On Trial Interview 2006

On Trial are Denmarks longest running psychedelic rock band. The band started in 1987 and has a long history that has produced only 6 studio records but when a new one is upon us, it is time to celebrate. The band continues today with two original members (Nik and Bo) as well as long time guitarist, Henrik (since 1996). They are joined by Bjarne (guitar) and Anders (Drums), to fill out the dual guitar psychedelic rock band! Forever, is the bands new record out on Bad Afro Records, the bands first studio recordings with Bjarne and Anders and the bands first full length studio recording since 2000, when Blinded by the Sun was recorded (released some years later depending on which country you lived in!). Anyway, the band are excited and full of energy and will go out and do some touring in the fall of 2006 to support the records. The band will play in Denmark at Loppen on Sat. June 9th, probably the only chance to see the band before the fall.

Anyway, I caught up with some of the members recently to get the full scoop on the new CD and future activities…

By Scott

LC: Why the name Forever for the new CD and where did the front picture come from?

Bo: Don't know. Blame somebody else. I think it sounds like the title of a KISS greatest hits album or something. The picture is taken by Hobbitten, somewhere near Anders' second residence in Sweden.

Nik: There is no real reason for Forever. This obsession with meaningful titles came in with Bob Dylan and Idiot Morrison, didn't it? Suddenly they all had to be very literary fellows. You hear that writers spend weeks trying to find that one word that will be the perfect double-layered title for their novel, but we don't. Titles are a bitch. There weren't any songs with an album-worthy title. I think 'Forever' has a nice open ring to it, and people seem to remember it. Of course it's 'On Trial forever', but it's also 'whatever forever'... There's no manifesto behind it, except the one by Sölvi Silver:
"When you have a good thing going, you want it to last...
FOREVER.
And when the good is good the bad gets going and the good is flowing...
FOREVER.
And in the search of good it's trial and error. That's why we are...
ON TRIAL - FOREVER."
- but that was written after the fact, so ... it's probably just another inkblot test. You could also say it's from a quote found in the Hunter S. Thompson Hell's Angels-book: Dope Forever Forever Loaded
- but we found that quote, too, after we'd settled on 'Forever'... it's beginning to dawn on me that we may have chosen the title for reasons we are only beginning to see now, and that's kinda scary, isn't it? What kind of synchronicity is at work here?

LC: This is the bands 6th full length CD. Musically, how do you think this album is different from the others?

Bo: Basically, the major difference this time has been that we have been enriched w. two new musicians, both of them excellent in their field. And second, the songs are generally much shorter, that has been one of the mantra's we held on to during the process.

Nik: It's more audience friendly. It hasn't got the ten-minute thing that all the other albums had (Slip Inside this House/New Day Rising/Slippin and Slidin/Kolos). Anyway, it was good to be able to draw on the whole extended some-kinda-family - the Brothers and Sisters Superior, Baby W., our Copenhagen psych die-hards... and also to waste valuable studio time haggling over tiny details, just for the hell of it. And laying down tamboura tracks all over the place all thru the night while Ralph was at home sleeping.

LC: I heard that a lot of the music was inspired by a few band weekends up in the nature in Sweden? What did you guys do to get inspired and to make music?

Bo: Beside the usual feast? Eat, fight, argue, drink, sleep, visit the local Christian flea market, nothing special really, except having a good time. Most of the songs for the first session were more or less presented and or arranged during the time we spent there.

Nik: Big gloomy Swedish nature. Big chunks of silence that almost make your head cave in, and no people apart from this elderly seriously Christian couple. They were very sweet when we met them in the daytime, but the old lady walked around Anders' garden at night, scratching at his windows, making all sorts of eerie rituals in the barn. Sometimes when Anders comes home, the tv is on full blast, yet the door is locked from the outside. So we only went up there once.
But to be fair, Anders got a lot out of the isolation, and kept turning out hits from the woods. God only knows what deals he has made with the locals. If they are indeed local.
Inspiration mostly isn't something that strikes like lightning or is dug up in a field somewhere, just shut up and listen to the sounds that really go on inside your head (not that we succeeded, it's an ongoing thing - one more 'forever').... Then we argued a lot, and recorded a handful of songs that we didn't have room for on the album. And we paid attention to some small ideas that normally would have been too vague to be used, but turned into music once we started playing. And a great trick is to have a deadline: When the studio time is booked, you damn well better have some music ready to record. It forces you to focus.
Ralph disagrees, he says it's more like we just got blind drunk, "fucked it all up and then we began writing our own songs and they are better than ever". That's true too.

LC: Describe your experience at the Berg Herzburg Festival that inspired the song off the new CD?

