Marble Frame

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Music
Interview : Kenneth from Marble Frame

When and how was your band created?
Well the band was more or less created in 2001 - early 2002. But before that miraculous time our vocalist/guitarist Niklas and our drummer Marc started out (sometime in the 90's) by playing brilliant covers of bands like Greenday and the finnish punkband "cheeseheads"(free translation). Later a bassplayer not worth mentioning joined and then I joined sometime round 2001-2002. The bassplayer was kicked and sometime in 2003 (i think...don't count on the dates) current bassplayer Petteri joined. After that it's been smooth sailin'.

Where is the name of the band coming from?
Well basically it's two words from the english language surgically placed one after the other. What it means is beyond me, but I bet it rocks! Marbre Cadre in french maybe?

What musicians or artists did have a major influence in your life / work?
I have been hugely influenced by bands like Mr. Bungle, The Cooper Temple Clause, King Crimson etc... well it's a pretty darn long list. Within the band we do mutually listen to the same bands like f.i Radiohead, Sigur RÃ³s, The Mars Volta and so on. But each of us has his (or her, not sure if they botched Petteris sex change) own personal taste in music. I wouldn't want to admit what artists have directly influenced our music because I don't know who we sound like. I'll let people complain later.

What are the positive and negative aspects of being a musician in Finland?
What's positive? Well, first of all the underground music community produces far better music than that what gets shipped outside our borders. Which is great because we have very talented musicians here and fantastic bands. Sadly the finnish music industry doesn't give a shit. So the dreams of becoming something in Finland are pretty limited.

How could you define your style of music?
I once defined it like this. I think it still holds today :)"everythings fine with the band who doesn't like to categorize their music but still feels that it mostly resembles progressive, melodic rock with an edge but still keeping calmness a factor, quirky, easylistening but hard to fully comprehend, massive, angstfilled, genuine, feeling-based, rythmic and difficultly sculpted, sometimes bordering outside classic musical elements, fulfiilling and warming but judgemental, lightly anarchistic and slightly activistic, but keeping the messages crypted and giving the listeners a chance to on their own understand this self sufficiency and the band's earthing and comforting sound.

During the years how has your musical style changed?
I wouldn't say that the style has changed. It' just that we used to suck. Now we don't suck as much.

How do explain these changes?
Well we just evolved from being the bubblegum you scrape off the bottom of your shoe to the gum you stick in girls hair during art class. (That meant nothing). I don't know, I guess we just got more comfortable with our instruments. The songwriting also is more polished than before.

What are topics you treat in your songs?
For starters we have pedophilia, torture, concentration camps, ethics, history, litterature, advertisement and so on. (I must stress that we do not support all of those topics). We also try to treat every single emotion revolving around that magic word love.

What is your favorite song in your repertoire and why?
For the time being it's a new untitled song but we'll call it "peaceful mind" at the moment. To me it's simply the most beautiful song we've produced so far.

Do you actually prefer performing your music live or in a studio?
They are two very different things. I absolutely love being in the studio, but at the same time I love performing live. I guess I don't have a preference.

During the process of making a song, what is the moment that you prefer?
The moment when it's still unfinished but you suddenly hear it for the first time and it just kicks your ass and throws you down the stairs.

A stupid question but... what is among all the songs you've been listeningin your life the BEST song?
Damn thats hard! I'll just say "carry stress in the jaw" by Mr. Bungle. It's nice.

What is your opinion, as a musician, regarding internet?
Love it. I sometimes trip on the download button and get nice music. No it's more complicated than that. Lets just say that I support music spreading on the internet. To me it's just the evolved version of "hey, lend me that Village People cassette" But yes there are some downsides, but I mainly support it.

What are your projects?
Writing new music so that we can record our next EP. Also playing as much shows as we can. Oh yeah, I'm editing our first music video. It should be ready soon. I have also been looking for my favourite Garfield socks.

What "image" do you have of French music?
Old men on the street playing the accordian with baguettes up their bums?. No, i'm sorry. I really don't have an image. The only French music I've listened to is AIR and Edith Piaf.

Is there one French song that you prefer? If so, what song is it?
I'd have to say "La vie en rose" by Edith Piaf. It's really nice.

http://www.marbleframe.com

Interview by Vincent Lefrançois - 2006