Interviews
Pain of Salvation
Interview with: Daniel Gildenlow of Pain of Salvation.
2005-01-10
In this midday I had the luck to talk with one the most creative and interesting minds of our days, Pain of Salvation Mastermind Daniel Gildenlow.
R: Hi Daniel, how are you?
D: I’m fine
R: have you been busy lately?
D: yeah, we’re working on the DVD right now, but the last two days I’ve been doing a lot of interviews., so my throat hearts a bit.
R: getting tired from all this interviews?
D: not the interviews in themselves but it is tiring for the voice, it’s more damaging then singing it appears.
(both laugh)
R: for the people in Israel who aren’t familiar that much with you, and your music, cant you tell us a few words about yourself?
D: I formed a band called reality when I was eleven, from that time pain of salvation has been born over the time, we’ve changed music styles, but somewhere around 1991, i would say , pain of salvation as we know it today was very much born, but it wasn’t complete until I think 1996 when Fredrik joined the band on keyboards, that was the first time we felt ready for the world.
R: The question is, was the world ready for you guys you know (both laugh), what have you been doing lately expect for your latest release BE and touring with the flower kings?
D: yeah, BE is such a weird thing , because I started to write down the outlines of the concept two years ago, and I was heavily involved in BE ever since, so even though, in the audience, public point of view we’ve been kind of away in the last two years, in fact this last two years were more busy then ever to pain of salvation, because we have the whole writing process and the rehearsal process of BE, and then the whole stage production which was kind of in a large scale and after that we started to record the studio version, the album, doing that there has been a lot of work on the concept all the time and a lot of source literature and a lot of research thing going on, that is from my point of view, and during this process I’ve been building my studio at home, you know, to be able to record everything in my own home in the future, and of course you have a lot of technical problems doing that because you have to buy a lot of new stuff and it all has to fit together and sometime you have computers breaking down and stuff like that, and also we did 12:5 in the middle of all this.
R: yeah, it was a great album, it’s really unique.
D: oh, thank you, I’m really satisfied, I thought if we’ll do an unplugged album, it’s got to be different, it’s got to have a value of its own, and I think we achieved that so I’m really satisfied with it, but then after that we finished the studio recording and the mixing and the mastering of that, and after that we started working on the live recording, and the DVD, so now we’ve finished the live mixing and mastering of the live track and the surround mix and now we’re working on the extra material stuff like that for the DVD, and we’ve working a lot on the coming of the DVD and now it’s gonna be occurred for the 12:5 album and the BE album of course and we’re trying to get the whole thing up and running again, because we had very little time to spend on those things, we have priorities, we had to have priorities to make this thing work and it’s been a very difficult choice we had to make, and we’re trying to get everything up track again, and right now, the album has been already released, and I did a lot of interviews about the album, for two years I’ve been heavily committed to this whole concept ,it’s definitely weird because now the album is released and the world is paying attention to this, and for me the whole concept is two years old, and I’m getting dizzy from working on it. (both laugh)
R: Are you exited about every ones reaction to it?
D: I’m really happily surprised, I was actually expecting everyone to hate this album initially, I was sure people will hate it and then after one year of listening to it, they will love it, but we will have to take a lot of heat when we’ll release this album, people will not be able to grasp it, both conceptually but especially musically, It takes so much more time then the other albums I think, especially if you are a standard die hard prog. metal head.
R: I personally think this album is much more progrock then progmetal, in my opinion progressive isn’t just about different time signatures and key signatures.
