With keyboard player Kayo about to graduate*, Kirsty Evans caught up with the band a few days into the American tour to chat about how things are going and their plans for the future.

(In Japan the term graduate is used to indicate that someone is leaving a band, or that a band are leaving a record label. The implications are positive, not negative. Also, please note that unless otherwise noted, the singer, Hiro, is doing the talking.)

How is the tour going?

All the shows have been great. The new songs from the new album have been very well received and we’re having a lot of fun.

How did Polysics get started? The only two original members are Hiro and Kayo, correct?

Actually I am the only original founding member. I saw the video for “Satisfaction” by Devo when I was in high school and was deeply influenced by it. I went to get my jumpsuit the day after that! I started the band but the various members were just in and out throughout the first couple of years. Kayo and I went to school together so I invited her to join the band and that’s how we ended up with the two steady members.

The boiler suits and shades look obviously was inspired by Devo. When you originally adopted that look did you think you’d still be doing it more than ten years later?

(Laughs) No, we had no idea we’d still be doing this after more than ten years.

You have kind of a unique sound. Other than the Devo influence, where else did you get your inspiration from?

Other than Devo, there were tons of artists that influenced Polysics, like Kraftwerk, a lot of German and British New Wave bands. Electropop is one of our big things but also we have punk and metal influences, progressive – it’s definitely all over the place. I think the one thing you can say about all our influences is that they were all the pioneers of the time – they were all pushing the boundaries back when they were active.

Before Polysics did any of you ever have a regular, boring day job?

(Kayo) I worked at the register in a grocery store!

(Hiro) Actually we were all still in school before Polysics so not too much. I worked at a donut stand.

(Fumi) I played guitar in another band and also worked at Denny’s.

(Masahi ) I had another band too and was also working part-time.

When you guys are onstage you seem like you’re having a really great time, there’s a lot of energy. How long can you see yourselves physically being able to sustain that? Ten or fifteen years from now do you think you’ll still be able to put on that kind of show?

(Laughs) I feel like we could do it. (Laughs) I might not be as reckless as I used to be when we started out, maybe, but that’s the only difference. I think we can still put on a great show ten years down the road.

Your sound has been fairly consistent for a while – obviously the skill level has improved in a technical sense, but the actual sound is the same. Do you have any interest in experimenting with very different styles or do you always want to stay true to that original sound and idea that you started out with?

A drastic change might occur after March, when we’ll go back to Japan and do a big show at Budokan, which is Kayo’s graduation. At this point we plan to carry on as a trio, so there might be a little bit of change there in terms of musical style. We definitely would like to experiment, but we do want to remain true to the spirit of the band.

Live on stage. Photo by Kirsty Evans.

As far as the Budokan show, have you ever played a show that big before that was just Polysics? Is it challenging to adapt your usual stage show to such a huge venue?

Budokan will be by far the biggest venue that Polysics have ever played, so it will be a challenge, but I think we’ll still put on a great show in the same spirit we usually do. The method or approach is the same, we’ll just try to do a bigger, Budokan-sized version of the Polysics show, which I’m sure is going to be great.

How did you end up suddenly playing such a large venue? Has your popularity been increasing lately?

The fanbase has been growing. That’s definitely one of the factors, but Budokan itself is just a very special place for a lot of Japanese musicians, and this is the tenth anniversary of Polysics being on a major label, the tenth album, and Kayo’s graduation, so there are a lot of special things happening around this particular show. That’s why we decided to go with Budokan.

As far as Kayo’s graduation is concerned, how are the rest of the band members feeling about that now?

It was never a surprise. We’ve all been talking about this for a long time. The rest of the band is very positive and happy about her departure and the new life that she’s going to lead after this. It’s a celebration – it’s a very positive occasion.

Have you experimented at all with playing as a trio to see how it goes and how it’s going to work?

We’ve had to play shows as a trio before for various reasons such as illness. That’s always been a temporary thing though, a case of filling in the blank spots of the person who’s not there, whereas this time it’s going to be kind of a new thing. It’s an opportunity to experiment, basically. We’re going to try to come up with a new Polysics sound, which may be totally different. It’s going to be a challenge, but I think it’s a positive thing.

Are you planning to do that thing that a lot of bands do where they have someone stand in the background and fill in during live shows but they’re not really a member of the band?

