EXCLUSIVE: Interview with Andy Thommen from Zenit (Part Two)

I am embarrassed to admit that until their CD  The Chandrasekhar Limit popped through my letter box courtesy of the lovely Anne-Marie at Gonzo HQ, I had not heard of Zenit. But Galileo Records have been putting out so much fine stuff recently that I had high hopes from them. My hopes were justified - they are magnificent. Much more subtle than much of today's contemporary progfare the band show an admirable lightness of touch that should be emulated by all and sundry. They have a deft awareness of the importance of light and shade, in the way that Pink Floyd had, and that few bands that followed have mastered. They are a very very good band, and I have somewhat of a proselytising hat on whilst I write about them, because they deserve to be absolutely massive.

Just in case you missed it, yesterday's installment of this interview can be found HERE

JON: Have you got stuff written for the next album yet?

ANDY: <laughs>  I sent, this morning, a demo to colleagues with an idea.  We have a lot of ideas but the difference between the other albums and this one, is that we have very few ideas at the moment, and one thing is that the keyboardist – who is the oldest member of the band – he played it say 15 different bands over the years and he had a lot of ideas and a lot of material, and that is what we mainly used as a starting point for the first three albums.    And that is why we said The Chandrasekhar Limit limit is a point where you don’t know exactly which direction you are going to take. And that is exactly the moment where now we have to start even more from scratch.  We don’t have basic ideas, or very old ideas, which we can work on and modernise them or personalise them to the band so we are probably at a bit of a change, which is very good because we have this new drummer, who is a very good drummer,  and when we do some improvisation we see that it will be very easy to get to good ideas.  And that brings me to one point, if you’ll allow me to change a bit. Sometimes we get reviews where it says we are neo-prog or it’s really Marillion-like, or it sounds like this or like that.  Most of these songs, the original idea, were written even when Marillion didn’t exist. Our keyboardist played in a lot of bands and he was extremely unlucky, because every time he was close to really producing something, the band split up, he changed country, he changed cities, or whatever and this was the first time he was able to use some old ideas.  I don’t know if you remember the cassette tapes – we had some old tapes which we listened to and said this is a good idea, let’s start on this one, and sometimes they were ideas from the ‘70s and the ‘80s.

JON: How long has the band been together?

ANDY: The band has officially existed since May ’98. It’s an interesting story.  I mean I played in another quite successful prog band, which was Clepsydra, which I left in ’98,  but I met Ivo – the keyboardist – and Gigio Pedruzzi – the former drummer – three years earlier because there was a tour planned for Clepsydra, but the drummer and the keyboardist had time issues or were not able to attend so we decided to go with tour musicians and I had extremely fun playing with Ivo and Gigio on drums, even if it was another band, and I always said that if ever I had time I would like to put up a project with them and when I left the other band the first call was to them and say hey let’s start something, and it was quite easy to found the band and the band’s ideas came up really fast and then we found a singer and guitar player and that’s the story behind.

JON: Well I think it is a fantastic band and I’m very disappointed that I’ve not heard of you before.  Have you guys got any plans to play in the UK?

ANDY: Oh the plans are there.  The problem is – on one side there are the cost issues and there are not many – you know I am in contact with festival organisers and all these things  - that’s the issue.  Zenit is not known of as a name, so when we call and when we send a promo or we send an email, we are one of probably 100s that they are receiving and it’s a bit difficult and strange for a band whose third album is unknown because the first two albums were self-produced, because we were really still doing music for fun.  We are not trying to make money out of it. We are not living for music and we don’t want to because we want to keep it as a fun factor in our lives.  And that’s a bit difficult.  We would play almost everywhere.  We are in discussions now with the Netherlands, with Italy and a few other dates in Switzerland, so if anyone who reads this interview from the UK has a spot for us we would be extremely glad to  play in the UK.

JON: Well I see it as my job now.  I am going to go out and tell as many people in the UK about your band because I think you are very, very good.

ANDY: Thank you very much.  There is another small issue. Normally all these concerts and festivals – on the one side it is all the big names and on the other side – I often hear ah you are not progressive metal – we are too Pink Floyd-ish, we are too … I don’t know how to explain….. We have a lot of atmosphere – we are not hard enough for a lot of people and still a lot of people think that a band that does a lot of noise on the stage just to get more audience.  It’s a bit difficult, but we are working on it and again, we love to play live. And what we do, and I know it’s sometimes difficult to believe, but it’s a 90% match to the record because we really love sounds. We are not just playing it one to one, but we are really trying to give the audience the original feelings when you are listening to the record.

JON: Well I look forward to seeing you live. We’ve got to get you over to England some time, because I haven’t got enough money to come over and see you in Switzerland, so we’ve got to get you over to England. So I’m going to make it my mission to get you as well known in the UK as we possibly can. 

And I mean it! I think that they are a superb band, and really deserve to be massive, so I make no apologies for the fact that I am going to be campaigning very hard on their behalf from this point on!

