Q & A with Roman(us)

“What inspired you and Felix to work together on this new album? 
 J.ROMAN: we always wanted to do something together. We spend years talking about it, how to do it, how it would sound like. I think the fact that technology has advance so much in terms of music software, and the advancements of the internet, that all those things pull together to make this time , the time to do it. And of course there was the RPM challenge. If that event wouldn't have happened, I guess we will still talking about making music.
 
F. ROMAN:The RPM Challenge, was really a great opportunity for this to happen FINALLY!! It has been a long time for us wanting to do something like this musically. Each of our separate experiences as musicians shapped this project of which we are proudly satified!
 
Describe the process of working together to create this album.  What were some of the processes you and Felix went through in creating a song…the evolution of a track…   What worked really well?
 
JR:I would…either start with a drum beat, or a synth drone of sort, I play around the keyboard looking for chords that I think will sound good against what I am playing on the software application…once I get something with substance, I’d see where else can I take this piece of music, how can it be developed into a different section, once I have something that to my opinion have some logical structure…I would then send it to F….
 he would add some singing to it using his own lyrics, or some poems I would have written, and he would manipulate them In order to fit into the tune…or not.
also there are pieces that are just F ideas, in which I had no involvement, perhaps a suggestion on certain voice over the lyrics or shortening or expanding a section….but some compositions belong entirely to F
 
FR: my process could start by listening to a sound, maybe a chord, or a noise. I record it, create a loop out of it, on top of that I start singing the first thing that cross my mind, while at the same time I record myself singing, I'd retouch it a little then send it to J, he would add perhaps, some Rhythms or chords…
 
And, what didn’t work (maybe?)
JR: ….some ideas didn’t work….I have kept I think 3 or 4 pieces that didn’t get used at all and I think they’re great…so now I have to figure out what to do with them.. Maybe keep them to develop them and use them later
 
FR:…If something doesn’t work at the moment, we store it, we might use it in the future
 
 What surprised you along the way? 
 
JR: it surprised me how a piece that I would built with an specific structure in mind, such as, Secret Lives of Trees, here are the verses, then the chorus, the we have a space for the solos, …I’d do this with the supposedly preconception that F, would understand the piece the same way I do…..to my surprise, in that particular piece, he sang in places I wasn’t expecting to be any voice at all….changing completely what I have originally structured for the song….it work nonetheless….it was a funny process
 
FR: the most entertaining part is to realize how J, can see one particular piece one way, and myself on a different take, the tune changes radically once we each have done what we thought it should be…
 
 
What were some of the challenges with working remotely?
 
JR:Other than the fact that we’re not physically in the same room, is the time changes between Europe and the US…by the time I’m done working for the day, and I could dedicate some time to work on the music, it was already midnight in the EU, so F, would be most likely in bed.  Some weekends we could connect easily, I would get up earlier and then converse over the internet via Skype and played each others ideas we had developed that week.
 
FR: that very same distance, I believe has enriched our work, even thou we both listen almost the same artists and musicians, we have very different and marked influences due to the things each of us has experienced in our lives in this long distance
 
How do you and F compliment each other?
What are your strengths –what are his –both  in the process of working together and musically/skill-wise.
JR:I think F and I complement each other quite well and in a very comical way. We have such different personalities, that sometimes it’s a miracle things work.  I am more on the uptight side of things, I get really serious about stuff, and get stressed a lot about them, F is way more relaxed, not to say he does’t take it seriously, but he has a way of believing everything will be great at the end…weather he’s stressing about and not showing it, I do not know.  ;-)
But musically, I have more experience in working and arranging pieces of music, the knowledge of harmonic and theory concepts in music I handle pretty well, F, is more like if it sounds good who freaking cares????......which I happen to be more oriented to that end of things after working in this project.  F, strength lies in the fact of how creative he can be, and the fact he can pull a melody out of his head and sing over whatever musical idea is playing he’s good at creating melodies and that fact that the bastard is very very in tune all the time!!!
 
FR: since we play as kids, we had a great understanding of each other and now as grown ups, musically that mutual understanding is even more so. In fact I still feel as if we were playing like we did as kids and that makes this process much fun. We have very different personalities, and that helps a lot in the creative process.
 
