In only two short years, the seven members of indie band Kan
Wakan have made a very big impact on the music scene and have been deemed
“modern pop’s most beguiling and inventive new artists”. Their sound is a captivating mélange of
ambient jazz, cinematic psychedelia, noir-infused Americana, alternative rock,
and orchestral elements, and it seems that their rapid success is just a taste
of the things to come. In fact, their
recently released Forever Found is
just that, a sampling of tracks from their full-length album, Moving On, which is set for release in
early 2014. Based on the praise-filled responses
to the four-track EP, Kan Wakan is about have a very exciting year! On Tuesday, October 29th, 2013,
composer, producer, multi-instrumentalist, and founder of Kan Wakan, Gueorgui
Linev, was kind enough to chat with me about what the members of Kan Wakan have
been up to lately, what the band’s fans can look forward to in coming months,
and why seven people on a stage just isn’t enough.
Hi Gueorgui! How are you?
Hi there, I’m good.
How are you?
I’m good! Where are you calling in from?
I’m in Los Angeles.
Oh, well then,
welcome home!
Thanks, yeah, we were out for a few weeks. We went to CMJ
[Music Marathon] in New York, played a few shows there, and kind of hung
out. Then, we drove back through the Mid-West
and played a show there at a country club for our drummer’s parents, which was
kind of fun.
How cool!
Now we’re back here and I’m actually making some soup right
now so forgive me if there’s any weird noise in the background.
No worries…tell me
about your experience at CMJ. What was
that like?
Well, it was totally a brand new experience for the band
because we had never really done anything like that before. So it was super exciting, very fast-paced,
and also a quite terrifying experience. We
were playing two shows a day, in and out really quickly, with almost no set up
time. It was a lot of fun because we all
love New York and we really like the vibe there. The whole experience was super positive for
us. It was awesome to see a lot of new
bands and I think it got us ready for what SXSW
will be like.
Of the sets that you
played at CMJ, does any one stand out as particularly special?
I don’t know. They
were all so different. Our first show
was at The Ace Hotel at 11AM, and walking into that, well, we just didn’t know
what to expect. We didn’t have a very
positive feeling about it, but it actually ended up being, I think, the most
special because it was the weirdest experience that ended up turning out really
well.
What has it been like
for you to transition from your earlier work in music composition for TV and
film to your new life as a member of a touring band?
Well, one of the reasons why I wanted to start a band and
tour was because composing for film and TV is a lot of sitting at home,
spending hours in front of a computer, and, I think, for anyone’s sanity it’s
good to have a little bit of balance and get out of your cave for a little while. Also, getting the music out in front of a
live audience and seeing that response is something you don’t get when you are
composing for film and TV.
What motivates you
when you are composing?
Well, to be honest with you, there really isn’t any
pre-conceived motivation. I’ll just hear
something and I’ll work off of it and I don’t really think about what other
people or even what I will feel about it.
To me, it’s all about the emotional integrity of it and just building on
that is what I’m most interested in.
What has it been like
for you to have this shift where you are now able to see people react to your
music in an immediate way?
I didn’t know they were reacting! (laughs) No, I mean, obviously, it’s extremely amazing
to see that anybody shows up and listens and cares about the music that you’re
creating, you know? That’s the best
feeling, you know, and that’s why we’re doing it.
I wasn’t able to be
at the Chinatown Moon Festival in September, but my friends who were there said
that your performance of “Midnight Moon” at midnight was absolutely spellbinding!
Well, actually, performing “Midnight Moon” at midnight was
really a coincidence. We had no idea
that it was going to line up that way. It
was kind of cool that it worked out like that and kind of eerie being that it
was a moon festival. All of that seems
like it was put together on purpose but it wasn’t. That was our first festival experience and we
were headlining so it was kind of nerve-wracking, but it was really amazing
playing there in the middle of Chinatown in the plaza with all of these other
really talented local artists. There’s
something just really special about playing outside at night that we had never
experienced before. There’s this
openness to it that really suits that song in particular.
Oh definitely! Despite performing together as a band for a
relatively short amount of time, some fairly respected people in the music
industry have taken notice of Kan Wakan’s particularly unique sound. Has the success of your music felt sudden to
you?
