Tatsu Posted February 1, 2007 Share Posted February 1, 2007 Q/First of all, can you introduce yourself in a few words, give us some personal indications about you, for the people who don't know you? ((Name, age, nationality, studies or profession, particular interests, …) A/My name is Jim Granlund, I’m 30 years old and live in a town called Gävle some 20 kilometres north of Stockholm in Sweden. I have a background in the computer business but since 2004 I’m trying to educate myself in other areas. Currently I take classes in history and archaeology at the university. My interests cover a lot of things but I enjoy technology to some extent, science, current events, politics, history, archaeology, music, movies, books and more. Anything that can stimulate the intellect is welcome ! Q/Let's start to talk about your musical career and, more precisely, about your first steps on the trance scene. Your first track was released on Lyrical Robot Records , back in 1997. When did you start exactly hearing about the goa music, and then producing this kind of sound? Which were the motivations that pushed you, at that time, to choose goa trance instead of another genre? A/Well, this is a rather long story that needs some background information but I’ll try to cut it a bit shorter. I came into contact with electronic music at the age 10 when I got Depeche Mode and Nitzer Ebb on cassettes for my birthday and instantly got hooked on electronic music. Around 1988 house- and acid music started flowing into the stores, and me and my friends started buying vinyl records and sat at home thinking this was great stuff. Later on German techno etc also came in my path. In the beginning of the 1990’s I discovered bands like Front 242, Skinny Puppy, Front Line Assembly, Die Krupps and other industrial bands and got really really into that for several years. This is when I started thinking about making music of my own and I also came into contact with Noise Tracker on the Commodore Amiga. From there I went to real synthesizers and started building my studio. I discovered trance music in 1993-94 through compilations and I liked the sound and kept listening to that besides industrial/EBM. In late 1995 I was listening to a Swedish radio show called P3 Dans and they played Starship 101 with Etnica and it totally blew my mind. It was like being electrified with sound. I immediately started collecting Goa records and took my first step trying to produce similar music in my own studio. It wasn’t only the music that appealed to me but the whole deal with the hindu imagery, mysticism and spirituality. It took a while to get the sound like I wanted it but in February 1997 I had three tracks ready to go and a good friend of mine had some label connections which resulted in the release on Lyrical Robot Records. The other two tracks that were completed at the same time ended up on Lord of Illusions later on. Q/You released, by the past, two brilliant and very original albums, "Lord of Illusions", & "Spiritual Heritage, respectively in 1998 & 2000, and also a few compilation tracks, on Tsunami Productions. How did happen the contact with this label? A/This also came into being through the same guy who got me the deal with LRR. He knew a DJ who had connections at Tsunami and he thought I should send them a demo. Said and done, I sent them the tracks for Lord of Illusions and they wanted to sign me. Q/It seems that your two albums can be distinguished by their own touch, since their general atmosphere and personal universe sound different for each of them. How do you describe personally your style for each of them? How much time did you spend to produce both ? A/I think the records pretty much reflect how I was feeling as a person during the time I produced them. LoI is more upbeat, energetic and positive. This was my first steps in the Goa scene and I was really passionate about everything and it was all new and exciting. It also had a huge influence from the artists I used to listen to early on as Astral Projection, Etnica, MWNN, Transwave etc. When Spiritual Heritage was in the making I had started to listen to a lot of industrial music again and that music tends to be a bit dark. I also experienced some personal losses and my life was in a big change and I think that’s why it got a heavier and more condensed sound altogether. I still think the production qualities of Spiritual are better than LoI even if the songwriting maybe isn’t. My production technique used to work the way that I did hundreds of sketches and then suddenly something just clicked and became a complete track. All my tracks on the records are made like this, and most of them took around 10-20 hours each. But since there was long time between these moments of creative explosions each record took me about a year in total. But they were recorded almost a year before release, both of them. I actually transferred all my original DAT-recordings to my computer a few months back and discovered that the originals are much better sounding than the CD’s. I’m afraid Tsunami did a half-ass job mastering them. Maybe they will become available online in some form in the future. Q/In the meantime, I'm curious to ask you where do you capture your very special inspiration? A/The main inspiration when I started out making my own music was music by others but everything I’ve collected in my head through the years has served me well as inspiration. It ranges from books to movies to personal experiences. Also all the partying and dancing, going to concerts, festivals and our own little basement parties we used to have in the mid 90’s. Q/Is there any particular meaning behind your first project's name, "Dreamweaver"? A/At the time I was starting out with the Goa stuff I was a true seeker. A soul searcher interested in new age, magic, spiritual things of all kinds. I guess that’s also one of the things that attracted me to the scene in general. I think I actually got the name from some new age magazine. I also thought it described my music pretty well - I was “weaving” dreams with sound. As I said, I was into heavy soul searching, ha ha. Q/Are you still in contact with former artists of tsunami ( Masada , Xervana or Tripticon for example)? Can you give us some fresh news about what they are doing now? A/Not really, and I never was in any real extensive contact with these guys either. I know that Masada produces some progressive music these days and I think he’s doing rather well. I have no idea what Xervana does but Tripticon is Ticon these days, big name in the progressive