MIND’S DOOR is a Spanish band that I just got wind of. Since I liked what I heard I wanted to interview them. Anders Ekdahl ©2018 <!–more–>
Every band has to introduce their music to new
people. What is it that you want people to get from listening to you guys?
-First of all, hello to every progfan, thanks for pay attention to our work.
Obviously, we want everybody could enjoy our work as much as we do. Concerning
about “The Edge of the World”, we have to tell you, that [1] it
is another conceptual album where we mix the real story of a man, who has a
“standard” life with his wife Victoria, but something happen to them, that will
change them forever. We think is a work full of melodies, riffs, strength and
harmonic structures, which build special moments and feelings.
How hard was it for you guys to pick a
name? What had that name have to have to fit your music?
-Well, it’s always a little hard to pick a name that could represent what we
want to express with our music. Specially, when it has so many influences and
different styles on it. So, we think, what better than opening your “Mind’s
Doors”. As you see, it’s a kind of a wordplay that invites you to listen to the
music unprejudiced, simply feeling and enjoying every second.
Everybody is influenced by certain
things. What band(s) was it that turned you on to the kind of music you play?
What inspires you today?
-As you can listen, we are influenced with so many bands. Every member of the
band has his own preferences, but there’s a common part, which connect us
completely. The key is that we are people with a very open mind, we love metal,
prog rock, jazz, classical and so many and many styles. Maybe, prog fans think
we are too metal, and for metal fans we are too proggy, buy we are exactly
where we love. Just to mention some of our influences, we love Haken, Steven
Wilson, Transatlantic, Pat Metheny Group, Dave Weckl, Snarky Puppy, Leprous, Dream Theater… As you can notice, very
diverse styles.
When you formed did you do so with the
intent of knowing what to play or did you do so from the point of having a band
name and then picking a sound? How did you settle on the name/sound combo?
-Well, Jose (drummer), Alberto (guitarrist) and me, César (singer) were the
first members of the band, and from the beginning we want to experiment in the
rehearsals but knowing the field of music we wanted to live. We always have
been very creative and restless minds. The band name came a little later as I
told you before.
I believe that digital is killing the
album format. People’s changing habit of how they listen to music will result
in there being no albums. Is there anything good with releasing single tracks
only?
-Well, as you can see in our work, we can’t express ourselves with single
tracks because every album tell a story that you won’t be able to understand it
completely unless you pay attention to the whole work. Of course, you can have
some favorite tracks, but in our case, the “single track” habit doesn’t work as
it does in another styles.
What part does art-work and lay-out play
when you release new recordings? How do you best catch people’s attention?
-We try to take care of every little detail of our work. Art-work has to fit
perfectly with what we want to tell you with our music. As you can see in “The
Edge of the World”, a woman with a lot of things running through her head
(including music, of course) is the main idea in the album cover. Also, we
chose clear tones trying to reflect the mental state of the characters. Just to
mention some examples of our art-work process.
Has social media re-written the rules on
how to promote your music? Or do you go about doing promotion the same way?
-Of course, social media has absolutely change the rules of promote music. But,
honestly, we are not very good in that aspect. Fortunately, we are very lucky
to have Wormholedeath as a label and people as Carlo Belloti, and Natasa Pribac
working to share our work. We are very happy working with them. Without them, this album could no have been promoted as has to be.
When you play in a band, does that make
you feel like you are a part of a scene, of something bigger and grander?
-Nowadays, we don’t feel we are part of something bigger than simply enjoy of
our music. We frankly, really love each gig, each rehearsal, and every stage of
the creating world.
How much of a touring band are you? Is
touring/gigging still a great way of spreading the word of the band?
-We love touring, and we think it’s essential to promote our work. We are open
to listen to everyone who want us in their scene (festival, show or whatever).
We have some shows confirmed but we think will be sharing “The Edge of the
World” during 2019 and 2020 too. Nowadays, we are only touring in Spain but in
the future we hope we could do some shows in some part of Europe or who
knows…
What will the future bring?
-This is easy for us. The future will bring us MUSIC as always. In terms of promoting the album, you know, touring, interviews… but probably during summer we’ll start taking form to the ideas hanging over our heads. So, it will very happy days for us, touring and writing music.