Well, most of the people in the band have never really been
in a band before. For us, there’s
nothing really to compare this experience to, but, for me personally, yeah it
definitely felt like everything happened sort of quickly as soon as we got a
little bit of music out there. But then
again, I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing, yet. I guess we’ll find out. (laughs)
Well, I wanted to ask
you about your recently released EP, Forever Found, and the impending full-length album.
Can you tell me a little about the recording process for these albums?
Well, the EP is an album sampler, so the songs that are on
the EP are going to be on the album, and the album is already finished,
recorded, mixed, and mastered, and it’s awaiting its release in early
2014. The process of recording the album
started last year in December. We got
into the studio with engineer, Darrel Thorp, who has worked on a lot of records
that we’re huge fans of. We started
there and then we worked on the strings for the record with my uncle, who flew in
from New York—his name is Stefan—and he conducted a full strings session in a
studio downtown, called The Fortress. From
there, we spent some time doing overdubs until we felt like we had everything
we wanted on the record, and then we sent it off to New York to Tom Elmhirst, who
mixed the record in New York. We flew
out there and met him and he was the nicest guy. We were kind of nervous meeting him because
he’s worked with some pretty timeless artists.
He just mixed the new Arcade Fire record, I think.
No pressure, right?
(laughs)
Yeah. (laughter) The fact that he was even considering
[mixing our record] was mind-blowing to us.
We are very thankful that people like that would give [us] a chance.
Will there be any
songs on Moving On that have never been debuted before?
Yes. There will be a
few tracks that we have never played live, and there’s going to be a total of
11 tracks on the album. You’ll find out
what they are soon.
I’m looking forward
to that! Will there be any visual art
accompanying the album?
Yeah! On our way back
from the East Coast we drove to upstate New York to shoot a music video [for "Forever Found"] with a
director named Noel Paul. Right now, he’s
very tirelessly putting in a bunch of hours editing every single detail, being
the perfectionist that he is. So, we’re
just waiting for that to come back. We worked
with Storm Studios on the album art for the full-length album. They did all of the Pink Floyd album art and
they did our album cover.
Oh wow! Did they also do the album art for the Forever Found EP?
No, that was done by a friend of mine in Germany, Andre
Kostin. We also did some live
performance videos that hopefully people will be able to see soon. Yeah,
there’s a bunch of stuff in the works and already done that’s just sort of
waiting to get out there for people to see.
Well, I know we have
to wrap up soon, but I wanted to ask you one more question. On a more personal note, I was wondering what
you would say collaborating with your band mates has brought out in you as a
musician.
Well, on the record, the collaboration is mainly between me
and Kristianne [Bautista], our singer, and Peter [Potyondy]. The ideas, when they roll out, are something
that I kind of do on my own until I get to a place where I can’t do anything
more with them. The beauty of working
with [Kristianne] is having her emotional, brooding vocal on top of [the music] and that
really fills in the gaps and expands on what it is even further. Peter’s creative ideas and guitar [work]
really help us shape and mold what it is, which is something that we really
can’t define anyway. We also have some
really talented players in the band. Our
drummer Keith Krey is really influenced by Jazz music. He loves drummers like Chris Dave and our
violinist, Dannon [Rampton], had a huge hand in helping with the string
sessions and arrangements. Jesse [Aumiller]
plays keys and sax, and he’s extremely talented with technology; he’s sort of
like our designated nerd, and he’s proud of that term. Ian [Anderson] is our bass player and he’s
also an artist so he does a lot of our art for our posters and stuff like
that. Did I miss anyone? Was that seven people?
Yeah. It’s hard to keep track of all of you!
Yeah, but that’s what makes the band what it is live. All of us have worked really hard, because,
on the record, there’s literally hundreds of tracks; it’s very textured and
layered. So being able to strip it down
to only a few people was very difficult.
I think we’re very proud of being able to do [our] parts live and being
able to perform music that, on the record, was performed by about 60
people. A lot of people think that seven
people is a lot of people on a stage, but to us, it’s not enough.
Well, I know we are
at the end of our time but I really want to thank you for taking the time out
to talk with me and share your thoughts.
Yeah, thank you, and hopefully we’ll see you at the show this Monday at The Troubadour.
Oh, I will definitely
be there! Enjoy your time at home and
see you Monday!
Enjoy your day! See
you then!
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