Well,Friends Of Aristocracy!
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All music by A Ghost in Rags
We speak again of our newsroom, where in a little while, we will begin in all your emotions, the interview 132 of the Aristocracy.This time, we talked to a mystery band. But, what's not a mystery is that they sound in many ways. Mainly, touches of doom, Black Metal and strong elements of Sludge. Put that musical structure in a blender and you have, the band German singer who introduces themselves as A Ghost In Rags. At the end of last month, they presented their debut album entitled Akarano. Let's go to their full album and after that, our spectacular interview with them. Come On, Guys!
A1:Who´s who in band?
A Ghost In Rags:We are four guys from Freiburg, who just feel like playing music without genre boundaries.
A2:How was the sound composition for Akarano?
A Ghost In Rags:It's been a long but not boring, rather very nerdy process to finally arrive at the sound structures we use at the moment. With a lot of trial and error we developed a sound palette that we deem rather fitting for the themes and arrangements of the songs.Those are mostly created in the rehearsal room.We come up with riff ideas that we as a band develop together. Then there are the moments where everything just seems to turn into the right way. The energy starts to flow and suddenly the structures of the songs reveal all by themselves, the parts line up like a puzzle. When a fragment is finished, we work on the fine tuning and the dynamics. That's how the music begins to live. So we work our way forward piece by piece, until we say: "now it's possibly quite good".
A3:Why should music unfold?
A Ghost In Rags:Music is often reduced to essential style elements such as intro, verse, chorus, verse, solo etc.Then the whole thing gets packed into three to four minutes to be mass compatible.We think that music has more to offer. In every structure there are more layers, mini, macro and meta. We try to channel hence the 'ghosty theme' and contact all these layers to develop an experience that can be viewed from different angles and perspectives. We love the slow build-up of a song. It generates atmosphere. The music get's a pulse, breathes and unfolds. There are no more structural boundaries.
A4:Even being instrumental, do your songs seek some meaning?
A Ghost In Rags:Every song seeks meaning in a way. Otherwise it's pointless to even write them. What kind of meaning, abstract or direct, strongly depends on the artist and on the listener. Every person experiences meaning in a different way. Our perspective on meaning is that without lyrics, it is far more easy to interpret and feel songs instinctively. This is far more direct and honest, because words can be easily misunderstood.
A5:Some literature or film inspire the band?
A Ghost In Rags:We are defenitly influenced by literature and film. How could it be different in a band where the bass player is a bookseller and the drummer a photographer. In general we have an affinity for painful topics in arts. This surely reflects in our music, even if we do not consciously force it. But in the end, everything influences everything
A6:What is Akarano?
A Ghost In Rags:Zurvanism was a branch of an ancient Persian religion, which understood all good and true, as well as all evil and false to be born from the same, which was "Zurvan Akarano", time and space itself.
A7:Why the band have this name?
A Ghost In Rags:Finding a band name is always a process. Various suggestions were thrown into the pot, in the end we decided on A Ghost in Rags. It hints at the layers and that everything vanishes and blurs in and out of our lives. Additionally it is a name that is perhaps not quite tangible. It gives us more freedom in our musical expression to do what ever we want.
A8:Is the last song on the album based on German reality?
A Ghost In Rags:If mankind continues to live on planet earth as in the last century, the whole thing will probably turn into World-Reality.We refer more to todays global crises than to German history, if you have the Shoah in mind. We have not deliberately designed the title for German-Reality, we just thought that the title sounds cool in German.
A9:What´s the idea behind artwork´s album?
A Ghost In Rags:We tried to refer to our songs with the cover artwork. The whole album is about the symbiosis of beginning and ending, of creating and destroying, about life and death.We have tried to transport all this with the images. In the end, it is again in the eye of the beholder to discover all this for himself to interpret.
A10:How is A Ghost IN Rags different from your previous bands?
A Ghost In Rags:We all learned to step back and let the song, not a person unfold. And we understood the principle of „less is more“. We came from pretty diverse musical backgrounds, as classical Metalbands, Metalcore, Punk- Stoner and Surf Rock,just to name a few. So, A Ghost in Rags is a change for all of us.
A11:What would A Ghost In Rags 2022 say for A Ghost In Rags 2018?
A Ghost In Rags:Write longer and heavier songs, buy more pedals! Never hesitate to turn up the gain! You can almost never use too much reverb!Did we mention reverb??? And get into the studio before the pandemic hits!!!
A12:How to mix sludge and black metal on this album?
A Ghost In Rags:Actually, it's quite simple. We all love heavy riffs and are inspired by modern Blackmetal. Why not combine both? In the end we just make music we like to play and try to put everything into context. That's the way,Akarano was born.
A13:This album is conceptual?
A Ghost In Rags:It's not a traditional concept album where there is a story from start to finish. But the songs and the artwork all revolve around the theme of time and the decay of all being. It was inspired by Zurvanism as a mythology but also by places and landscapes and how they change throughout the aeons.
A14:What is Zurvan?
A Ghost In Rags:Zurvan was understood to be the beginning and end of all existence in the universe.
A15:What´s bands influence ours?
A Ghost In Rags:We are very influenced by bands like Cult of Luna, Wolves in the Throne Room, Year of no Light, Russian Circles, Dödsrit, but also older stuff like Pink Floyd and Nick Cave, just to name a few of all these great bands and artists around the globe.
A16:Ghosts generate torment. Did any of your torments generate music?
A Ghost In Rags:We must consider ourselves very lucky to live in a part of the world where we do not have to fight for our daily existence, or where we are restricted in our freedom and basic rights due to political repression. In fact, our music originates from positive energy. When we have written a really fat riff and we play it in the rehearsal room it makes us happy. We have this grin on our faces that says: Hey, this is really cool, massive shit...
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