Basically, there is no replacing Kayo. We could possibly find a great keyboard player but it’s not going to be the same, so whenever we’re going to try and play the old songs we’ll just have to come up with a new way. We haven’t really thought about it yet.

After the Budokan show you’re going to take a little break, right? What are you guys planning to do during your hiatus? It seems like you’ve pretty much been working constantly for years.

It’s not really a break. We don’t actually intend to stop working. Right after the show we’re going to get started on preparations for the new Polysics right away, so it’s not going to be long before people get to see the new Polysics.

One Kayo has graduated, do you think there’s a chance that she might occasionally come back as a guest or call the other members up and go “by the way, I wrote a song”? Do you think there might be some ongoing involvement, not on a regular basis but occasionally?

I think that might be a great idea for our twentieth anniversary, to have Kayo come back and play a song or two. We haven’t really thought about it yet, but it might be kind of a cool thing to do.

More from the Polysics show. Photo by Kirsty Evans.

I guess the question is, if you’ve been writing songs for ten years can you just stop?

(Kayo) It was Hiro who asked me to join the band in the first place, and I never really had much of an aspiration to become a full-time musician. Twelve years has been a fun ride, and I’ve been enjoying it a lot, but I want to see how I feel after I kind of take a break from it for a bit. It might come back and I might get hit by a musical bug and want to start writing again, but at this point I just kind of want to take a break from it, step aside for a little bit and then see how I feel.

That’s actually a question for the other members too. Obviously if you’re in a band it’s not something that you can do forever – is there anything else that any of you have ever thought that you might want to do when you’re older?

We’ve never really had anything in particular that we’ve wanted to do other than music.

You mentioned that the change brought about by Kayo’s graduation might lead to a change in your musical direction. Any thoughts yet about what that might be and what direction you might end up going in?

We’ll just have to wait and see what happens.

Any idea yet of the timeline as far as when fans might be able to expect something new from you?

No idea really at this point, but it’s not going to be long.

To wrap things up, is there anything that you want to say to your fans overseas?

The album Absolute Polysics is definitive I think, and everyone in the band is very satisfied and happy with it, so if you love music go out and get it!

And for anyone who might be planning to check them out this time who’s never been to a Polysics show before, what should they expect?

An out of the ordinary, crazy, happy space.

She took some time to talk to Sarah Jaffe about the progressive media in the age of Obama, media’s role in social justice efforts, and the changes she still hopes to see.

Sarah Jaffe: I guess we can’t start a discussion of the progressive media without talking about the end of Air America this week.

Tracy Van Slyke: Air America was its own unique model in a lot of ways. Investors put a lot of money in a model that takes many many years to work, and they were looking for a very quick return on their investment, which is not the way the media works in general, and especially not for-profit media. Then each time ownership switches hands everybody’s got a brand new idea of what’s going to happen. Starting from the beginning again, there’s no way to create momentum.

It did launch a lot of progressive media darlings, from Laura Flanders to Rachel Maddow to Al Franken becoming a member of the Senate. There’s pros and cons to Air America’s story.

SJ: Doing old-school radio doesn’t really fit into the kind of new media model—they were getting there with the new website, but…

TVS: The traditional way of radio communicating is still vitally important. The right still dominates the media landscape. I don’t think we figured out how to do radio for the left the way they figured out how to do media for the right. Mimicking the Rush Limbaughs of the world and just making a left version of that certainly doesn’t appeal to me. I think that was an issue, although I think they tried to move away from that over time.

Progressives have really demonstrated how to operate online, but incorporating that into a one-way communications model is interesting.

things have changed

SJ: Money and funding are less of the subject of your book, but definitely a huge part of the problem.

TVS: That’s a whole other book, and you’re not going to come up with an answer in a book about business models. It’s really about the experimenting and the learning and the evolution.

A lot of the organizations that we feature do have successful business models, but it isn’t what we write about. We write about their media production in this new networked media environment, why that’s successful and why does that matter?

SJ: There are some innovative ways these companies have figured out how to make money, but in a lot of them it still comes down to advertising and a lot of free labor.

