Chronicles of the Gaze : Guitaro, the interview

010 is a special year indeed. Guitaro is a cult band. They only released one album, Futura Black, in 2002, and went off the grid. Futura Black was a gem of pure space-rock which left a deep imprint in many an ear of noise-lovers with its ethereal melodies and heavy guitars. Eight years later, they’re back with JJ’s Crystal Palace, an album as surprising as their come-back.

JJ’s Crystal Palace, is a strange album. The listener is left in the midst of many influences like Krafwerk, M83, Elliot Smith or Depeche Mode which is surprising considering that Guitaro in its 2002 version sounded more like this. But this mix is effective and catchy, and after being caught off-balance the first time you listen to it, you will find yourself listening to it time after time.

But who could speak of the album better than the people who recorded it? The members of Guitaro, Heather Warkentin, Mark Wiebe and Jeremy Unrau accepted to answer our questions.

http://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=1243999244/size=venti/bgcol=FFFFFF/linkcol=4285BB//

Mark: Maybe the mystery is part of the draw?
Jeremy: I write, play bass, guitars, synths, keys, produce and do the graphics.
Mark: I do the engineering, sequencing, producing, and also writing, vocals, guitar, keyboards
Heather: I was pretty hands off with most of this record, i contributed my vocals during the recording process.
Jeremy: concerning the gap between records, these songs took a long time to form. We’ve been enjoying them for years, on our ipods in various states. Some are 5-7 years old. I hope we’ll still have records in us when we’re 80 or 90 years old!

Jeremy: Yes, that is the spirit of shoegaze I suppose.
Mark: We enjoy the fact that we’re totally self-contained. it’s all DIY and we own everything.

Jeremy: YES, it’s all about influences. Not that we were trying to imitate or emulate influences, but they were in our minds. We wanted to give those feelings back in a way.
Mark: It is quite a departure from the previous album, so hopefully fans of Futura Black can still dig it.

Mark: After 8 years we didn’t know if anyone even remembered us anyway, so it was kinda like starting fresh.
Jeremy: We haven’t got much of a reaction yet. a few people have mentioned non-stop listening, and physical reactions, like chills, which is nice. but we really have nothing to gauge it by yet.

Jeremy: It was more like an accidental channeling. Jean Michel Jarre, Air, ABBA, Jesus & Mary Chain – such a great spirit in this music…

Jeremy: Yes, unlike Futura Black, guitars were not necessarily our starting point for composing anymore.
Mark: Part of it also was that there are no live drums on the album.

Jeremy: We were moving in this direction anyway.

Jeremy: Difficult question. It would be a lot of fun, but no answer yet…
Mark: if someone wants to fund it, we’re in!
Jeremy: I’d love to get back to Europe, I was born in Germany…

Jeremy: YES.
Mark: I think there’s a bit of Kraftwerk coming through in Modulo (ndlr: 9th track of the album)

Mark: That’s a good way of putting it.
Jeremy: I just don’t think we were equipped or had a vision to do that. Time passes, one ages, things mingle and mellow and sometimes the results surprise. But I think JJ’s Crystal Palace is as much of a departure from Futura Black as Futura Black was from earlier songs.
Mark: The result always surprises when making an album. That’s part of the magic of it. It’s always something different than envisioned when starting the project.

Jeremy: You can certainly hear the shoegaze spirit in a lot of different artists.
Mark: I don’t really keep up with the latest stuff. I’m usually a couple years behind discovering new stuff My favourite new shoegaze-ish band has to be A Place to Bury Strangers though.
Jeremy: Are we shoegaze? I’m not the right judge of that. Its just easy to tell that to people when they ask you what you sound like. Most people then ask « what’s shoegaze? ». So, in that sense if shoegaze means not many people know who you are, then I guess we’re shoegaze!
Mark: If this was our first album I don’t know if we’d be classified as shoegaze, it’s more a carryover from Futura Black I think.

Jeremy: I like to think so. I don’t know how to make a direct comparison to anything with JJ’s.
Mark: Yes, the elements are there. I still like my reverb!

Mark: Well, we made the album for ourselves primarily. It’s stuff we want to hear, and we want it to provoke feeling and emotions. We like it and we hope that other people will, too. It’s all about word of mouth with this, so if you like it, tell your friends!
Jeremy: I still cannot describe it well. for the sake of categories we called it shoegaze disco rock. But I think there is a depth of feeling in it that transcends those labels. Some of that feeling does stem from shoegaze sensibilities. I think and hope it has an addictive quality for all the right reasons. We’re very pleased with it.
Heather: I think it’s a collection of songs that evoke something familiar, good, happy, sad, and uplifting for me. I still enjoy listening to it!