D: yeah, that’s the funny thing, a lot of prog. metal fans will define prog. metal as intelligent and having odd time signatures and scale full playing. The thing is, that this album has it to a larger entrance then in the previous albums, so how the really define prog-metal is that it’s suppose to be a lot of electric guitars, with distortion and because that basically is the only thing we left out of this album, and we didn’t leave that out, because you have “Nihil Morari”, which is one of the more trickiest songs, that we’ve ever made, and then we have “Diffidentia” that is one of the more heavier songs we ever did, so we still have those elements, it’s just that this album is so much more than that, and from that perspective it’s kind of fun to do that, it’s actually true that Progressive metal in many senses has become a recipe music style, with a standard that should be followed and for me that is never what pain of salvation was about, pain of salvation was never about repeating something somebody else did or something that we, ourselves, did, it’s always about finding new ways, not about making your favorite album over and over again, so from that perspective I can honestly say , doubt you’ll ever hear two pain of salvation sounding the same, but on the other hand they will always have the pain of salvation emotional and musical trademark and it will be in a very high quality.
R: right, as I understood, you have two versions of BE, the original live one, and the album version.
D: yeah, well, it was very similar , the whole album was actually done the only difference is a few of the lyrical passages which I’ve changed, from the time we did the live performance until we did the studio recording, but since everything has been happening more or less simultaneously all the versions are very similar, so the only difference in the DVD is that you can actually see what happens on stage, it was a very different production stagewise, because we’ve build the whole stage from scratch really.
R: Did you have the orchestra with you during those shows?
D: yeah, we did have an orchestra and we had all the percussions on stage and Fredrick is only playing grand piano and a harpsichord, and those are the real thing, no keyboards, and we also had a four by four meter pool in the middle of the stage.
R: it does sound like something you have to see.
D: yeah, it was a really unique experience, we’ve been discussing this that probably we will go on tour in march or April, over Europe, first of all it’s the first tour we do now, because we never really made a headline tour really in Europe, so I think we pretty much decided on going on a mix materiel tour, like playing songs from all the albums and then maybe in the beginning of 2006 maybe a shorter but still large scale BE tour, with an orchestra doing 5,7,9 gig something like that, but even so it will not be the same thing as the original stage production since we were able to build our own stage and have water on stage and stuff like that, which are not so common to be found in a venue.
R: yeah, it’s not the most common stage you can find out there.
D: I can see it, in different venues they’ll ask us what we want to have, “yeah, we want to have a piece of chocolate behind the stage, and ten gallons of orange juice and a four by four meter pool” (laughs).
I can just imagine them saying, “yeah the pool is ok, but the orange juice, humm it’s kinda of tricky”
“we have a pool full of orange juice is that ok?” (both laugh), I think from that perspective I think the DVD that will be coming out In the beginning of next year will be a good thing because it gives people the opportunity to take part in, I mean it’s a whole different thing from seeing it on the TV screen then when you’re there in the flesh, but still get a little idea of how the actual original stage production of BE was actually like.
R: yeah, it’s better to do it once the way you really wanted it then never to do it at all. What made you name all the tracks in Latin?
D: well to explain that I’ll have to get into the conceptual idea, which might be a little confusing and I will be talking a lot, are you prepared for that? (laughs)
R: sure, we’ll give it a try (both laugh).
