Artyfiction

Artyfiction – Interview

Interview with Pete Devine of Pete’s Rock News and Views (http://petesrocknewsandviews.com)

PD: What type of artist are you?

A: We are mixing the styles, finding inspirations in metal, post, art, progressive and (neo) classical rock as well as jazz and classical music. Overally, we kinda evolved from progressive art rock vibes you can feel listening to “Preliminaries” – our first LP, and took more progressive metal route on the ”Firing Line” – the second one. We do not want to cut the roots though, or limit ourselves to more heavier stuff from now, rather than that, we are constantly searching for what allows us to express ourselves. Every member has his fair share in compositions and this way we think our music achieved some diversity. To make things simpler, you can identify us as a progressive rock/metal band.

PD: Tell us the brief history of yourself.

A: The story is quite typical – few friends met and decided that they want to play uncommon music. The roots of Artyfiction dates back to 2014, when Darek (keyboardist) joined them and put his pieces on the table. The band started to rehearse seriously and later, Mirek (bassist) jumped in. A couple of concerts and Paweł (former drummer) joined. Later on, the band decided to record the debut LP. Jacek (former vocalist) joined and, later, Wojtek (guitarist) completed the line-up for “Preliminaries” (2018). Soon after recording it, Jacek left and we were audiencing vocals, even briefly playing with one. After some time though, we took the instrumental route and started working on “Firing Line”, indeed. After composing and recording the whole album, Paweł left and Kuba (drummer) jumped into his boots. As You can see, there were a lot of turbulences and replacing people on the way, but now we are finally united, strong and ready to publish and promote “Firing Line” in autumn this year.

PD: Who are your musical and non-musical influences?

A: There’s a lot of them and every band member has his own influences and inspirations. Wojtek for instance values various music, from Bach, Vivaldi or Paganini, through Deep Purple up to Symphony X, The Aristocrats, not to mention Snarky Puppy, Opeth and the list goes on. As for non musical

inspirations, he reads fantasy and novels, he is also inspired by some universe mysteries as well as our nature – the brain, the concept of human soul. Mirek is inspired by some extraordinary people such as Quincy Jones or Dr Dre, reads novels too, listens to Tool or Leprous. Darek values american grunge bands such as Nirvana or Alice in Chains, reads fantasy and crime fiction. Kuba is into Pink Floyd, Rush, Yes, Metallica, Dave Weckl, Porcupine Tree, and reads a lot of fantasy such as Witcher, Lord of the Rings, Stephen King. We do observe and look around carefully, spotting things that might not be seen at the first glance, that’s how we get influenced.

PD: What are your dreams and goals?

A: We want to reach as many people as possible with our music. Progressive thing is not light and either You love it or hate it, that’s how it goes. We want to tour in Europe, USA, all over the world really and spread the energy and create big Artyfiction family. That’s for a dream. Down to earth, we have the album to release and promote as well as we want to record another ones. We are aware that it’s really easier with vocalist, so we look for the right candidate. The goal is to play in cities, where we haven’t played already and meet new people. We also aim to participate in some prog or rock festivals and participate at least in one festival abroad, to start with.

PD: Who writes your songs, what are they about?

A: We all write songs 🙂 Currently, there’s no single person responsible of writing, every band member is involved, we even have guest appearances in one of songs on “Firing Line”. Back in times of “Preliminaries”, Darek was the main composer, then Wojtek joined the band, and started the constant stream of riffs, solos, song ideas and so on, but they weren’t ready at all, not until all of the band took those seeds and compose pieces together out of these stubs. Mirek and Kuba are both full of ideas too and we usually have a lot of ideas from different point of view. We, as opposed to the other rock bands, do not write songs about girls or love, rather we observe some behaviour or situations and write about it. Say, there’s a lot of temptations but someone needs to follow his path, no matter what he/she encounters, to achieve the goal. We often use metaphor and draw these pictures while playing the songs.

PD: How do you promote your band and shows?

A: We use Social Media as best as we can, posting about events and shows. We also do interviews, our music is available online to listen. We try to record the shows and put it online, so the people can reach us. Obviously, when playing live, we do our best – for the people that take their time and go see us in the first place, but also for ourselves. We are really into it when playing, moving around, headbanging and grinning while playing usually as it’s our last show ever 🙂 We plan to do some podcasts and be more and more interactive and available, but first things first.

PD: What do you think about downloading music online?

A: As 75% of the band is working in IT, we are aware of the chances and risks of putting the music online and make it open for people. Our first album is free to listen, but You can also support us by buying it digitally on Bandcamp, that’s up to You. By sharing our music on YouTube, we want to be discovered by as many people as it’s possible. If someone really want to support us, he/she will do it, no matter if our music is free to listen or not. On the other hand, if someone really want to avoid paying for the music, he/she will find the way to do this either way. Saying this, we’re quite positive

about sharing our music with people. On the other hand, we really also understand the arguments of the opposition. We have no record label, management, whatever. We pay by ourselves for recording, mastering, graphics, promotion and stuff and it’s all not cheap, to put it mildly. We’re grateful for every supporter.

PD: What song do you wish you’d written and why?

A: I think we already written and recorded all songs we wished for now. There are couple of more under development, but we’re satisfied of what we have done recently. But, to be really honest with You, we miss really great vocal song, take Opeth’s “Burden” as a reference. The song is fantastic, the solos are very suggestive and great, but it’s Mikael’s voice that nails it all, so many emotions it’s perfect. That’s really our dream to find out such a vocalist that would complement our music well and we could expose the vocals without being afraid of nothing.

PD: What are some of your pet peeves?

A: I think we have allergy on wasted time and potential. Both things are precious and finite, even if You’re a genius, it eventually ends somewhere. The trick is to unleash Your potential and make use of Your time. We are workaholics, moving from our jobs to the music. One is for living, the other one for loving. We also don’t like arrogant or egoistic people who will not enrich You at all, no matter what You do. Other than that, we’re kinda cheerful bunch 😀

PD: What is your proudest moment in music?

A: Pretty much every show we participate. No matter if You play for ten or hundreds of people, it’s always fun and gratitude, that we can be there playing and people are enjoying it. Seeing them dancing and cheering to your ⅞ or whatever odd meter instead of standing with notebooks and counting your mistakes 😉 That’s when we’re proudest, You make it.

PD: So what are you working on at the moment?

A: We are preparing graphical stuff for “Firing Line”, rehearsing the material with Kuba, as he joined recently, but he doesn’t stop to amaze us with the learning tempo, and these are hard things to play and booking shows for autumn and 2020. We also prepare the scenario for our incoming music video and doing some other organizational things. In the free time, we are doing attempts to compose new stuff, we love new things and even though we didn’t even publish the new LP yet, we already want to do more 🙂 The main focus is to promote the “Firing Line” as much as we can.

PD: Tell us about your next shows and why we should be there.

A: We have some shows scheduled for this autumn, the next one is happening in Wrocław, at 8th of September. We will present our new album there to the audience and as always, will do our best and give You all as much positive energy, as we can. We invite anyone to come and see us live, chat and get familiar. For now, we have booked shows only in Poland, but in the future, who knows?