EXCLUSIVE: Erik Norlander interview (part two)

And here we have part two of the interview I conducted with the massively talented Erik Norlander late last week. If you missed the first part yesterday you can find it here. Read on chaps and chapesses:

Jon: I noticed the science fiction theme somewhere there

Erik: Well science fiction runs throughout the album and throughout my music. I am a huge science fiction fan.

Jon: An Asimov fan I noticed

Erik: Yes, there’s a song called Trantor Station that is off of my first solo album, Threshold, from 1997 and of course Trantor Station is a reference to the Asimov Foundation series and Trantor is the centre of the galaxy and you can imagine that the big international airport – the big interplanetary spaceport of course – would be Trantor station. And the approach to this song was to create this kind of frenzied manic environment much like a busy airport would be like Heathrow of JFK or Port of New York, or LAX in Los Angeles.

But that frenzy is created by the modular moog synthesiser doing these various pulsing modulating patterns and this kind of frenetic percussion played by Nick LePar on rototoms and the additional drum kit. So you have all this energy on this freneticism - if that is even a word - and then over the top of that you have this very wistful, almost peaceful melody going on, and what that represents is the traveller going through the Trantor Station space port and perhaps you as the traveller you are going on holiday or going to visit a loved one or going on a job.

Meanwhile all of this chaos and energy is going on around you but you as an individual are looking at your trip and you are looking forward to your destination and you are very peaceful and placid during this, and that’s really the spirit of Trantor Station. I think that I was very much influenced in my own travels to create that song when I would tour over the years. Obviously I spent a lot of time at airports and my mind is always on where I am going and what I am going to be doing, and very seldom do I dwell on the chaos that is going on around me, which I hope is a healthy attitude towards it all.

Jon: Airports are very strange places aren’t they? They are a very odd environment.

Erik: They definitely are. In some ways they represent the city that you’re in, if you’re in Phoenix, Arizona you’ll have pictures of cactus and tequila bars and that sort of thing, but they’re kind of these little bubbles, and because you have people coming from all over the world going through them they don’t really feel like they are in the city they are in. I was joking with John Payne the other day about Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam that of course you know the announcements are in English first, then they are in Dutch second and when you’re on the motorised walkways there’s this very posh, scholarly English woman’s voice that says,’ Mind your step, Mind your step, Mind your step,’ that repeats a little too often, and whenever I’m there now, I’ve made such a joke of it for so many years that it just makes me laugh now when I hear it whenever I get off the plane there.

Jon: There’s one at Dallas Fort Worth that a woman over the intercom sounds the way I’ve always imagined, if there actually was a heaven, the sort of voice the angels would have, ‘Move along the moving walkway towards the light’. It always sounds like a mechanised angel at the Pearly Gates.

So what are you going to be doing next? Or is this it for the Collective?

Erik: Well we are releasing two products. The first is the Galactic Collective Definitive Edition, which was a name coined by our friend Rob Ayling, and it’s the studio album that we recorded in Cleveland, plus a DVD of the whole series of sessions that was shot by the video crew. So we have start to finish video of the entire album which is a pretty neat thing. I’ve made so many albums over the years and you’re lucky if you have a few snapshots or a little video clip from them , but to actually document the entire recording is pretty cool and I am pretty happy about that. And then there is a second CD on there as well containing some alternate versions of the songs and one other track that didn’t make it on to the first CD simply because there wasn’t any room. I think the main CD is something like 79 minutes and 45 seconds which I guess leaves a glorious 15 seconds extra space on the CD. So that’s the first project; The Galactic Collective Definitive Edition with the two CDs and the DVD of studio material.

And then the second set is another two CD and DVD set that was recorded at a concert we played last year about a little over a year after the studio recordings were done. And we played the entire album live, and that is of course documented in the DVD and then it took two CDs to of course fit the complete 2-hour set on there. And so this is the same music plus a few other songs as well but done live in front of 500 or 600 actual live bodies and on stage and so it has a little different feel. You have the urgency of a live concert and some of the unexpected turns that happen, sometimes for better, sometimes for worse – hopefully more for the better. And that just kinda gives a different perspective on the same music. So really these two products are meant to go together as a set. There’s a studio version, and there’s a stage version so we’re going to be releasing those in June and then we are looking forward to doing some more touring later in the year.

And so it ends for today. Tomorrow we will post the third and final part of this interview with this extraordinary man, and massively talented musician.