D: the thing is, I think I will start with the fractals, which is an idea that I have, everything is build out of fractals , from the beginning, a fractal is a mathematical is a term for patterns repeating themselves in different scales and size, I happen to firm believe that everything we know, and everything we do not know is build on a large system of fractals, a pattern repeating itself on different scales, there is probably an endless chain of fractals, this could be seen in social movements, in scientific scales, in time, and how time is proceed, in everything. Everything is promitted by this different patterns, and much like if you’ll take this chessboard, where you have a pattern of squares, that every square will be divided to smaller squares and those squares will be divided to squares and so on, the little difference that every time the patterns will change just a little because it’s in a different level, I also have a strong believe that being a part of this fractal system you will only be able to prosieve a certain amount of fractals either direction from where you’re situated , so as for ourselves we are part of a huge large fractals pattern, system and we have like this window, which I call the fractal window which is the possible amount of fractals that we are able to proseive and comprehend and if you are looking at science, you can see that already when we get down to small size of the atom or the atomic fractal, already at that point, even though it’s part of our fractal system that is part of our reality and we are able to see it, and visualize it in a way, but even so, it’s getting very hard for us to explain, we have to make simplified models to a large extend, because it is similar to the world that we know, but it is also different, difficult to comprehend because it’s abstract in many ways and the same goes with the micro cosmos, you know, going on a larger scale, you get to a certain point where it’s getting really difficult to understand, when you’re getting up to dark matter and stuff like that, and like the big band if you’re going in the timescale a bit backwards, the big crush, are also things that we have to work with are more on an abstract level, because it’s getting out of hand, just at the edge of our fractal window, just at the edge of what we’re able to comprehend, and we have to simplify this things, and now, I’m getting to the whole conceptual idea with the universe of BE, back in 1996, I was looking at the different mints of creation and this come from different corners of the world, and are usually very old, kind of inherited by oral traditions for a very long time, and it is very hard to know what they came to be, but they are usually very different, and contain very different characteristics, very different happenings and events, but as soon as you’ll start to look at this and start to take away the human context, when you take away the semantic values and the Grammatik coed and the connotations of the words, then all of a sudden, try to look at the larger fractal, at the fractal beyond human context, beyond the fractal window so to speak of our fractal system, and all of a sudden they start telling the same story, you start seeing pattern repeating themselves, as soon as you’re able to take away the words that they consist of, and only try to see what they cam mean on a larger scale, it’s really hard to do this, it’s like you can only grasp it for a second or two, and then you lose the connection, but the feeling I’ve had looking at this, people or someone seeing for a second a larger fractal, seeing the pattern of creations but impossible to bring it down into this fractal which we call our reality without dressing it in human words, in human context, and doing that we destroy the massage. If you have to individuals living in a two dimensional universe, or a two dimensional fractal or reality, then you show them a three dimensional cylinder, and one of them looking at it from one perspective will call it a round shape, the other guy, standing in another angel of the cylinder will see a rectangle shape, and both of them are right in a way, because in a two dimensional fractal this cylinder from one angel will be a rectangle shape and from the other perspective will be a round shape, and they might even prove that this is scientifically correct, but even so, if they are both right at their own fractal they are both wrong in the fractal of the cylinder, because even though it is very similar to their own world, it’s only shape and form but in three dimension, it’s very , very similar, it’s the same pattern, it’s the same fractal pattern repeating itself, but still forever in comprehendible, for this two dimensional beings, and thing is, if they were allowed for a brief moment to see the cylinder as a three dimensional shape, and they would try to explain this, the significance of what they’ve just seen, this three dimensional world, they will still have to explain it in words that belong to this two dimensional fractal, they will have to say, “it’s like having a circle on one side and a rectangle on the other side, and the people in the two dimensional fractal will never be able to understand this, so this is what I was trying to do after looking at this myths of creation I would try to look at all this different theories, I mean, because every thing being and object of our world has its own story their own stories their own myths, tale of creation, we can look at religion, we already have the myths of creation which is history, we have social politics, we have philosophy , we have science, all of this different territories have their own story, their own view on the fractal that we call reality, what I was trying to do, was, I was trying to find a pattern that will allow all of this different ideas co exist and to be able to do that I had to deprive all of this theories of their semantic values, take away the human context to a large extend as possible, and for a second see a larger pattern a deeper pattern, or a higher fractal, and the frustrating thing after having done that, that in the end creating a concept like this you will have to destroy the message once again , like everybody else did, you will have to put