CONSTANCIA
Questions asked by Jon Wilde, added to Rock Realms 9th July 2009.
Constancia is a new project featuring a number of top European musicians. Their music is heavy yet melodic and their new album Lost And Gone is, well, rather good :)
Guitarist, Janne Stark, answers questions on behalf of the band.
Hi Janne, thanks for taking a moment to answer these questions. Could you give us a brief rundown of how the band got together?
Janne: Mikael Rosengren (Token/Scudiero), whom I’ve known for some years, contacted me two years ago asking if I would lay down some guitars on some tracks he had written. I really liked the songs and got more and more involved with the arrangements, especially guitar wise, and a bit lyrically. It then started growing more and more. We started looking for a full line-up. I had previously worked with drummer TrumPeter Svensson in Overheat, Locomotive Breath and Mountain of Power, while Mikael knew Michael Mueller from when they were on the same label with Token and Jaded Heart. Finally I had worked with David Fremberg in Mountain Of Power and knew he would deliver, which he surely did. Then it all started growing together and what started as a project has become a band. Mikael came up with the name Constancia, which comes from the word “constant”, everlasting, which we of course hope we will be.
How would you describe the sound of Constancia to someone who hasn’t heard you before? I believe you once described it as 'melogressive metal'...
Janne: When I heard the songs Mikael had written I came to think of the old pomp bands like Styx, City Boy, Trillion, but then we wanted a heavier edge to it, and I'm a big fan of the heavier stuff as well, so we figured marrying the two sides would be a good thing, melodic and aggressive, thus "melogressive" :-). It's funny because I've seen many different descriptions and comparisons in the reviews from Giuffria and Journey to Pretty Maids and Whitesnake. It's great to hear we don't sound like one particular band, and I don't mind the comparisons at all, as they are all great bands.
Parts of the album really are very heavy; especially Michael Mueller’s throbbing bass. Was it tempting to make the record a full-on heavy metal album or did you always want that melodic edge?
Janne: We actually had five other people do test mixes, Beau Hill (Winger, Ratt, Europe), Pontus Norgren (Great King Rat, The Poodles), Johan Blomström (Blinded Colony, Overdrive), Pelle Saether (Locomotive Breath, Steel Attack) and Pontus Lindmark (Cloudscape, Planet Alliance), and they were all really good, but it didn't fully click until we decided to also try Fredrik Folkare, who used to play guitar in Mikael's band Scudioero. He's also produced both melodic stuff like Eclipse and death metal like Unleashed. He did a test mix on one track and we instantly felt he was our man! It was the way he managed to blend the really heavy bass and guitars with the keyboards and melodic vocals and get some great dynamics in there, that caught us. We started with the melodic edge, so I guess it was more of getting it as heavy as possible without losing the melodic side, instead of vice versa.
Are there any particular bands that influenced you or the sound of this album?
Janne: For me I was listening to both the more melodic stuff like Trillion, City Boy etc and the heavier stuff by Children of Bodom, Sevendust and Black Label Society, so I guess I just picked some of the goodies from each camp when arranging the guitars. As for the overall mix we had no albums or anything that we used for reference, not even like "we want this and that drum sound, guitar sound". It was all a blank page when Fredrik started mixing. We weren't even there when he mixed it, which is very unusual for me. I'm ALWAYS in the room when one of my albums is being mixed. It was tough, but I did work great! I totally fell in love with the sound when he sent the first test mix and there was very little we wanted to change.
Was the album recorded under the watchful eye of the record company, or did you get the record finished before you looked for a deal?
Janne: The only thing Frontiers did as far as guidance, was help us compose a track list and select which song to start off the CD with. They have been great in that sense. No pointers at all!
How did you get involved with Frontiers Records? Did they come to you or did you approach them?
Janne: We started out by demoing five tracks that we let the aforementioned guys mix. We put these tracks up on our MySpace and let people vote for which sound they liked the most. Unfortunately they voted for the songs instead :-). Michael Mueller was already signed to Frontiers with Jaded Heart so he tipped them off about us and they actually signed us on the five demos from the MySpace page!
What’s your favourite moment on the record? We REALLY love 'Life Is A Mystery'...
Janne: It kinda changes from week to week. Right now I think it's "www.lostandgone.com" for me. I do really I've "Life Is A Mystery" myself, too! I'm quite happy with the guitar solo in that one. It's actually a one take more or less improvised solo.
Where did the concept for giving a song a web address for a title come from - blatant marketing or simply trying something different?
Janne: That was an idea I got after we had decided to name the album "Lost And Gone" and the whole concept of the world map versus the internet, navigation etc. came up. It's about getting lost on the web, so I figured if we name the track www.lostandgone.com it will always create a link in e-mails and on web pages. The web address was available and people often can't resist clicking the links, so we bought the domain. I guess it was actually both, blatant marketing, but trying to do it in a "smart" and different way, like when Stan Bush put a phone number as an album title and had an answering machine playing samples off the album - http://www.lostandgone.com/.
