BROTHER APE TALKS ABOUT THEIR NEW ALBUM
Stefan Damicolas, main composer, guitarist and vocalist of Brother Ape philosophically explains his thoughts about the forthcoming album Turbulence: Music is your own experience, your thoughts, your wisdom at this particular moment. So, Turbulence is where I am in my life right now.e
Drummer Max Bergman about his part in the creative process: I had to adapt and become more beat minded on this album in order to reach the more modern sound we were searching for. It was real hard for me in the beginning, since my earlier attempts trough the years were to change the pattern as much as possible. But I think I found a good balance in the mix between those two aspects.e
Gunnar Maxén, bass player, keyboardist and head man at the mixing console, says:
This is Stefan on "steroids". And he is still very productive and energetic. To have a song writer on board that has his capabilities is a dream on its own. But to stick to the making of Turbulence, as it came out, i really had fun being part of this trip. This is with out a doubt the most fun and at the same time the most energy consuming recording I have been part of. The songs speak for themselves, so I will tell you a story about the last 10 days before the finalization of Turbulence.
I was responsible for the last polishing of the mix of the album, but was never really satisfied with my work when I listened through it the day after a session or when I tried it on other equipment. It took me about a week of frustration to really get mad and do something about my studio setup. I went out on a shopping spree and bought me a new set of "serious near field monitors". The old ones werent crap but definitely not "honest". This was a bit of a risky thing to do 10 days before a deadline and a reserved day on one of Sweden's most respected mastering studios (Cosmos). Turbulence had to be ready within 10 days or otherwise we needed to wait until January for the next opportunity. Anyway, after I had played around a couple of hours with the new monitors and tried out a lot of different music I went back to Turbulence for another go.... And there it was. The problem just hit me in the face and was constant throughout the whole album. I found issues on almost all tracks including intensive bass playing and also ugly sounding cymbals just waiting to be firmly apprehended.
After five days I had gone through the whole album and to my luck, both Stefan and Max was "ecstatically satisfied". We ended up with one song, the title track, which was a bit weak on the drums. We tried a lot of variants to enhance the drum sound. We wanted the drums to be more "present". Higher volume did not do the trick, EQ'ing neither. finally we tried to double the drum tracks with an exact duplicate and very gently fade in the duplicate tracks to the song.. This little trick finally gave the drums some more energy and the presence we where looking for. This last fix was made the very day before "Mastering day".
We landed the project 7 hours ahead of schedule :-) duuhhh.....
This little story became a very "techie" article. None the less, I do think the songs are worth all the time and effort we spent on them and I do really think the audience will enjoy them as we wanted the songs to appear. "All elegantly dressed up for you to indulge...e
Brother Apes new album Turbulence is to be released on Progress Records label on October 16. The label describes as follows: On their new, forth, studio album they have chosen to focus on their more progressive sides. Turbulence contains several tracks within the 8 - 10 minute range. Initially they used to be described as a band with influences from, on one hand, bands such as Genesis/Hackett, Saga and Yes. On the other hand from fusion acts like Weather Report and Brand X with elements of Pat Metheny, Frank Zappa and Bach. Over the years they have more and more incorporated these different influences into a true Brother Ape sound and style. Now days one can say that they are mainly influenced by themselves. We get melodic, and sometimes rather complex, progressive rock with really fine vocals, superb guitars, brilliant bass work and inventive drumming backing up the highly melodic, yet somewhat adventurous song writing. After giving us 3 very fine albums, each with a slightly different approach they know deliver an album combining all previous Brother Ape styles…and developing it within the longer song format has taken them to this new masterpiece.e
