Interview
(Progressive Newsletter Nr.38 01/02)
excerpts from an interview with Antoine Fafard (Bass)
I guess I feel that Spaced Out’s music is somewhere between jazz rock & progressive. We are like a progressive band which improvises the solos and who have slightly more freedom in the music than a normal progressive band. I also think that the first album we did was more jazzy than the second.
You write almost all the music of the band and are the mastermind behind the activities of Spaced Out. In which way do the others musicians contribute to the music and the band? Is it more a project or a 'real' band?
I think that Spaced Out is a band. I don’t want to hire musicians to tell them how to play their instrument or how to improvise on my compositions. I guide the players towards the sound that I want, but I like to get a personal input from the other players in the band. On the other hand, it’s true that we only play my compositions and it’s my personal project… I think you realise that Spaced Out is a band when you see us on stage. You realise that every players take their place and give the energy of a real band.
How much room to you leave in your compositions for improvisations and is there a big difference between the studio recordings and live versions?
There’s a lot of improvisation in the Spaced Out’s music. In those solo sections, the improviser is totally free to play it as he feels. The objective is to create team work, so in the end you are not just listening to Spaced Out’s music for the bass player or the guitar player but for the music created by a group of individuals. If you listen Spaced Out live, you realise that the improvisations are real. It’s why we can say that Spaced Out has a jazz sound… the solos are improvised. There will be some live cuts in our next EP that will show the fans some different interpretations of our tunes.
Concerning the pictures in the booklet of your latest CDs and on your website, your live performances seem to be very energetic and you're even putting a humorous aspect in your music. So, what can one expect, when seeing Spaced Out live?
I really think that it’s important for Spaced Out to give a wild and different image and sound to what you usually see and hear in this field of music. I don’t want to give an image of musicians who are taking themselves seriously. I want to give to the listener what I think is a good musical product without being pretentious. On stage, we offer a very entertaining show for anybody who has a weird and absurd sense of humour. I often joke with the crowd and the reaction is funny to watch! People are not expecting us to act like mad men or to joke on stage while we play that kind of music. Actually, I have many ideas for more grandiose shows that one day, if we have a decent budget, I’ll try to develop. I’m talking about video and images projections, choreography, etc.
In which way do the song titles have a connection to the atmosphere, the meaning of the songs or do they have no meaning at all?
Most of the time, I try to define the song atmosphere or to try to indicate the mood of the composition or the musical contents. Basically, we all know that with an instrumental song, you can call it whatever you want! I sometime try to put some humour in it… For example, “For The Trees Too” is rhythmically made of 4 against 3 and 3 against 2. I just took those numbers and made a strange title with them…
The artwork of the covers of your CDs seem to me a little bit strange, having no obvious connection to the band or the album name. Does the eagle on both covers have a deeper meaning?
The come back of an eagle on the cover of the second album is a pure coincidence. On the first album, I asked the artist who painted it to put one; but on the second, I asked an other artist, who didn’t even see the first one, to paint a dragon. When I saw the final result, I saw that he added two eagle heads at the end of the dragon wings… I thought it was interesting! But the eagle doesn’t have a real importance.
Can you tell a little bit more about the idea behind the Spaced Out Orchestra?
That is something I’ll definitely do one day! The idea is to rearrange for a big ensemble some of my best compositions. I’d like to make a fusion of elements of the classical orchestra with the jazz big band. I like the colors of those two distinct orchestras. And I think that my music would benefit a lot from this wall of sound and textures. So, the Spaced Out band would be there… with some more power behind it! Before even thinking about making this project possible live, I rather start thinking about the studio recording of it. Which I think will be done in the first place. So when will it be? Probably somewhere in this life time!
Kristian Selm © Progressive Newsletter 2002