Pelican - Interview

I don’t think there is anything more I can say about Pelican. Thanks to Trevor for answering it. And if you haven’t got the new album, buy it here.

1. Hey man, how are you doing? How is the weather over there?

I'm doing real well, thank you. Just got home from a few shows with the band and now I am trying to do some hardcore relaxing before our next stint starts this weekend. I'm in North Carolina right now, and
the heat is sweltering, so my girlfriend and I have been hiding in a darkened room trying to keep cool.

2. What's up with the band? Are you preparing for the upcoming shows in Japan? Will this be the first time you guys going to play shows in Japan? Do you expect anything or looking forward for it?

Just got back last week, actually. It was our first time over there. The label which releases our albums in Japan, Daymare, invited us over to do four shows. They were all big successes, so hopefully it won't be long before we're asked to come back over. In addition to the opportunity to see and tour Japan, which we had dreamed of for a long time, we got to play with many of our favorite Japanese bands - Mono, Boris, Greenmachine, Church of Misery, etc. and got to catch a Corrupted show on our day off. It was a great trip.

3. So there will be a US tour this coming August, how long will this be and is Pelican touring with another band? Is this upcoming tour to support the new album?

Yes, this Sunday we are hitting the road for five weeks in support of the new record. The majority of the tour will be with our labelmates Big Business. We'll also be joined by Breather Resist, the Panthers, and Red Sparrowes for different legs of the tour.

4. So you guys are going on tour with your own money or…?

Yes, Japan was the first tour that wasn't paid for with our own money. Luckily we do alright on the road so the tours have started to pay for themselves rather than us having to slave at our jobs back home just to pay to play for people. The idea is that the better the tours go, the more we'll be able to do them, so we're hoping this tour is a success.

5. Tell me something about the new album. Is it the progression from the previous recorded materials? Are you guys happy with the output? What can the listener expect from this new album?

The album is much more diverse from our previous efforts. Whereas "Australasia" was heavily repetitive and distorted practically the whole way through, the new album makes use of a lot more changes throughout the songs, including many quiet passages. I guess the easiest way of describing the change is that the album is more song oriented than riff oriented, as our older material tended to be.

6. From the track list of the new album, I'd noticed that there is a track call March To The Sea, does this track have any relation to the March Into The Sea songs off the March Into The Sea EP?

Yes, it's a new recording of the song from the EP, with some changes made in the structure of the song. The most notable difference is that we excised the acoustic outro, since it seemed to eat into the continuity of the album quite a bit.

7. I have to say that the song March Into The Sea is probably on of the best songs I've heard from Pelican. Is it intended to be 20 minutes long because it really sounds like a combination of one or more songs in it? Can we expect more 20+ minutes songs from Pelican in the future?

We'd talked a little about dividing the song into movements, like a classical piece, but that ultimately seemed a little pretentious and uneccessary, so, yeah it's one twenty minute long song. I guess I can
understand the feeling that it seems like a lot of songs happen in its midst since we cover so much different territory within its boundaries, but I think the song itself is sort of indicative of all the different tones and ideas that we want to explore as musicians. It's a tidy bundle of chaos, really.

8. I found out that your new album had been leaked on the Internet for a while now. How does the band see about this? What do you think about kids downloading the whole album from the Internet instead of buying
the real album?

If I thought that no one was going to buy the album because they could just as easily download it, I guess I might get pretty bummed. It's a lot of hard work and very costly to make an album, so the ultimate goal of any independent release is to at least break even; and I am always gripped with terror when we are releasing something that the whole thing is gonna sink the ship, so to speak. But while the downloading phenomenon has definitely affected peoples' propensity to peel open their pocketbook to buy a new record, I don't think it's
necessarily a negative change. I think people that download music still spend money on music, downloading just gives them a chance to check out more stuff and broaden their musical palette. Technology has always forced change in the music scene/industry, and we are undergoing a time of dramatic change - downloading is here to stay and artists will have to find different ways to make their art come to fruition is they want to survive.

9. How was the SXSW show the band did a couple of months ago?

Shows with large bills always tend to have quite a number of duds on them, so it was amazing and an honor to participate in what I think might have been the best large assortment of bands I have ever seenplay on one stage in one night. The highlight was probably Oxbow; as music and performance the band drops my jaw every time I see them.

10. It seems that there are a lot of bands who are musically similar with Pelican and are gaining a lot of popularity within the 'extreme music' scene (i.e. Cult of Luna, Mare, Jesu etc), is it safe to say that this kind of music is going to be the next trend? Do you think MTV will catch up and starts hyping this kind of music?

The rarity with which music that is sincere and uncompromised "catches on" tends to suggest to me that MTV will not take an interest in bands affiliated with our scene or our label. I think that that's fine - business interests and corporate affiliations only bring negative effects with them. Those types' interest in music is predicated on the belief that there are material rewards to reap from it, which shifts the attention from sincerity to sales. Artists don't need that shit fucking up their work.

11. There was a Justin Broadrick remix on the March into the Sea EP. How does that come about? Is there any plan to do a remix album like what Isis did? Are you guys planning to do collaborations with other
like-minded musicians?

We toured the UK with Justin's band Jesu, and we got to talking about potential remixes and stuff while we were on the road with him. There's a remix of the same song, "Angel Tears", by another friend James Plotkin that'll show up on a split 12" EP with Mono later this year. We don't have any plans for a remix record, but we may comission remixes for future releases since the results we've had so far from these experiments have been very good. As far as collaborations, I guess we haven't really sought anything out to this point, but we try to never rule out artistic posibilities.

12. Is there any plan to do an acoustic album in the near future?

Laurent, Bryan, and I do all the initial songwriting on acoustic guitars, so a project of that sort would not be too surprising, but there's no plans for such a release at this time.

13. Anything else you want to add?

We apologize for the actions of our destructive government and culture. There are peace loving people in the United States and hopefully someday shit will change. Thank you very much for the interview.

Peace,
trevor