David Fremberg has an incredible voice. Does he sound that good in real life or is it all clever electronic trickery? ;)
Janne: Oh, man, he's the real deal I assure you! It's funny because when I talked to Fredrik Folkare he said. "David is an incredible singer. I ALWAYS have to use AutoTune to at least fix little things here and there, but I didn't have to use it... not even once!". He's so incredibly versatile as well. He's recorded a heavy blues rock album with Sven Cirnski (Bad Habit) under the moniker Truth, melodic poprock with Bloom, prog metal with Andromeda and even sang musicals.
Do you know where the concept for the cover artwork came from? We like it.
Janne: The artwork was actually my baby, so thank you! I had a few different ideas, but the title track is about getting lost on the internet, and I found it quite appealing drawing the parallels of being lost in the world and lost on the Internet. You have to learn how to navigate both of them to find your destination without getting lost, and today we are kind of lost, both on the Internet and in the world. Also the world map (with Scandinavia and Germany, which we are from, in the view) refers to the whole world now being at an easy grasp with the Internet, but you still need some type of compass to find your way. David then made the logo with the compass in it.
Sell us the album in ten words or less...
Janne: If you like melodic heaviness, go to http://www.myspace.com/constanciamusic and listen...
Are you planning any touring or smaller gigs on the back of this release?
Janne: We sure would like to! Now that the album is out and we have something to show for, we hope we will get a good booking agent interested so we can actually get out there.
What’s the best band you’ve ever seen play live?
Janne: That's a tough one... It may be a tie between Pride & Glory and King's X.
Is there anyone else in the music industry you’d really love to work with, both in the studio or on the stage?
Janne: Wow, there are quite a few. I've had the great pleasure of playing on stage with people like Uli Jon Roth, Udo Dirkschneider and Ken Hensley, which was awesome. If I could put together my dream band it would be Paul Shortino on vocals, Brian Tichy on drums, Bob Daisley on bass (whom I've played with on the Planet Alliance album) and Ty Tabor as my guitar colleague. That would rock :-)
Any members of the band working on other projects at the moment you’d like to mention?
Janne: Actually ALL members are working on different projects. Michael has just laid down some bass on the new Paul Shortino (lucky bugger) and a new Jaded Heart is on the way. Peter recently recorded a new album with his doom-folk band Faith, Mikael has just recorded an album with Eric Hawk Haukson and Fredrik Folkare and David recently released a new album with Andromeda. For myself I have a million things going on. I'm currently recording the forthcoming, second, Mountain Of Power CD (where Peter plays some of the drums) (http://www.mountainofpower.com/).
We are writing material for the forthcoming Overdrive album (http://www.overdrive.se/), I'm writing songs together with Mikael Nord Andersson for his solo album, plus I'm working on two new books. One is the third encyclopedia of Swedish hard rock, due out early next year, and the second is a history of Swedish hard rock, due out later next year. Besides this Mikael and I are working on songs for the next Constancia album.
If you were trapped on a desert island with a solar powered CD player, what five albums would you want there with you?
Janne: Hmm... I guess it would be:
"King's X" by King's X
"Stigma" by Jack In The Box
"Left Overture" by Kansas
"Seasons" by Sevendust
"Double Eclipse" by Hardline
If you could have one other person there, who would he or she be?
Janne: My fiancée, who is currently on vacation on her own. I'll meet her up tomorrow, though :-)
Do you have any hobbies which might surprise the Rock Realms readers?
Janne: It's not really surprising that I'm an avid record and tape collector, or that I write encyclopedias I guess, so that would probably be that I'm quite a lot into fishing (whenever there's time).
What does the future hold, both for you and for the band?
Janne: A lot, I hope :-). The first step would be to get together and rehearse as a band, get a show together and go out and play! Besides that we want to do as much promotion as possible. The album will be released in the US on August 11, and I'll be in New York doing promotion end of August.
Is Constancia a one-off project or are we going to see more material?
Janne: There will definitely be more material! We have already started writing, and this time it won't take two years ;-)
What are you up to once you’ve finished answering these questions?
Janne: I'll start preparing for going to Gotland (a nice Swedish island) to meet up with my girlfriend tomorrow morning for a couple days of nice vacation (if the weather Gods are with us).
Anything else you would like to mention in the footnote?
Janne: Well, of course we hope that people actually buy the album instead of downloading it, that they like it and that we will see you out there!
Thanks for your time :)
Janne: Thank YOU for your interest in the band!!
The new Constancia album is out now. Check out the review on Rock Realms here for further details...
http://www.myspace.com/constanciamusic
