Found two more interviews with the a-team today, one is in French and the other in Dutch. They are better-than-average reading material, so here’s a translation of the most interesting passages for you.
First, the one from brusselsnieuws.be about The Dark Age Of Love:
The dark age of love [was] a tribute album to the British duo Coil that you recorded last year. How did that come about?
Han Stubbe: Their front man, John Balance, passed away a few years ago. The boss of the French label Ici d’ailleurs, who has been following us for a while and many years ago also released something by us, is a big fan. He brought together a number of different artists to put together a tribute to Coil and re-interprete Coil songs – or covers to put it bluntly.
Next to us he had brought Yann Tiersen and Bonnie “Prince” Billy. We spent a year sending music back and forth under the name This Immortal Coil. Sadly we did not get the chance to go to the studio with Bonnie “Prince” Billy. But it was tremendous to hear him singing on songs that we had recorded. Coil made really avant-garde, electronic music for its time. But there were two faces to the group. They had a really experimental side but they could also be very melodious. And that’s what we focused on.
About the art concept behind The Shepherd’s Dream:
The artist collective Afreux came up with a contemporary interpretation of the arcadian landscapes, as it would have been naive to just work in such an old style of art. There is too much irony and cynicism in today’s society for that.
Sitting between all chairs is a little like the curse and the blessing of DAAU. The inconvience is, of course, that you cannot be marketed. But the big advantage is that we can go play anywhere. From squat houses to festivals to night clubs and opera houses.
From www.zyvamusic.com, accompanying the Lyon concert:
The new album is called The Shepherd’s Dream. What is the shepherd dreaming of?
Simon Lenski: (….) It’s very quiet music compared to other things we’ve done. Because we have abandoned the idea of using electronics, we try to recreate fairy tales with acoustic instruments so that it sounds more … rural (laughs) … the idea is to return to nature. When you play acoustic instruments, the musicians’ reactions to each other are more fluent and communication is much more efficient. When you work with electronics and sounds have to be programmed, it becomes more conventional. The shepherd’s dream is an idyll which has been lost, but which you keep a memory of.
Han Stubbe: We don’t have anything against electronics! I wouldn’t say that we won’t do electronic projects again in the future, by the way.
Name a song which could represent you and your music?
Sonic Youth – Diamond Sea. Because they are one of the groups that inspire us the most. What they do with their guitars, we try to do with our instruments.