The Seven Mile Journey has made an interview with the Italian music publication Music On Tnt, it is our job to forward it to you.
All my little interview start with the same question: What The Seven Mile Journey means? What’s the name genenis?
In the musical sense, there are certain concepts that we build our songs and albums around, that creates a degree of overall consistency. The concepts however are very wide ranging which allows us to explore these with various approaches in each individual song. Each album is focused more on certain concepts, but uses the wide range in these to explore their different dimensions and applying these variously in the individual songs. At the same time we keep the focus on, that the songs combined provide the feeling of the album as being a united story, and at the same time creating some separate underlying stories that are each continued from album to album. Although these may be harder to notice, they are present. The band name was chosen to support this approach.
How did you become part of the United Nations of Fluttery Records?
Fluttery Records contacted us during the construction of our last album Notes for the Synthesis. We liked the approach that they had to their artist so we decided to release the album through their record label.
How do your works come into life? Can you describe their producing process?
The main themes of the songs are often established before entering the rehearsal room, but after that, almost all of the music is created through jamming sessions, where every member in the band contributes. This approach sometimes takes a lot of time through eliminating or re-constructing different parts, but it allows us to make sure that we feel that the songs keeps their strength over time.
Was the choice of the long suites made of your own will or was it necessarily imposed by the post-rock genre?
We started out with vocals on most of our songs, but the poor sound conditions in the place we rehearsed the first years did not allow us to be able to hear the vocals over the songs. This forced us to make sure that the instrumental side of these was strong enough to stand alone. We slowly found out, that the pure instrumental approach to writing songs was satisfactory and very interesting to us, and therefore decided to shift the focus to this 100%. The songs then naturally started to progress in length, in order to capture what we felt made them feel complete.
How do you consider the fact of being compared to bands like GSY!BE, God’s an Astronaut, Explosion in the Sky, If Trees Could Talk? Is it for you source of pride or simply an annoying parallelism?
When starting out, Nirvana was our biggest musical influence and we are still to this day, inspired to incorporate musical elements from this genre into our songs. After we shifted our focus to purely instrumental music, the band that became most important to us within the post rock genre was GYBE, so when we get positive comments that are related to the music of GYBE, we feel honored by this.
Considering the album, what does your band manage to obtain playing live?
An important focus when we create the songs, is to limit the instrumentation of the songs to what we can perform live with four people, and we make sure that the few things that are sometimes added in the recordings, are never the drive of the song, so it is not felt that these are missing when we play live shows. Therefore there are seldom any adjustments in the composition of the songs when played live, and there is never any instrumentation added to our live performances that is not already present on the album versions of the songs.
Being that the songs are constructed this way, we also construct our albums with almost everything being played and recorded live in the studio, to try to achieve a more authentic and intense sound on the recordings.
I noticed your web address, although active, doesn’t connect to a real web site yet? Is this only a temporary situation? How important are the web and the social networks to a band like you?
The internet has definitely been an essential aspect for us, as it has allowed us to present the music to a worldwide audience and establish the contacts that we have collaborated with over the years. It has given us the possibilities of having our albums distributed in a range of countries we never thought possible, and has also allowed us to play concerts outside of Denmark. Regarding social networks, we mainly use these to announce shows and news.
What do you think about illegal download?
A subject that can be approached with many arguments, balanced by the reasoning behind the choice and characteristics of the individual.
Metal, indie, post-rock music fans are often still inclined to purchase hard copies ignoring mp3, what do you think about digital format?
Overall, we prefer hard copies and especially the vinyl format. We will ourselves within the next 6 months, begin releasing our former albums on vinyl.
Is still nowadays possible to make a living only by playing music?
It is very dependent on various aspects that are constantly changing and the choice of level of adaptability.
In a few months you will be out with a new release. Can you disclose something to us in advance?
We are currently constructing our next album but we do not expect it to be released before the beginning of 2014. We are on this album working with concepts and approaches that we have used in the past, but we are exploring these even further along with combining these with new ones, which we feel are creating new layers along with intensifying and broadening the overall dimensions and expression in the songs, in the sound of The Seven Mile Journey and in the new album as a whole.
✎ Italian version of the interview is available here
♫ Read the reviews, listen or buy The Seven Mile Journey’s latest album Notes For Synthesis