of a mermaid singing. I also had a dress on with sequins that had a little bit the look of the scale of a fish, you know, and I felt a little bit like The Little Mermaid out on the sea, singing and my voice was carried far over the ocean and it was just magical and it has become more magical because after that we couldn't tour any more, so I'm very happy with that last memory. MAL- Hmmm, that sounds really good, you're making me really jealous. Simone great to talk to you. SIMONE- Yeah likewise. MAL- Yeah good luck with the new album. SIMONE- Thank you very much. MAL- I really think it's the best you've done and 'Code Of Life', I mean, come on, that's magnificent. Best song you've ever done. SIMONE- I will let Coen know, he'll be very pleased to hear that. MAL- Excellent. Simone. Thanks so much for your time. You have a great day. SIMONE- You're welcome. You have a great evening. Comments are closed.
|
AuthorMetalhead who hates bad parking. |