Mattsson
How did the album (War) come together, what were the inspirations behind it?
The idea to do something like this came when I understood that there would be a war (about a month before the actual attack) in Iraq, but the never ending problems between Israel and Palestine as well as the recent horrors of terrorist attacks in the west are also part of all this. Very complex problems but also very important issues…Once I knew what themes the lyrics would be based upon the music kind of wrote itself… I found myself more inspired that ever so it was really quite easy to compose the music, even though I did change things around quite a lot later…
The album is very complex with many different sounds running though it, how did you manage to create such a wide range within one album and how were you able to pull it together so well?
Thanks! I guess I have a quite good imaginationJ and that we were quite lucky - I had a lot of wild ideas but it took quite a lot of hard work to make them work , we spent a lot of time on the basic backing tracks which feature a lot of difficult passages sometimes in odd meters and often changing around completely. I could almost always hear in my head would it would sound like when it was complete but it’s impossible to explain stuff like that to other people so it’s important that you work with people who understand you and have faith in your wild ideas.
Could you go into the real theme behind this album? What is the overall message it is trying to convey?
I don’t like to preach to other people, I just want people to think for themselves and be critical to the enormous amount of information (propaganda?) that is surrounding us all. Things are not always what they seem to be…. Most of all: money rules the world, everything else is far less important.
How do you believe this latest work shows your progression as artists?
It is my absolute main priority to do what I can to grow as a musician and composer and I thing that every time an album has been finished I have or should have learned something new. I think that War is arranged and recorded better than anything I have done in the past and the performances are also the best this far, the musicians are the best I have ever recorded with. But the music is quite complex and might not be appreciated by everyone, something that I will have to live with.
What did you find the hardest part about creating War?
Probably getting all the difficult backing tracks recorded as good as possible was the most difficult, that really was a lot of hard work, after this everything was pure fun…
Is there any one song on the album that holds a special place in your heart or is the full thing viewed as one entity by the band?
I would say that I think this should be viewed as an entity, personally I like the 2nd [Your Dream] and 4th [Smoke and Mirrors] tracks a lot.
When working on a song what do you find to be the hardest part of the process?
I need to find a good initial idea, once I have founds something good to build upon it usually flows quite well, but sometimes getting that first spark might be quite difficult, also deciding on the ultimate tempo for a song can be difficult, specially if we record something that no one has ever sung before.
In your experience with being a musician has there been anything that has really influenced your music, either another band or just life experience?
In the beginning I was inspired by lots of musicians such as Uli Jon Roth, Steve Vai, Ritchie Blackmore, Jimi Hendrix and so on but I think lately it’s all just a big melting pot of lots of stuff I have listened to during the years. I was also influenced by classical music at some point even though I don’t listen to that kind of music very music these days.
This album features so many talented artists. How were you able to pull them all together to work on this endeavor?
It was a lot easier than I could imagine, I just asked the guys and more or less everyone I asked were willing to participate. I had to replace one singer since I did not want to wait a couple of more months at the point when the whole album was ready. I also chose people who are easy to work with, this is very important to me. I don’t like to work with difficult people no matter how could they might be…
What is your next step after this? Will you be starting work on a new album soon or are you going to let War sink in before you start thinking about starting a new project?
I
plan to release an all instrumental album before starting on a new big
project, but I am definitely into doing something in the style of War
again next… For some reason I feel like I am blessed with a lot of
inspiration at this time in my life so I can’t let it all slide out of
my hands…and most of all I love to work.
To find out more about Mattson and his music you can have a look at his web site at : http://www.larsericmattsson.com/. His latest album "War" is now avalable and more information on picking this great album up can be found on: www.lionmusic.com
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