it in words that cannot contain the story, doing that Latin gave more opportunity because first of all it is an older language and it has a wider range of vocabulary, it’s more open, . Because just looking at a word like animae for instance, it can mean soul, it can mean god, it can mean spirit, it can mean wind, it can mean breath, doing that you allow all of this interoperations and if I would use English language I would have to pick one of this words and doing that I will limit down the interoperations right away, I’ve already done that, Animae in itself is also a very narrow down word from the feeling I have looking at the fractal patterns I was talking about but still I have to pick some word and in that sense Animae is closer then any living language because they are more modernize and more detailed, and in a way it’s good, we need details, we need possibilities, but sometimes you lack the overall words, the words that combine, like containers , sometimes you need word containers that are larger then the once that we have, but anyway, that was one of the reasons. another reason of course it that I like the ring of it, I mean’ I’ve started with one of the songs I did this Latin very awkward title with several undertitled, having done that I figured, ok what the hell , I you’re gonna be over pretensions, to large, to Barock, then you might as well do it all the way, do it properly and do it for all the songs, I think if we chose to go that way for this album, because if you’re going to be difficult you might as well use the extra dimension, extra interoperation allowances that difficulty will actually provide, so I used details in a larger expend that I initially intended to so that is another reason to doing it. Another reason is that this language is a dead language, it gave a larger scale of freedom, there are some people speaking this language but still a dead language in a sense that when you grow up and you learn your mother tongue, you will always be closer connected to that language, that is one of the reasons that when you learn another language it’s easier for you to use bad words and to say really nasty things, even if you know what it means you don’t have the same emotional connection to those words, you will not feel them in a way you do when you talk your mother tongue or a language you’ve been talking for a very long time. Even though there’re people knowing that, knowing this languages, a few people will have a full emotional connection to this language, like you do with your mother tongue, and this mean, if you’re making poetic errors’ like if you’re making intentional errors for poetic freedom, it will not be as annoying for people to see this, if it’s in a language that they are not so closely connected to it like English or any other modern languages that people actually have learnt, so instance, you have Nihil Morari, Nihil, which Is a word for nothing or nothingness or something that’s left when you’re deprived of everything, and this is a word by its own ,giving a feeling to the song on its own, and then you have Morari which is the remaining of something, the leftovers, a corpse, what’s left when you’re deprived of something , but not everything , so this is also something that we have come up with, with the name of the song , you have two words and then when you combine them you get word magic, because if you translate that into English you get you will have “nothing remains” but the remains is actually in its way the plural noun of remains, but when you’re reading it out you have hollowness remains, which is the progressive verve so grammatically transferred without thinking about it this whole phrase into the English phrase “nothing remains” which gives us a third and a fourth dimension to the title, and I always loved word games and in that language people will object less then if I used poetic freedom and put linguistic errors in a language like English example.
R: Dealing with the BE album, I must ask you, there is a lot of talking about god in there between the patterns and all of the sort, do you believe in god?
D: I always had a very complicated relationship to the concept of god, because, I mean, god is constantly present in this world weather you believe in him or her or not, you will be aware of the existence and the concept of god in human existence, I’ve never been able to believe in any of the gods as presented in any human religion so far, I’ve always hoped for god, I always wished for god but I never manage to believe and have full faith in the concept of god, especially after working with this concept, I have come and more to the conclusion that the question weather there is a god or not does not apply to our fractal system and is like when this two dimensional guys are looking at the cylinder asking themselves if there’s a round shape or a square shape and there is no answer, because you cannot ask that question, because it’s beyond our fractal.
R: You always have and had unique concepts in your albums, from where do you get the ideas to those concepts?
D: Basically I write about the stuff that interest me, I very rarely seek out a concept, it, initially down upon me or present itself to me overtime like with this concept I looked at the myths of creation and had this kind of feeling of this higher or deeper pattern back in 1996 and I in stored that information away in the back of my head, being interested in that came back over and over again and then overtime that influences how you look upon other things and you will and you will gather more information that you in store in the back of your head and then, and then this thing that you in stored in the back of your head start to communicate, interact, and all of the sudden they start to…, I guess they’re like molecules they just start to building things, and then all of a sudden, “wait a minuet this is very interesting” and then you start to meddle with the creations they are turning to, and you go like “wait a minuet if i put this shape there, and this shape here, that really makes sense” and it’s like a co-operation between independent ideas and larger structures that can actually in store this individual ideas, a larger scale picture or a larger scale pattern.
