Tuesday, December 9, 2014

[Interview] Down with Afformance

Welcome to Downtuned
Tell us a few words about the group, when and where did you get started?
How did you meet?
Hello Downtuned! We started around 2005 in Athens when I met John and Petros who were playing together in the latter's home studio. I met John through an mirc channel (younger audiences will have to google that) where for some reason, we decided we should make a band. After a few rehearsals, Dennis and Fotis joined us and the rest is history. Since then, we have had some changes in the lineup and now Nick and Kostas are our bass player and drummer, respectively.


Which are your musical influences?
There are so many, individually speaking, but I think some of the artists that have influenced the sound of the band throughout the years are Isis, Mogwai, Sigur Ros, Radiohead, Neurosis, Battles, Minus the Bear, Rosetta, Foals, Aphex Twin, Saxon Shore, Grails, Tool, Pink Floyd, Brian Eno… just to name a few.

Your music is quite cinematic, what kind of movies you prefer?
Just like with music, we don't really have an actual favorite genre for movies even though we have a tendency of watching anything including zombies. That said, I can tell you that our favorite tv show at the moment is The Walking Dead. And South Park. But hey! Some favorite movies that come to mind are Memento, Fight Club, 2001: A Space Odyssey, This is Spinal Tap, The Godfather, Requiem for a Dream, The Tenant, Rambo, Into The Wild, The Naked Gun, Brain Dead, Mulholland Drive… and the list goes on.

All these years you released limited edition cds, cassettes, digital album & single sided vinyl. So, what next?
We haven't released yet a double sided vinyl so obviously our next release is going to be that one with a possibility of a surprise for a few of those vinyls, we're working on that. We like to make our releases feel special so ideas keep coming on that subject all the time.

The album "Affection" contains some remixes which were made by your friends, how it was made? Do you have any limits while experimenting?
Yes, actually we had a few songs that we really liked but for various reasons didn't make it on the previous two releases and we started reworking on them. Also we had some already released songs remixed by friends of ours and they did quite an amazing job. It's very interesting to see old recordings come to life from a different perspective, either from other artists or from yours at the present time.

Do you feel like you’re a part of a particular “scene” in which you would like to join and contribute or you are indifferent about it?
It is a bit rare not to be a part of a "scene", people can identify you more easily and discover your music that way. We always were indifferent with tags though so we wouldn't want to be called representatives of a specific musical style or scene because it's easier for someone to be prejudiced about your music, before actually listening to it. We use tags all the time of course, it's useful and results in great music conversations! I'm only talking about the possibility (or fear) of staying stuck in a few words. So what if it's australian porno grind jazz with an element of progressive pop, it might be really cool (actually I would like to hear that).

Is the communication with the crowd something that you care about, in all levels, or do you do music for yourselves?
In a way, both. We wouldn't be making music in the first place if we weren't satisfied about it. People liking our music is so wonderful and crazy at the same time, it's hard to understand how exactly others receive it and what feelings do they have when they listen to something you created out of nothing. So we're equally surprised and happy when someone tells us these kind of things.

How do you imagine that the band will be in ten years from now?
We will have at least 5 more records behind us so we would have to support them live but we will be too old to do so, so I'm pretty sure we will send our holograms to perform. And then some guy at the audience will go "They were a lot better when I saw them live 10 years ago". But the truth is no, Steve, the holograms will probably be faultless.

Which famous artist you would like to do a guest to a record of yours and why?
Being an almost exclusively instrumental band, we would probably like help with vocals at some point so Thom Yorke I'm waiting for your call. I would say Robert Fripp would be welcome to do a guitar sequence too but a certain member of the band would have his head exploded after that and we really need all guitarists in the band, so…

What plans do you have for the near future?
We have a show with Crippled Black Phoenix this Friday in Athens and probably a couple more shows from January. Also we plan on releasing our next full-length record within the first quarter of 2015 for which we are very excited about and then hopefully tour around Greece and a part of Europe to support it.

We wish you good luck to whatever you’re doing, the epilogue is yours.
Thank you very much! Be well and always downtune.



by Kavaldi

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