Interview
(Progressive Newsletter Nr.62 05/08)
excerpts from an interview with Doran Usher (Keyboards)
All of us have different unique tastes. It take a long time to enumerate all the bands influenced us more than other. Briefly our beloved genres are classical progressive rock of 70ies, contemporary alternative rock and electronic music. Also we are fond of symphonic classics, fusion and techno. All of that and even more you could find in our creativity.
What does the band name mean?
It means a mountain as high as Everest (translation from Sanscrit). Actually we would like to impress the feelings of the man, living on the edge of Asia and Europe, near mounties. The northern man living under the high mountain and imagines what it's high as the highest peaks over the world.
You have already released previous material, so "2nd hands" is not your debut album. Is this material comparable to the music of "2nd hands" or is it totally different?
It's so hard to describe our first LP "Close grip". Of course it differs from 2nd Hands but it was composed with the same ideas in mind and our style is quite recognizable there! Close Grip was recorded in 2003 and will be reissued by Unicorn Digital at 15th of April 2008. There were 4 long years till the release date, but we hope that the album will be kindly accepted by prog fans anywhere!
Very typical for your album is the mixture of completely different styles fitting together surprisingly well. Was this concretely planned right from the start or did it just evolve into this direction?
It's just our style of thinking. We don't try to fit into a certain genre. The limitations they have often too hard to keep, so we synthesize all we have to create the music we love, to create our own recognizable sound. It's our main idea from start and we will follow the same direction further adding new unexpected elements.
Can you tell us something about the lyrics on the album?
The lyrics are based on Russian classical poetry of 19th and the first half of 20th century. It's a very strong part of whole Russian and even world-wide poetry. There is unusual fairy atmosphere in the poems, close enough to the mood of our music. We would like to bring such brilliant poetry to English-speaking listeners.
Is there already material for a new album?
We would like to prepare our new album till the end of the year. We all have full 40-hours a week job to pay the bills, so it's hard enough to compose. Also we are looking for a new singer cause we would like to make our music stronger and we have some ideas about who could work with us. We hope it would be a pleasant surprise!
How did it happen that your album was released by the Canadian label Unicorn records?
We sent promo CDs to tens of independent labels and most of them agreed to publish our work. We choose Unicorn Digital because of strong label's promotion plan and fine publishing conditions. And that's all :-)
"2nd hands" has an excellent cover work. Can you tell us about this in more detail?
The artwork was done by Jonas Ekman, perfect artist and drummer. Jonas is a good friend of Michel St-Pere, Unicorn Digital manager and was recommended by him. We also had some drafts from Ed Unitsky, but we hadn't accepted them and he had no time to suggest us something else cause he was very busy with other projects, so Jonas becomes our artist. He worked with the cover continuously for 5 weeks correcting main idea of northern and eclectic mood. We think he found right solution.
How were the reactions to your "debut" in the prog press so far?
There are a huge range of opinions about our "debut" from extremely positive to absolutely negative. We were accused of excessive amount of electronics, techno sounds and modern grooves but in other hand we were kindly accepted due the mentioned above and many reviewers found it's quite original and inventive. Anyway we are happy what our album don't let listener to be indifferent!
Is Gourishankar a studio project or have you already played your album live?
Unfortunately we have no ability to spend much time for live gigs or even touring. As we already said all of us have regular job, and it's simply a matter of money. We hope the situation will change in the future! From time to time we are playing live but mostly here, in our native city.
Jürgen Meurer © Progressive Newsletter 2008