R: the unplugged album, 12:5, do you think we can see you guys do another unplugged show sometime?
D: we don’t know, we’ll see what happens, I mean, we’ve been talking about going on this European tour in March-April and maybe in that tour we’ll an unplugged section or something like that, I mean, maybe playing parts 12:5 or redirect some other material in the same way we did with 12:5, we’ll just have to see basically what happens. I usually say that we usually surprise ourselves as much as we surprise our fans (laughs) so we’ll just have to see I guess.
R: (laugh) which artist dead or alive, would you most like to do a project with?
D: Dead or alive? It’s very hard… (both laugh), the first that come to mind the beatles, Dal Belo, the thing is, they were good on their own, so maybe it’s better to find someone that I find to be insufficient and to be able to cooperate with that guy just to make it more interesting (laughs) and see what we can do together you know, it’s actually difficult, it really deserves some thinking , I mean, the beatles, and Jeff Buckly and Dal belo are the first one to come to mind I would probably consider Tori Amos as well, yeah, who knows, because sometimes the combination can be very fruitful, I mean, looking at the beatles, the beatles were great and I think that none of them achieved something as great on their own, ant I think it’s the same with the other way around,, there are artists that were really good on their own but combine them with somebody else and it will never work really because they work in a specific kind of way that that thing is not to the meddle with that certain way of working, because if you mess with it you might destroy it.
R: How was working with the flower kings for the first time as an official member?
D: I didn’t feel any different then previously, because that is just a matter of state that I’m an official member, as far as the working method nothing really changed, I enjoy working with the guys because they are really nice guys and musically very good, I know that our record label has been a bit nervous of me going more into progrock ‘cause of that, and I think, this is probably the other way around, if I’ve ever thought of doing a thirty minute song, or a forty minute song then it is in generally not there anymore (laughs) , because I don’t believe that much in thirty minuets songs I think that they are two or three songs in the world ever that has been created that are worth every minute. For me it’s a good outfit for a lot of other musical ideas, it’s getting me more focused on pain of salvation in a way because I could use out the prog rock element of myself in the flower kings, in a sense.
R: if you don’t believe in 30 minuets songs, then I must ask you, how did you deal with touring with Transatlantic?
D: (both laugh) yeah, I find it a bit peculiar, a lot of people asked me if it’s difficult to remember 30 minutes songs, actually it’s easier, I mean, it’s like playing 5, 6 songs in a row , but you just have to learn one song, so from the perspective it’s easier because everything kinda leads into everything, it’s like learning 28 different letters it’s rather difficult but once you’ve learnt the alphabet it’s much easier. I don’t know how many letters every language has, but we have 28 letters in the Sweedish language.
R: what other language do you know? Expect Sweedish?
D: only Sweedish and English but you have small roots of other languages as well, especially the Scandinavian languages are very similar, I can probably understand German if I read it, but I cannot speak German, I know small fractions of other languages because I find them interesting.
R: it is well known that you are a very educated man, and you’ve learn a lot of different subjects. What is your formal education?
D: (laughs) well, usually when people ask me what I’ve studied, I always say I’ve studied basically
Anything that will not lead to a job. It feels like I’ve been studying forever but on the other hand I don’t have any education that could lead directly to a job. I’ve been studying a lot of different things, I’ve been jumping around in a lot of different areas, not until I actually made the concept “One hour by the concrete lake” it finally down upon me “oh so this is what I was studying for” , while I was writing the essay that was the foundation for that album, finally it was like, having studied so many different things, you can see connection between areas that a lot of them, I mean, once writing the concept it gives you a way to look at it from all different perspectives. It’s like I’ve been learning a lot of not use full stuff and all of a sudden I found why it’s useful all of a sudden.
