M.S: Hi Robert. Thanks for your time. First of all, let me tell you congratulations for your album, it’s really brilliant.
R.S: Thanks to you.
M.S: For those people who don’t know you, please tell us: How long have you been in the musical scene? And what do you think that you reach with W.O.A. within the AOR genre?
R.S: Although we’ve been digging AOR since we were teenagers, as a band we are quite new on the AOR scene. We grew up in the 90ies when AOR and melodic rock was kind of unhip so most of the people we grew up playing with didn’t like this type of music. We never had the chance to actually play AOR. We’ve been playing a lot of Soul, funk, pop etc. but no AOR until now so it really was about time!
I hope our record “artwork” is something that people in the AOR community will remember for a long time. We didn’t make this album to become rich and famous, we did it because we love this kind of music and we did it for everyone how still cares about AOR music.
M.S: Before the album, you had released a couple of demos, so, how did it happen that Frontiers listen to you and tell you that they will release the album?
R.S: Actually no, we had not released any demos. We tried for 15 years to get a demo together but for a number of reasons we always failed. So the first completed demo we made was finished last year in February. We directly uploaded it on our MySpace site and Frontiers contacted us and offered us a record deal the very same day!!
M.S: What kind of musical influences do you have? Do you listen to Heavy Metal apart from AOR or Hard Rock?
R.S: Not to much but I hang around in a lot of Metal clubs and have a lot of Metal friends so I get to hear a lot of Metal anyway. I’ve listened to Pantera, Machine Head quite a bit and I’m big Tool fan!
M.S: What do you want to show with your cover? It’s something mysterious and elegant for us… is it something like that?
R.S: We want that was rather clean and classy since that’s how we try to make our music sound. That’s way we also dressed up on suites for the booklet and promo pictures. However, I think the overall impression of our CD artwork became a little to dark. Next time we try something else.
M.S: I have read in a review of your album that “Maria” is dedicated to the Spanish girls, is that true? How did you choose that theme for the song?
R.S: True! I wrote “Maria” right after we got our record deal. At time we were getting a lot of attention from people in Spain so, although the first name that came to mind was “Sophia” I changed it to the more Spanish sounding “Maria”. Tribute to all the Spanish girls who supported us on our MySpace site;-)
M.S: If you see your album in a download website, would you see it as a popular interest for your music? Do you think that Internet is something bad for music bands?
R.S: Well, for better or worse, internet and downloading is here to stay so you might just get used to it. Of course we would like people to buy our record and not download it but at the same time, if it wasn’t for the internet, most people wouldn’t even know that we exist!
M.S: In your opinion, what’s the key for an artist not to be repetitive?
R.S: Good question. The trick is to not repeat yourself and still not go to far from you still so your fans won’t recognise you. This will be a huge challenge for us for sure. Especially since we are playing in an 80ies retro kind of style….
M.S: FrontierS Records doesn’t stop releasing albums apart from other melodic rock record labels such as Aor Heaven, or, do you think that everyone likes Hard Rock now? How do you see the genre status?
R.S: Let me but it this way, I think the status of the genre is better than in a long time. There is definitely an 80ies retro thing happening, not only in rock music but in all kind of music and in fashion. So I guess this is a great time to release our album.
M.S: An obligatory question, will there be a second disc of W.O.A?
R.S: It’s too soon to say. It all depends on how well this record does and if Frontiers wants us to do a second one but I really hope we’ll get chance to record a second album.
M.S: And for this album, will there be a tour or some gigs as live presentation? Is there something confirmed?
R.S: Nothing confirmed but we’re hoping to play live later this year. Will see what happens but hopefully!
M.S: Lars Säfsund will participate in the Eurovision Festival for Rumania, does it mean that he has a solitary career? We didn’t know that he was Rumanian…
R.S: Ha, ha! Lars is as much Romanian as I’m Chinese 😉 No, he’s from Sweden and the songwriters behind that song are also from Sweden. I also think it’s strange but besides Lars and his “Biondo”, two more Swedish artists appeared in the Romanian Eurovision this year. I guess the rules have changed a lot in the recent years. Earlier, at least the song writer needed to come from the country that the song was competing in. As for Lars having his on career, yes, he has. We all have our separate careers outside WOA. That’s the main reason why it took us so long to get our first demo together. Of course Lars is the most successful one but I don’t complain either. I’m very happy with playing in a lot of groups and project here in Stockholm and I also write songs for other artists.
M.S: What do you think about that festival? It’s based on politics interests of the participant countries, don’t you think?
R.S: Yeah, probably that and also the focus have changed from the best song to the best show. It’s more like theatre play this day, or circus if you like;-)
M.S: If you didn’t make music, what would your job do?
R.S: Most certainly I would be working with computers. My father bought our first computer back in 1982, a spectrum Sinclair 48K, and I’ve been hooked ever since. I’ve actually done some work for computer companies a couple of years ago. Mainly working with LINUX based servers.
M.S: This is the end of the interview, if you want to say something to your readers, this is the moment…. Thanks for your time, and good luck!
R.S: Yes, I want to say THANK YOU to all you Spanish people who have supported us on our MySpace site and elsewhere. It means everything to a new band like us and I really hope our record lives up to everyone’s expectations.
David Aresté
LINKS:
Work of Art : Art Work // Frontiers Records ( Mastertrax )