Bo: We've played two very different shows at the festival, cool festival, I imagine it is more or less like Roskilde 30 years ago. Anders came up with this positive and happy riff and the working-title, and it all made perfect sense at the time. There's definitely a Burg Herzberg feel to it.

LC: Bjarni and Anders have been in the band since summer 2003 now, so they are not exactly new members but this is their first CD with the band. How do they compare to Guf and Anders, who left to play in Baby Woodrose full time?

Bo: With all due respect to Anders and Guf (can't keep good men down) It has been refreshing and a lot of hard work adjusting to two new positive, hard-working and always willing inputs. We have been enriched and enlightened; have had to make new codes and even languages to come around it. But as far as I'm concerned it has been far more than worthwhile. I must admit though, I can sometimes miss having someone else, like Guf, with a feel for, and a will to emphasize on melody and vocals. But I guess that that's something we are working on.

Nik: Our Anders is slimmer than Guf (and blondish), and Bjarni is a bit shorter than Rocco.

LC: IN 2004 you had a big break and got to perform on the famous German ROCK program, Rockpalast. How was that experience? How were you treated and were you nervous? I still have never seen the video or DVD. Do you have the rights to release it yourself?

Bo: As an event it was a great thing to do and take with us, but at the time it was kind of frustrating as we were not allowed to play as loud as we wanted to. And hey!!! it really takes some volume to kickstart a rockshow at that time of day. But we did it, even as underdogs, and Nick Solomon assisted us by changing broken strings during the set. GREAT.

Nik: Everybody was real friendly and treated us well, but there's something lifeless about television, even when you're on the inside of the screen. One of the camera men was talking about how he always wanted to get closer, closer, closer to the instrument and what was being played - kinda makes me think of bad gynaecology porn, really - I think he misses the whole point of a rock'n'roll concert, he misses that it's about all of us coming together at the same time; there's not some basic nugget, some kinda small inside core where it all is - no, it's all about unexpected ideas, bypass consciousness, having to push this beat because it depends on the one before, freedom muthafucka, the whole kindergarten swinging from a framework that is the song structure, hitting the frame, missing, mutating, changing all the time... with this guy's way, you're able to grasp the experience just as much as you're able to grasp someone's personality by inspecting their toe nails in a microscope.
So the front row was all cameras, and since you always play to the front row, we were for the first time in our lives playing for a bunch of glassy-eyed cyclopses. Very weird. They were slowly eating us, so at the end of the set we had to set our guitars on fire and shove them into their one-eye to blind them. Apart from that, we were treated well. I think the weirdness of having to fight ravenous cyclopses with burning instruments in the middle of a ganz normales German Burgher-tv show made us forget about being nervous. It also distracted us from really going into the music. We just played the songs, and left the stage.
And about the rights: Ze Germans are professionäl, zey haf vays ov keeping ze rrrrreichts to reliise zis material.

LC: Speaking off, does the band have any video footage from the old and new days that could be released as a DVD compilation?

Bo: Huh!!! If it exists (some does), it is probably scattered all over in tons of different places.
No current plans like that, sorry.

LC: Has the band made any videos to support the new CD? If not, what track would you use if you had the opportunity?

Bo: Not as we speak. Of course, we've talked about it, what options we had available, but budgets are always tight in this band. If someone out there has some money, working hours and good will to burn, we definitely have the ideas.

Nik: "Someone" in the band was actually given the task of contacting this guy we know who could shoot a video, but "someone" seems to have forgotten.... maybe it's also because the kind of kick you can get from a video (whatever that would be) doesn't really interest us? But maybe we should turn that thing around - isn't it about time someone kicked the music video in it's head, and told us to fuck off if we tried to rock out doing playback? Zeppo, who's been making some lights and video for us before, is coming back from London soon. Then we'll get him to do a drone/vortex-video loop for Blood River, because that is probably the song least likely to end up on tv... and then we'll do a painting for Too Late Too Loud, and a video for that song, too: One still image for the whole duration of the song. The still image will be a close-up of the painting covered by a white piece of cloth.

LC: Are there plans to play outside Denmark to support the release of the new CD?

Nik: Probably September 7-17, the big bad booker man is working on it.

LC: Can you comment on further future plans for the band???

Bo: A gig on the moon, even though NASA has not responded yet. Otherwise just Keep on keeping on, investigating and exploring our new found potential. Certain songs on the new album shows new fields to explore, I think.

Nik: Jeez, Bo, why'd you have to go and mention the moon gig? Don't you know it puts a hex on it? Now we're never gonna play the moon, and it's all your fault!

LC: Any last comments for the fans?

Bo: Cheers. Stay cool, 'till we find you.

Nik: Cheers. Absolutely cheers. Try some of that Russian sparkling wine that some of the cornershops have, it's way better than Freixenet, and cheaper.

http://www.ontrial.dk