R: before committing to music, what was your daily job?, did you have any daily jobs?
D: I never had a real job, I would define real job as being hired full time, having a salary and knowing where to go every day and getting paid for that. I did teach computers and software and stuff like that for a while, but it was on an hourly bases, we would teach courses, so like five Thursdays in a row you will teach Microsoft and three Tuesdays in a row you would teach word and web design, whatever you know, but you didn’t have a full time job, you are only paid for that specific period of time.
R: what Is you formal musical education?
D: I did go to music college for three years, here you start studying an instrument from the age of nine and then you have a music lesson once a week, and we can also pick a topic of our own, I picked music dramatics , so I’ve been involved with music for a long time but the only formal education after the basics school years is the 3 years music college after that I thought of studying music more but there were no directions that seem interesting for me and also I always hated when you have to make tests, I never had any problems doing tests on paper, but to stand in front of people singing or playing the guitar, I always hated that situation which is funny because I’m doing that for a living but it’s different when you’re on stage and you’re playing your own music in a way, I don’t have the nerves for competitions , because as soon as I get involved in a competition I have to win, I hate that, I really work myself up when It comes to competitions so I hate that, so those two and the fact that I hated standing there doing auditions and whatever you want to call it and also the fact that I couldn’t find a direction that was interesting made me just go study writing, I actually studied writing for a year after music college and then after that I just start to jump around through all this different schools, doing all this different things.
R: it’s important to do thing that interest you, it enriches your soul .
D: exactly, that’s what happened to me during music college, it was good learning how to write music, but it took me for about three days that wasn’t something that took time, and that is what I felt was most giving going to music college, the most rewarding thing was to surround yourself with other people that were interested in music, that gave me much more then the attending the lessons actually, because it is so different from the ordinary school I went to earlier on, where thinking and creativity was found upon to a logic aspect. And then you get into a completely different type of society, I think that was the most giving and rewarding thing, actually you can find that basically anywhere, so I think that to develop yourself as a person, will give you more as a musician then reaching out for skills, or practicing or whatever, maybe it’s easy for me to say because I’ve always found it very easy to learn things, I remember people being annoyed with me, because of we had like homework on the guitar, if there is something I couldn’t played, and we had it as homework for next week , I could just place the guitar under the bed and go on leading my normal life, doing what ever I wish. The next week I would be able to play it without having to touch the guitar so from that perspective it’s almost silly of me to say that practicing is not important but I honestly think that developing your relationship to music and how to receive music and what you want to express and communicate is much more interesting and giving then how fast you can play a C minor scale.
R: you are a very political person, and you always have some address to politics, what do you think of the elections in the US ?
D: hopefully I’m wrong, but I have the feeling that maybe that election was one of the most important and most influencal mistakes done by man kind for a very long time, I mean, it’s only 4 years, but considering Ronald Reagen was only a regular idiot and he manage in those years to pull back environmental development and the whole environmental situation globally, he managed to actually push that back in about twenty years, some scientist claim it to be for least 20 years, and then we have Bush, that is not the regular idiot, he is, I don’t know how to say it, he is a super idiot, he has super powers when it come to idiocy , and I cannot understand, even if you’re manipulated by the media and even if you’re brainwashed or whatever, you just have to look in his eyes and it tells everything, there was a point there when he was 20-25 years old, if you’re looking at the story of his life, and you see pictures of when he was 20-25, he was just an idiot, but now, he is a super idiot, he is a very dangerous man, I cannot say this enough, he is the most dangerous man that I know of today, and it’s not that he know that he is dangerous, he is not aware of the fact, he is certain that he is doing the right thing and that is the most dangerous aspect and in that sense I would prefer Saddam, I would prefer Hitler I would prefer anyone because they are clearer In a way, Bush is dangerous because he is more settled in his insanity and I can only hope this 4 years won’t be too devastating, there are scientist today saying that we are maybe already to late actually, with a lot of other things that should have been taken care of already, I just get worked up when I talk about it, I try not think of it too much because I get really worked up, but politics and politicians are two different things, I heard for about three times this months someone say that politics and music don’t mix well and for me this is one of the most insane things ever, because politics is in everything you do, every action that you take every day, is an act of politics, whether you ignore something or you pay attention to something is a political action, one brand of a specific thing that you buy in the store is a political action, not a big political action but it will influence what type of product we will have in the future for instance, which in a long run can become a very important decision, and in that sense we are ,all of us deciding what kind of future we want to have, and our kids want to have, as long as we can realize this and figure out that every little small bad action is pushing everything a bit forward to a worse scenario, when we’ll realize that I think we can have a possibility of actually starting to become humans.
