This May sees the first Beyond The Redshift festival across 3 venues in North London. The stellar line up ticks a lot of our boxes here at E&D Towers so we sent our Editor to talk to co-curator Johannes Persson from Cult Of Luna.
(((O))): Hi Johannes, I know you're incredibly busy so thanks for taking the time to speak to us. When Redshift was first announced we were quite surprised as we thought you guys said you were taking a break in back in December and you said that you were putting your feet up for a while. What changed that, was it getting involved in Redshift, or is there other reasons?
Johannes: Nothing has changed. What I said was that after summer, we have nothing planned, and we’re not planning to plan anything. It doesn’t mean we’re quitting - actually it does mean we’re quitting, well some sort of hiatus. But, we are not going to be that active any more in that sense, and we’re never gonna be the band that release an album every eighteen months any more. We’re never gonna be that band again. We might do a couple of shows here or there, but we’re not gonna tour, we’re not gonna do a record. So that’s the whole thing.
(((O))): So Redshift could be quite a rare chance to see you then?
Johannes: I would guess so, in quite a while.
(((O))): So how did you get involved with Redshift?
Johannes: Actually it was our agent, Haydn that came up with the idea, then it kinda grew and grew. When you start talking and brainstorming with any project, things grow out of proportion. I think it came out really well - just a couple of weeks until we are home free, but when it comes to the line up it’s the best line up I’ve seen in quite a while. But I’m sad there were a couple of bands lost along the way.
(((O))): That’s what I was going to ask, was this all your first choices?
Johannes: To be honest a lot of these bands we’ve played with before, and a lot of the bands are on record I love. Some of the bands I’d never heard before, but Haydn is playing me a bunch of bands, saying “listen to this!” which actually made me discover a couple of new bands that I’m very happy are taking the time to do this festival. Every band themselves are worth watching.
(((O))): So why did you choose to do it in London?
Johannes: It was Haydn ’s idea, as it got bigger and bigger we ended up here. I can’t even remember how many times we've played London; ten or twelve times. There are towns or cities when you know ‘this is gonna be good!’: London, Paris, Berlin, Stockholm, Oslo, you know it’s gonna be good every time. So why not make it even better?
(((O))): Did you start off with a concept for it, or did you start off with a list of bands you wanted?
Johannes: I started by asking my friends! This is almost going to be like a class reunion because we’ve been touring Europe since around 2001, and you meet a lot of people along the way. One thing that I think is quite sad is that some of the bands that I wanted to play can’t, but that is why Haydn is better at economics than me, as well as having very good taste. When I want a band from Sweden, that aren’t very well known and don’t sell a lot of tickets but cost a lot of money to fly over, that’s when he says no. The best case scenario would be to have a festival where no one has heard of any of the bands, but then no one would come!
(((O))): Is there a common thread between the bands? Not necessarily musically, but in terms of the mindset?
Johannes: That is hard to define. It’s the same when we write Cult Of Luna songs, they might differ quite a bit but there needs to be something that connects them. I can’t really say exactly what connects all these artists, but they definitely are in the same realm. They might sound different, but they are in the same atmosphere, the same emotional depth. The form they might take might be different, but they definitely originate from the same thing.
(((O))): It definitely hangs together as an entity in terms of the line up. One band that, to us, sticks out slightly is Godseed – more on the black metal side than post rock / metal…….
Johannes: Have you heard their latest album?
(((O))): I haven’t, is it more progressive?
Johannes: I can agree with you out of a musical perpesctive, but I’m holding onto what you said. I don’t think they stand out that much, but musically yes, they are from a different background. I’m a big fan of their ‘I Begin’ album, and that is black metal, but it has progressed without losing it’s edge.
I’ve always liked black metal musically, but not the ideology, especially from the 90’s - but now people have grown up. Black metal has a wide variety, for example Mayhem and Darkthrone, totally different kinds of music.
(((O))): It has a kind of intensity that other genres don’t have. Maybe intensity’s not the right word, but you know what I’m getting at?
Johannes: They’re doing it for real, there’s a hundred percent honesty to it and that’s what resonates with me. I’m not a big fan of technical black aspects of black metal though, when things became symphonic. That’s horrible. Godseed have made progression and pushed black metal to outskirts I haven’t heard before. They’re like us in terms of where we are – not close but the circles are intertwined a bit.
(((O))): Without wanting you to name favourites, are there any bands you’re really pleased to see on the line up?
Johannes: I’m very excited to see Jesu. I don’t think people probably know of The Old Wind, but I want to educate them, as they are one of the best unknown bands out there. I’ve seen Amenra three times now, and normally I get easily bored by bands and leave after the first song but not with them. We’ve toured with Bossk a few times now so I’m looking forward to seeing them again, and I hadn’t heard of Esben And The Witch before, but now I know all of their songs. Abraham deserve so much recognition, they are amazing, lovely Swiss guys.
