First of all, congratulations on the upcoming release of ‘Crash Love’. I had the privilege of listening to it a few weeks ago and review it and honestly haven’t been so excited about new AFI songs in a long time. How does it feel to be so close to the impending release?
It’s very exciting for me. I really can’t wait for it to come out, and thank you, I’m glad you like what you’ve heard. Um, I’ve really never been more proud of an AFI record, so I’m really, really excited to have it released and have it available for people to enjoy. I’m really looking forward to it.
Does it feel like the calm before the storm at the moment? Are you guys doing anything in particular for the build up? Or are you just taking it easy?
Um, the storm has already started (laughs). Ah, we’ve been doing a lot of physical set up that sort of happens before a record comes out, a lot of interviews and photo shoots and working on video treatments and right now I’m in Amsterdam, actually. We’re over here doing press and a few festival shows and as soon as we get back we’re probably going to shoot a video, although I don’t know what that is going to be and I’m sure we’ll continue with such madness until the record begins, well, comes out!
Fair enough. What was the writing process like? I noticed that the album has a central theme being that of celebrity culture, did you have the idea from the get go, or was that something that evolved during your time in the studio?
Um, the themes in the record were what were really pressing on me at the time, and I still very, ah, I think are currently poignant for me, and it wasn’t something that I really set out to do, but I really think that the themes of, um.. false personas, misconceptions, destructive relationships, entitlement, narcissism.. all of that that runs through the record is affecting culture very greatly and I think because of that, because of the effect of those situations in relationships and lack thereof, I think it effects art culture and as a result affects me, and what affects me I write about! (laughs)
Was it aimed at AFI fans in particular, the general public or was it just cathartic to write about?
Um, I mean really it’s a manner of catharsis for me, and also I mean there is a hope in writing about these things that it will bring some awareness about what’s going on and how people treat one another and how people are reacting to certain relationships and events and hopefully that awareness can bring change.
I noticed that Crash Love is more of a pure rock CD compared to something like Decemberunderground that had a little bit more of an electronic influence, do you think that having the Blaqk Audio record finally come out, did that have an effect on this change in direction?
I think it really did. It wasn’t something that I had expected, and you know when we were doing Blaqk Audio and people were asking us do you think, well, they expected the next AFI record to go one of two ways, either becoming more like Blaqk Audio or, well, less like Blaqk Audio and I was always saying you know that it won’t effect AFI at all, it doesn’t really have anything to do with it. In reality, after we had finished recording, releasing and then touring on Blaqk Audio after the Decemberunderground tour, when we sat down to being writing AFI, and we were sitting there, Jade and I were sitting in front of each other and he had a guitar and we were playing rock again. It was very refreshing and was inspirational just to be playing rock again, and in that respect I think yes; having our Blaqk Audio band for our passion for electronica ended up polarising our interests and I think with AFI, naturally pushed it in a more rock direction.
There was a fair amount of excitement generated on the AFI forums when the Begin Transmission contest was announced. Who came up with the idea? And how did the fans react?
The fans were just… really, really, really happy about the experience and especially the fans that we chose to come down and sing on the record. It was really nice for everyone to be able to share that together, and to meet those fans and sing with them, and to check out the studio and see where we work and hang out with us a little bit, um, it would have been great if we were able to do it world wide.. and actually our first submission was a GREAT submission from an Australian guy! Oh really?
Yeah, he was the very first person to submit, and it was a fantastic submission. I remember myself and Kristen who is our day to day manager saying, “oh! I wished we could have picked him!” (laughs), so, yeah.. it was a really great event. Was it
hard to pick the videos? I actually saw this morning a video of the fans getting the chance to meet you for the first time, and it seemed like such an overwhelming experience for some of them.. I think I remember Jade saying that he was told to pick a couple of videos, and came back with 17!
It was very difficult. The whole time I was going I would hold submissions aside and put them in a folder and um, you know for the future when I knew I would have to decide.. and the folder was just packed! It was like you know.. probably close to 60 or 70.. and it was really hard because there were so many great submissions and so many touching submissions and very creative submissions that were you know, great contenders and so many seemingly wonderful people. It was a hard decision to make.. very difficult! For all of us.
Paraver la entrevista completa entre Aquí
| ::: THE LOWDOWN :: |
Entradas
No hay comentarios:
Publicar un comentario