New Series Interviews - Part I
Felipe Boreli Filho: Hi there Anton! It´s a pleasure to talk with you.
Anton Brejestovski: And you, Felipe.
Felipe: So, how do you see CAPRICE in the beginning and after the success of Tales Of The Uninvited and Kywitt! Kywitt!? And how were the fans reactions?
Anton: We feel we’re moving on. We’re making progress, but we’re still in the middle of the road and we hope our best album is yet to come.
It’s quite peculiar that Kywitt! Kywitt! was received better than Tales by the fan community, while Tales got better reviews from journalists. Apparently, Kywitt is more straightforward – so it’s easier to understand, and that’s what attracts the fans. On the other hand, Tales are more sophisticated, and it can require "deeper" listening (which is not quite what every fan looks forward to), but this is exactly what attracts music journalists.
Felipe: I read before, but don´t remember where now, that is quite difficult to gather all CAPRICE members. So, can you tell the experience on Six Secret Words record sessions?
Anton: It was pretty easy for two reasons: Six Secret Words has fewer musicians, and also we made a one-musician-at-a-time recording, so every musician could plan their individual recording schedule.
Felipe: This is very intersting, Anton. And what´s the idea behind it?
Anton: The overall idea is to create a 45-minute relaxation album. This idea came from Frederic Chaplain, the owner of our record label Prikosnovenie. It was quite a challenge for me – Caprice music usually requires intensive listening and is not supposed to be background music.
Fred even offered a plan for the album – that is, what kind of mood should be in every track. I followed the plan, and when the preliminary work was over, I listened to the whole thing. I understood that this album could have a really magic effect if you close your eyes and try to have a "trip" into your inner self. So, we decided to write these "instructions" right on the album cover: Turn off the light... Close your eyes... And listen.
At first – because the music was so different from our other works – I even wanted to release it as "Anton Brejestovski and Fred Chaplain", or under some other name, not Caprice. But as the work progressed, we understood – it is Caprice, it’s just another side of it. Having an album filled with peace and quiet was a nice idea after Kywitt! Kywitt!, which overwhelms the listener with its bursting energy.
Felipe: I had the opportunity to listened to it already and it´s a dreaming album... But what can you say about the next CAPRICE project? Do you have a name for it yet? And what can you tell us about it?
Anton: The next album will probably have the name Masquerade, and it will be again completely different from our previous work. You see, the first three decades of the 20th century are called the Silver Age of Russian poetry. A number of amazing poets lived and worked in that time. I decided to put some of their poetry to music. (Caprice have done it many times before. For example, Songs of Innocence and Experience is based on William Blake’s poetry; the first two parts of Elvenmusic Trilogy is J.R.R. Tolkien’s work; in Sister Simplicity and Kywitt! Kywitt! we use poems by various British poets. It looks like Caprice’s mission is to "transform" the energy of poetry into the energy of music!).
Anyway, the name Masquerade was chosen for the new album partly because in Stalin’s times people could only live and make art hiding under a mask, and partly because Venetian masquerade with its glorious, festive atmosphere was an inspiration for many Russian poets. These two opposing trends – the delight of creation and the fear of being destroyed by the totalitarian machine for non-conformism – are reflected in the future album’s music.
Felipe: Oh... There´s something great coming... Thank you, Anton! And see you soon for our second part interview. |