(((O))): I can tell you’re really excited about the bands that are playing, and that’s fantastic. If you had a blank cheque, is there anybody you would have liked to have been able to get?
Johannes: There are a lot of bands I would have liked to get over to Redshift because of different reasons. What we tried to do though was not have so much of a cockfest, to try and get more female participants. I think it should be 60/40 female/male, but it's more important that the music is great. There are way too few females in heavy music, and in general. I listen to a lot of female artists, and I tried to get some more over but it was definitely down to economics. I could have fifty punk bands at this festival, but that would fail. There are more females at this festival than most.
(((O))): It’s interesting you talk about that as we’re planning a series of articles about women in music. Not to patronize them and say ‘didn’t she do well?’, but to celebrate them.
Johannes: The worst thing that could ever be done is to see them as mascots, as a lever for bands to get themselves arena shows. And I hate them being called ‘girl bands’.
(((O))): Exactly. If we get a press release only references the women in terms of their appearance, we’ll ignore it, and unfortunately a lot of the time that's what 'female fronted' has come to mean. It’s a band and it’s got people in it, it doesn’t matter.
Johannes: “The male fronted band Cult of Luna”. Maybe we will put that in a press release just to see what will happen.
(((O))): If it’s a successful weekend, is it something you’d plan to do again, or have you not thought that far ahead?
Johannes: My hope is that we’re going to do it again. I know that Haydn has put a lot of work into it, and it’s something you have to see if it’s economically viable. If he doesn’t lose any money then yeah – that is my mission but I don’t hold the figures.
(((O))): Would you ever think about taking this to the rest of Europe, or do it somewhere else? Or does that seem too complicated?
Johannes: Maybe I’m getting old, but you know when you see those tours with four or five bands – no way! Two, maybe three bands tops for me, that’s it. How would you even start off something like that? But a man can dream.
(((O))): It seems to us that after ‘Vertikal’ was released, your profile has risen quite substantially. Is that something you’ve seen within the band? I’ve noticed a lot more press for it, especially in the UK – and it also featured on a lot of Album of the Year lists (including ours).
Johannes: We had a couple of years absence before then, and there’s two ways it goes there. Either people forget about you, or don’t like your kind of music, or they stay interested. When we started playing this music there were three bands: Neurosis, Isis, and us. That was basically it. Well, there were probably more, but they were the three bands that got mentioned all the time. But mid 2000s it suddenly went boom, and everybody got a delay pedal, and I think we went past that.
When we decided to come back, it was to do the best album ever and I had a very definite idea with what I wanted to do. I originated the bearing, and the band took over, with a collective idea of what we wanted to do from the beginning. We wanted to be focused and very unorganic, so much so that Erik (Olofsson, guitar) said it was going to sound like a machine, and that we should just play our guitars downstroke to sound more like that.
(((O))): You guys have been together for a very long time, how have you seen the industry change during that?
Johannes: I have been in the industry forever and in the beginning and we didn’t want to be a full time band then, like others do now. We were talking the other day about the ‘360 deals’ (where bands essentially sign over rights for not just their music but income from merch & shows) that young bands are getting, and it totally blows shit. It’s just a reality now, it’s what happens.
You can moralise about it, and I think it’s terrible how art/music is treated like a commodity. It’s horrible how it’s created a situation where bands on tour have to sign away any rights to your only income from the one thing you can’t download, shows. My other band had a manager who was also our record label, so it was really hard because you never knew who you were talking to, and your manager is supposed to stick up for you to a label.
(((O))): What can people expect from the Cult Of Luna set?
Johannes: A lot of mistakes (laughs). There’s going to be at least one song from every album, as Klas (Rydberg, vocals) is gonna be there.
(((O))): Was that a mutual thing to get Klas back? Or is that just for this one off show?
Johannes: Yeah, just a one off, but we are doing a warm up show in Stockholm. It’s going to be great! For Redshift, there is going to be something old, something new, and something inbetween. Some songs will sound exactly like they are but some are quite old so maybe we try something new with them – we’re not apologizing for them, even though I hate it when bands I like do the same thing.
(((O))): It’s definitely trying to find the right balance. Like, when you think about the amount of times Keith Richards has played that riff to ‘Satisfaction’….
Johannes: You either play it or you don’t. We haven’t done that much to them, just a little bit of colour. At the end of the day, if you don’t like our old songs, don’t listen to them.
(((O))): Thank you for your time and we’ll see you next month!
Johannes: Yeah, see you May 10th, thank you!