scene. Q/We will return now in the present. You have a track called "Penta", planned for the long-awaited "Fluorotronik" compilation, which is expected to be released soon on Tranceform records. Could give us some indications about the style of this track? A/Penta is actually my first and only real venture into the full-on sound. No worries, there are still Dreamweaver traces to be found in there. I’m quite happy with this track and think the production values are rather good. And the mastering from Tim Schuldt sure didn’t hurt either. Q/Ethereal members, Fredrik & Carl, already told us some words about the distribution issues that, it seems, is the main reason of the "Fluorotronik" release date's delay. But can you bring us, by chance, more light about what is happening now exactly with this VA/? Any chance to see it released for 2007? A/Well, there’s really only one person in the world who has the actual information about this and that’s Kalle. So you’d better ask him really since he’s the captain of that project. But I wouldn’t hold my breath for any 2007 release…. If you get any clarification let me know too. Q/What's your current situation as artist and also with Tranceform? Do you have future projects or tracks in the pipeline? Can your fans keep the hope of a possible comeback from your part on the trance scene? A/My relations with Tranceform these days only extend to Fluorotronik. No future projects have been discussed or asked for. I think Kalle is somewhat busy these days with his EBM/cybergoth club in Helsinki. Regarding future music from me there’s really no way of telling just now. I’ve been disconnected a lot from musicmaking the last 3-4 years but I’m actually starting to feel some urge again to make some tracks. I’ve always regretted I didn’t explore the Aquasphere-sound more for instance. There have also been some discussions regarding me participating on the new Ethereal record. The last couple of years I’ve got requests from different people about doing gigs and I receive mails from time to time from curious people and that’s given me some new lust for music so let’s see what the future has to bring. Q/What kind of equipment do you use for your productions? A/It’s varied through the years. I’ve owned loads of equipment in various forms and shapes. When I recorded LoI I had a Roland JV1080 with Vintage & Dance-expansions, Novation Drumstation, Control Synthesis Deep Bass Nine, Kurzweil K2000, some effect boxes, a small Soundcraft mixer, DAT-recorder and an Amiga 4000 running Music-X. Spiritual was done with JV1080, Yamaha AN1x, Emu ESI4000, Drumstation, effects, a large Spirit desk and the same DAT and computer. The remix I did for Ethereal and Penta was done in Logic Audio with it’s internal synthesizers, effects and a handful of other plugins, Aquasphere was done 100% in Reason. In the future I would like to use both hardware and software, as I think both have their strengths and weaknesses. Q/Have you any favourite psychedelic trance groups or tracks that you appreciate a lot or are fan of? Which artists or projects do you dream to collaborate with? A/Oh, there’s lot of good groups and producers. I like Astral Projection, Etnica, Koxbox, Transwave, MWNN, X-Dream, Juno Reactor, Wizzy Noise, Orion and many more. I also enjoy a lot of progressive stuff from bands like Ticon, Vibrasphere, Son Kite, Thomas Penton, RPO etc. I haven’t really had any aspirations to work with other artists. It’s such a “hit&miss” thing and could just be terrible in the end. Q/Excepted goa trance, what are the other kind of electronic /non-electronic music that you use to listen to? Any particular artist or musical genre? A/When it comes to electronic music I listen to industrial (FLA is the household name for sure), EBM, progressive trance and house, ambient and other kinds of dance music like Underworld, Leftfield, Lucky People Center, Fluke etc. I also enjoy metal music like Testament, Paradise Lost, Fear Factory and goth rock like Fields of the Nephilim and Sisters of Mercy. There’s so much good music to listen to. Q/Which were the best & worse parties you ever played? A/I haven’t played too many parties but one of the worst was at a local party here in 1999 when everyone but me was totally wasted on drugs. I got stranded in the bush for 24 hours with a bunch of wackos. Another time the same year when some crazy person decided to fall down on all of my equipment was failure too. But there have been some good parties, in some small places indoors and the gig I did for Tranceform in the woods in Finland 2003 was kind of nice too. Q/A classical question now: we are in 2007, ten years have passed since your first ages in the goa trance music; what's your opinion today about the actual trance scene? How do you characterize its evolution? Do you think that goa music is really dying or is only asleep? A/Firstly, I think that all music genres have to go through evolution or else they dry up. Some stages of the evolution in the trance scene have been good and some haven’t. At the moment, even if there are always exceptions, I think they release way too much music that’s really below the level of quality that should be present these days. And too many producers use the exact same equipment and same plugins so sometimes it can be very hard to actually hear if the same guys did 20 records or not. But I’m not willing to put down full-on totally since I think there are gems to be found there too. And sometimes a very special album comes around, like last years OOOD – that was really good stuff. Especially the track with OTT, he should really do a full length album in that and Hikikomori style. That would simply rock. Well, I don’t think Goa is dying, it’s still here isn’t it ? It’s just not the main focus in trance anymore, it used to be THE scene and now it’s more of a subscene. I don’t expect it to explode and become the great movement it once was, I think the interest in that is just too low. But I have respect for people who try to keep the vibe alive and keep on doing Goa-themed parties and releasing records. Q/ And the final question: for all the fans who are still hoping for better goa days, which message would you like to deliver to? A/Keep at it and stay positive ! The world today is in real need of positive vibes so just keep on rocking. Thanks a lot for all the explanations and interesting answers you bring to us in this interview. We wish you all the best for your future projects! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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