R: Bands like Green day, and System of a down, are getting very political this days, do you think it’s a promotional trend or an act of interest?
D: I think they have an honest political interest but the spin off might just as well be a commercial dressed as politics, just like I have to say happened with the punk era that the original punk era had an original political mind and after a while it has become a recipe just like prog metal has become a recipe, so after a while it was more of a thing that you were suppose to be anarchistic and rebelic or whatever but it was not at heart, it probably happens in the second generation of something, when people grow up listening to something, thinking that is really cool but never grasping maybe the depth of it, and they imitate the style, they imitate the genre. You have to be emotionally involved really, you can’t just imitate something and get away with it, well the thing is that you can get away with it (laughs) but you’re not suppose to, because in the end I think that what you will have is a drained music scene, where you’ll have images of music styles, you have containers, the core is not there anymore and you only have the decorations on the outside, and that’s what I like with Pain of salvation, my wish with the music of Pain Of salvation is to hide away the complexity of the structures underneath, I rather have a pretty normal looking car with a great engine under the hood then have a great looking car with a plastic thing as an engine. Because that is what I feel a lot of Progmetal band are about this days, trying to seem complicated, even though they’re not, I mean. Most of the Prog metal today is annoyingly simple and I can take that, I think that there is no problem with simplicity, but the problem is when you try to make the simple sound complicated, and the difference between something complicated and simple can be a very fine line, and sometimes you can hear that some parts are ment to sound complicated while the real complicated thing was to make it sound simple, but they don’t have that because they wouldn’t be able to pull it off, I’m more interest in how to complex things only when needed and if that is the case, try to hide I away, and let the musical values be on top, let the music lead the way and if you want to play attention to the details, the fine structures and the complexity, you take the time and find out afterward.
R: How would you describe your childhood?
D: it was very happy, which I think is a problem in a way, because I think if you had a happy childhood you will always be unsatisfied with the rest of your life, I consider a happy childhood as a childhood filled with magic, when proceeding childhood into adulthood you will lose a lot of magic, just like magic, can be more magically, or more fantastic when you don’t know how it works.
R: After hearing the perfect element I wanted to know, what is your perfect element?
D: for me there is no perfect element, the whole thing of the perfect element is the danger of seeking, to become a perfect element, the story is about having a hole in yourself that you are trying to fill in different ways, and this is a way of saying that this person has been given a lot of three of this element and not the last one, which means, in this particular case the missing element is fire, so he sets himself on fire to breathe the perfect element to become this one perfect element, to define balance in a way, if you’re balanced then it’s a good thing, but if you are in concent inbalance and you try to consemate this in your life without have the right tools you can make a lot of damage to yourself and others.
R: Thank you very much for this interview, and thank you for your time.
D: thank you!, it was very nice, I think it’s the longest interview I’ve done for this album (laughs)
R: well thank you, I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did (laugh)
D: sure did.
I would like to Thank Daniel Gildenlow for his kindness and time spent (we were on the phone for about an hour and half or so…) on the phone with me!
And to thank Inside out for allowing this to happened.
Thank you all very much.
Roy Povarchik