…is there any favorites tracks? can you tell me what it is that you really like about it? –either the song elements (lyrics, composition, ...),  or the particular process you went through for that track (or both)?
JR: I think one of my favorite track in the album is Secret lives of Trees and Dressing like a God…..
For secret , I was looking for a dark sound, almost gritty and earthy, and I found some sampled loops that I like I started playing around with them, then added layers of souds and played keyboards and drums on top of that. The lyrics, came as something I wrote actually months before, and it was this poem about trees….or an attempt to write a poem..i don’t’ consider myself a poet…I just like to write things down…trees, have always been here, no matter how many changes humanity have gone thru, trees have been there, and hopefully will be here once we leave…..so I imagine that they had a whole life that we are not aware of, because as in “lord of the rings’, the Ents, those trees that walk and talk….they move pretty slow!
;-)
Dressing like a god, is in part due to my feverish listening of some pieces of David Sylvian, I wanted to do some tunes in 3/4 time, since I know F, love that time signature..
 
 I started playing some drums, in 3/4 time, then with that as a base, I started playing chords, to see what I could come up with….I end up playing the whole thing, is one of the few tunes that all instruments are actually played, there are no loops …..so that was an accomplishment.  Thou you can mention here also how Landscapes in A truck, F, wanted to keep it instrumental, and I insisted that a voice singing about longings and landscapes would work great..he refused, I insisted….at the end I was right!
 
F.R: I wouldn’t be able to say which is my favorite, each tunes has a Story and a enriching creative process. But I concur with J, in regards “landscapes in a truck”.. J, insisted and obliged me to create a vocal melody to it, and I have to say, the result was wonderful!!
 
Is there a theme or a thread that runs through the whole project?
J.R:At the core of the work  or what could remain in the center of the pieces or the music we try to make is “emotions”, we experiment in terms of trying to convey emotions thru sounds, and lyrics, no matter what emotions are there, nor if they are related to one another..
We just put them together, the listener would or wouldn’t indentify with them, or all of them, or certain ones or none at all.
I think , because a friend ,who's a poet, have mentioned this to me before, is that the music we do is very “visual”, and awakens some images of sorts…almost soundtrack like, which is accurate, we both love films, and F in fact works in the Film industry as well as Andres, his young brother, Landscapes in a Truck, is a tune that appears in a documentary by the same name by Andres.  
F.R: we attempt that the music has that visual impact, when you hear a chord or lyrics, it strikes something in you and that takes you to wherever your imagination allows you to go.
 

 
 
Can you say a few words about the style or “feel” or mood of this album?   J.R:The songs have serious depth as well.  I think the more prevalent theme is that of Nostalgia, longing. I believe it could be all due to the fact that both F and I are immigrants, we both live far away from our homes, families, …and from each other, far away from places that we both enjoyed as kids, and also that sensation of those childhood days that wont come back….we had a great childhood, we were really creative in making stuff, very fantastic and adventurous highly influenced by our readings,movies, comic books and the music we listened to , so I feel that the music is a maturity of all those feelings together into this new way of expressing ourselves thru this medium.
 
F.R:Nostagia, is the the perfect adjective to describe this album. A famed Colombian writer and poet, Angela Becerra , defined nostalgia as “an inflammation of the past that grows and grows when we feel our present is becoming empty”. Recalling our past is useful to relive things, to stop and float above known waters. It’s great to look back to our lives and remember a great past knowing that all that we have today is the “now”. And that this "now", we don’t’ know where it will take us. This album has been an exercise in remembering our childhood games, adventures and other experiences and make them a reality “now". I always relive them everytime I press “play” on the stereo!
 
 
What do you hope the listeners’ journey/experience to be like?
Do you want them to feel the unveiling of each song individually as you go along?
are there any current inspirations…for this specific duo/album/style of music that you’d like to be mentioned? 
J.R:
it woud be great if a listener forms it's own concept and emotions on a particular feel, I don't want to tell the listener, hey, this is a sad song, someone broke my heart or whatnot, let them create their own stories from a particular song. I think we acomplish this by the beauty of writing in a language that is not our mother tongue. Writing in Enlgish enables me to create emotions that by the mere logical structure of the language wont be normal, but creating disparing images of sort, the end result is more a surreal representation of any given feel or emotion, that each sentence, is in itself a self contained structure when put together with the other sentences of a verse in a song, it creates a total surreal painting of what a song is about.....
I think most musical inspirations for this album I could definitely mention David Sylvian as the biggest one, as well as Nils Petter Molvaer, Perry Blake, perhaps some Dead Can Dance, a little bit of everything, film composers such as Ennio Morricone, for example, but to me some musical ideas come after an emotion arise from watching a scene from a movie or reading a great line from a fabulous book ….
 
But I think all those bands, that we listened as kids have a slight appearance there, Queen, Saga, Simon and Gartfunkel, Camel, Yes, Genesis(with Peter Gabriel)and many more
 

F.R: inspirations??? Phew, too many, I think it’s better if people visit our pages,www.virb.com/romanus &  www.myspace.com/romanusmusic then there they read about our influences, other wise this would a long interview!!