In the meantime check THIS out:

CURRENTLY AVAILABLE FROM GONZO

The Chandrasekhar Limit CD - �9.99

EXCLUSIVE: Interview with Andy Thommen from Zenit (Part One)

I am embarrassed to admit that until their CD  The Chandrasekhar Limit popped through my letter box courtesy of the lovely Anne-Marie at Gonzo HQ, I had not heard of Zenit. But Galileo Records have been putting out so much fine stuff recently that I had high hopes from them. My hopes were justified - they are magnificent. Much more subtle than much of today's contemporary progfare the band show an admirable lightness of touch that should be emulated by all and sundry. They have a deft awareness of the importance of light and shade, in the way that Pink Floyd had, and that few bands that followed have mastered. They are a very very good band, and I have somewhat of a proselytising hat on whilst I write about them, because they deserve to be absolutely massive.

The Galileo website has this to say about them:

Zenit was found in Southern Switzerland (Ticino) in 1998 by bass player Andy Thommen, keyboarder Ivo Bernasconi and drummer Gigio Pedruzzi after their well-known experiences with bands like Clepsydra, Changes and Brainstorm. In 2001 with the addition of singer Lorenzo Sonognini, Zenit release their debut album „Pravritti“ with words in Italian as well as in English, followed by inspiring live performances in relevant prog festivals. In 2006, with the addition of Luigi Biamino on guitars, the band releases the second album „Surrender“. The song material is elaborate even so catchy and offers all fans of Genesis, Marillion, Supertramp, Kansas or Gentle Giant all that they love in their favorite bands. The production of „Surrender“ is crisp and very accurate what makes sound all tone diversity covering multiple musical desires. On Zenit’s 3rd album „The Chandrasekhar Limit“ (69 minutes), Andy Thommen affixes a seal with his distinctive bass play right from the start of the first song (“Awaken”). Later, with the start of the guitar, you will somewhat be reminded of the Clepsydra sound: awesome guitar-bass team play! Here you start with what you expect to get from this brilliant album: quality. The marvelous long tracker “Matrimandir” (17 minutes), brings a breath of oriental sounds in a very subtle but delicate way without being brash, despite the Sanskrit lyrics now and then. One of the best long tracker of recent times clocking around 25 minutes, is “The Daydream Suite” that brings reminiscences of Pink Floyd and all the other stuff a prog suite should have: crazy keyboard solos, melodic guitar lines, cool bass parts and complex choirs, harmoniously in action. The rocking instrumental sound of “Pulsar”, the sweet and sinful ballad “Cub Lady” and the screaming-jazzy “PiGreco” song, jointly make up an impressive and progressive rock album of the 21st century. 

For those of you not in the know, I am bi-polar and there are some days - like yesterday - when I am no use to man nor beast. However, I did manage to pull myself together for about twenty minutes and have an interesting chat with Andy Thommen of Zenit. I was not at all well whilst I was talking to him, and had to truncate the interview fairly abruptly when my housekkerper and kids arrived, causing Prudence (my massively bulky bulldog x boxer bitch) to rush about everywhere like a tee-to-tum barking insanely. This was too much for my faltering mental health to deal with, and so I promised that we would talk again soon, and said my goodbyes. Andy, my friend - I am terribly sorry about that. I would have liked to have talked for longer, and I will set up another interview soon, I promise.

On with the show:

  

JON: I very much like your album.  I think it is very good indeed.

ANDY: Thank you very much

JON: Did it take a long time to do?

ANDY: Seven years

JON: That’s quite a long time.

ANDY: No, no, seven years is the time we had between the second album and this actual third album.  We had a lot of trouble between these two albums.  Mainly a band member had an accident, and we had kids coming so time was extremely restricted for another band member during this time.  We have a total of something like 12 or 13 kids for the band members so we are extremely busy with our families.  And at the end when we were ready, let’s say three years ago, the drummer changed which pushed us back a little bit on our plans, and finally we were ready, let’s say the middle of last year with a final print master, and then we made the deal with Galileo and Gonzo so it took a bit more time during the holiday season and then came the Christmas season and at the end it became January <laughs> so there are a lot of excuses but at the end for us it’s important to make  a very good product at the end – a very good album - and we had no strict deadline so in the end it took a lot of time but we are happy with it.

JON: Well, I think you should be.  It’s a very, very good album. I love the different textures of the sound.

ANDY: This was the idea.  We are all fans of Spock’s Beard, we are all fans of Flower Kings, you know, all these bands.  But normally we always say you put whatever song you decide or you try and you recognise them immediately because there is always this style across the whole sound and it was really the aim to make something that when you have to listen to a prog album which is normally very hard to  listen to from the beginning to the end, that you have different styles, different moods, different colours, different smells, that is why we went to this Asian/Indian sound and instrumentation to make it more comfortable to listen to.

JON: Well you certainly succeeded.  I was wondering, did you write the songs in the studio or were they already pre-written?

ANDY: No, no absolutely.  It’s probably a huge difference between our colleagues, or some colleagues I know, we play the songs.  We play them in our room, we modify them, we make some experiments but we always play them, and when someone comes up with an idea, we say let’s try it, if we can’t make this modification or this kind of sound and once we have the ‘wow’ effect, we play and we say ok let’s keep this part and move on to the next one, so before we move to the studio we are able to play it from A-Z completely and when we are able to play it and we are satisfied with it, then we go to the studio. There are some minor things added really only in the studio like the female choirs in the Daydream Suite and some other minor things, but basically they are playable songs and this is also how we play them live.

This seemed like a relatively sensible place to knock off for today. We will be back tomorrow with the second part of this interview. In the meantime check THIS out:

CURRENTLY AVAILABLE FROM GONZO

The Chandrasekhar Limit CD - �9.99