INTERVIEW : SEEED

Interview by : Sébastien Jobart Pictures by : Karl Joseph on Thursday, March 02nd 2006 - 10 789 views  Print        Reactions  (0)    Since our last meeting at the Marley Heritage Festival in 2004, Germany's Seeed have come a long way and, crowned with the success of the Doctor's Darling Riddim series, return with a new album in the starting blocks. "Next", powerful and carefully crafted dancehall, is their third album in Germany but the first only to get a French release. Their tour in April to promote it was a chance to get better acquainted with Pierre (vocals) and Jérôme (trombone). Reggaefrance / "Next" is your third album. The last one dates from 2003, so it took a little while to arrive… Seeed / Pierre: It came out in Germany last year. The international version that’s about to be released is a bit of a mix between "Next" and "Music Monks" (their second opus, four tracks of which are on the promo version that reached us: Double Soul, Respectness, Waterpumpee and Music Monks, ed.). There are even three from the first album at the end of "Next", dating from 2000 and 2001. But for France, it corresponds to our first album. We’re not very well known here yet. The idea was to introduce yourselves to the French public, to show what you’ve been doing since 2000? Pierre: Yes, because the new album is very dancehall. The record company in France wanted to put in more roots, because apparently that’s what people like to listen to. We listened to them, because for us France is fairly new. We’re more dancehall. In Germany too, people ask us for more roots, but we prefer dancehall. I find that playing with guitar, drums, organ and so on, in a classic instrumentation, it’s all been said, it’s all been done. Guitar solos, for example: after Jimi Hendrix, what do you want to do? You could play faster, but you wouldn’t be doing anything new. With dancehall, there is more to discover, more space to explore. How long do you spend in post-production? Jérôme: We took a year to make the album. We’re a bit perfectionist; we’re keen on having a sound that’s different from the others. Pierre: It shouldn’t sound Jamaican, nor roots, the way we’ve known it for 20 years. We try to have our own sound. At the beginning, the concept of Seeed was the marching band; are you still in that mindset? Jérôme: Not at all any more. That concept was from almost ten years ago, in 1997 or 1998. Pierre: It was very theoretical, too. Because it was impossible to sustain. Jérôme: I wasn’t even in the band when they came up with that. It was the basic idea in the band’s early days, but we only ever did one concert with that marching band. Pierre: We haven’t worked like that since the first album. It was the starting idea to get going with Seeed. Still, a bit of that concept has remained on stage, with the costumes, the choreography… Pierre: Absolutely, I find that very important. We try to get people dancing. That’s the first aim: to entertain them. Jérôme: We kept the concept by applying it on stage with the horns, the percussion… There are 11 of you; how does the writing of the tracks work? Pierre: On the new album, everyone started making riddims. We work in small groups. And then we try to add horns, to have a different sound. Even on the dancehall beats there are horns, or else several of us sing, so there is still a human dimension to those tracks. You are also producers with Germaican Records; you have the Doctor's Darling to your name. Pierre: The Doctor's Darling is the first non-Jamaican production to be released on the VP Records label. Did that success surprise you? Pierre: We weren’t thinking about that when we made it. We had this song with Anthony B’s chorus, the Waan Back, and I had some good ideas for German verses. In the end, we went for it, telling ourselves we were going to do something a bit new. We added the horns and did a new mix. I think it’s thanks to Tanya Stephens’ tune, It’s A Pity, that the series was a success. That riddim, we were already playing it live, and when we decided to record it, everybody wanted to sing on it. We must have about twenty tracks. Half of the tracks sung by Jamaicans were done in Stuttgart; the rest was when Franck from Germaican went to Jamaica. Jérôme: We make a selection of riddims that we give to Franck, and he tries to get vocals. More recently there was the Rodeo Riddim, which has two parts, one Jamaican and the other European… Pierre: That was Lamy’s doing. I didn’t even know he had that idea. I have to say I don’t like everything on it. But I’m glad he recorded Daddy Mory on it, for example. We met him at the Marley Heritage Festival and swapped mobile numbers. We wanted to do something together on "Next", but he had changed his number so it didn’t happen. He’s going to do some things on Stand up and maybe on Waterpumpee too, with a remix for France. Do you work with other artists from the German scene? Pierre: There aren’t that many German artists we work with. On the album there’s Black Kappa, a Jamaican who lives in Berlin. Maria de Gwada is from Guadeloupe, and used to be a dancer with us. There’s a live DVD that’s eagerly awaited. Jérôme: It will come out between now and the end of the year, or the beginning of next year. It’s true that many of the people who come to the concerts want to see a DVD, but we don’t want to rush it. It’s a bit of a fashion at the moment: you release an album and six months later you release a DVD. As long as we don’t feel ready to release the DVD, we’ll take our time. It has to be good quality. Is that what you’re working on at the moment? Jérôme: We did a month-long tour of Germany. We recorded a few concerts for the DVD, and we’re going to record others. But there will also be interviews and old footage, which will show the history of the band. More recently there was the Rodeo Riddim, which has two parts, one Jamaican and the other European… Pierre: That was Lamy’s doing. I didn’t even know he had that idea. I have to say I don’t like everything on it. But I’m glad he recorded Daddy Mory on it, for example. We met him at the Marley Heritage Festival and swapped mobile numbers. We wanted to do something together on "Next", but he had changed his number so it didn’t happen. He’s going to do some things on Stand up and maybe on Waterpumpee too, with a remix for France. Do you work with other artists from the German scene? Pierre: There aren’t that many German artists we work with. On the album there’s Black Kappa, a Jamaican who lives in Berlin. Maria de Gwada is from Guadeloupe, and used to be a dancer with us. There’s a live DVD that’s eagerly awaited. Jérôme: It will come out between now and the end of the year, or the beginning of next year. It’s true that many of the people who come to the concerts want to see a DVD, but we don’t want to rush it. It’s a bit of a fashion at the moment: you release an album and six months later you release a DVD. As long as we don’t feel ready to release the DVD, we’ll take our time. It has to be good quality. Is that what you’re working on at the moment? Jérôme: We did a month-long tour of Germany. We recorded a few concerts for the DVD, and we’re going to record others. But there will also be interviews and old footage, which will show the history of the band.  Print       Reactions (0)

REACTIONS

No comment