TVS: There’s a mix, some advertising, a lot of free labor, foundations or individual donors with large pocketbooks. We do see some instances, like with TalkingPointsMemo, who did sort of a deliberate callout for fundraising for a specific thing that Josh wanted to do. Which is somewhat different than what other organizations do.

I think that’s something we’re going to be seeing with some different spaces, like Spot.us. Recently Page Williams did this article that no one would pick up, although she was an incredibly well-known reporter, so she self-published it and asked for support afterwards. I think we’re going to see that sort of crowdsourced fundraising being replicated on a more institutional-infrastructure level.

SJ: It seems to work with TPM because crowdsourcing is such a part of their journalism.

TVS: What they’ve done is they’ve built up a community who is very invested not just in accessing the journalism, but being part of the reporting team, and very interested in accessing the opinions of the top dog at TPM, Josh. They’ve created this really great recipe to communicate with their audiences and interact with them, so it’s much more natural to go to that audience and ask for money. Although they only do that on very rare occurrences.

The audience and users see them as people that they can actually interact with, not just people behind a wall. Not every journalism organization is going to do that. You have to ask: what is the best way to interact with your users?

SJ: You say, “Address readers as members of communities.” I know you come from an organizing background as well as media, can you talk about how that drove you to found the Media Consortium?

TVS: I’ve always been fascinated with how journalism and media can impact the world. The organizing, actually providing the tools for people to organize and take action themselves, has been the other side of me. I think a couple of years ago, people would freak out if you put that in the context of journalism, but with the changing landscape and technology and online environment, the two not only naturally fit together, but it’s imperative for media organizations to figure out how to interact, how to embolden their audience in different ways, for a couple of reasons.

Journalism organizations, particularly progressive media organizations, always struggle to define what their impact is. They’re always pushed aside as just preaching to the choir, but the right’s been doing that for 30 years and they’re pretty powerful. Even preaching to the choir, giving them the tools to go out and fight their own fight is incredibly important.

And by the way, there’s a lot of disagreement among the progressive left—they’re not one homogenous group.

When Jessica and I started this work 6 years ago, it was really to understand: how does this system work and how do we understand what impact it has? A lot of funders, investors and even audience members didn’t realize the importance and the impact that it has on our landscape.

Combining those two elements, the need to show impact and to support the organizations that make that happen is like a melding of my two worlds.

And literally, on a future-of-media level, journalism organizations have to figure out how to do this. Amy Gahran says that media has programmed the audience to be passive receivers, which is not their natural element. Journalism and progressive media organizations have to find that combination of being comfortable producing media but also moving their users, engaging their users in ways that can impact the larger political landscape.

Visit beyondtheecho.net for more info

SJ: You mention Indymedia briefly, which came out of very specific organizing, but doesn’t really get acknowledged in the blogosphere. We get this strange self-congratulatory note among the mostly-white middle-class educated male punditocracy there sometimes. You quote Rosen talking about the culture of those who like leading the legacy media, but there’s plenty of that in the blogosphere as well.

TVS: I think the models that many of them have created are fantastic. I think there’s a blindness when you get to a certain point. A lot of people say that the Internet is open so everyone has access, but if you already have power, it’s that much easier for you to decide who else has power, and who doesn’t, and what’s important and what’s not.

In the “Beyond Pale, Male and Stale” chapter, we do talk about the opening up of gender diversity and communities of color, and I think that crosses a lot of different areas of the media system.

In the book, we did focus on specific examples that you could follow over time, of media organizations that had a broad impact on certain political moments. That does not dismiss in any way the importance of the Indymedia movement and the role they have played and the role they still play for many, many people.

While we’re lauding a lot of these organizations we do point out a critique of what we’re still missing. And some people aren’t going to like that. They’re like “I do my thing, you go do your thing.” And it’s harder than it sounds. We’re going to have to figure out how to force those people at the top to either reexamine how they do work or how they broker partnerships, or we’re going to have to really invest in these communities developing enough power so they can rival the others.

SJ: You talk about fighting the right as a strategy, but occasionally it seems like too many media outlets are focused on fighting the right and not on putting forward alternate narratives and ideas.

TVS: It’s one strategy of a multipronged strategy. What we point out about fighting the right is it’s not just about being reactive, it’s about being proactive, putting out strategies. To me that’s one major difference from the sort of reactive fighting-the-right mode we’ve been in for years.

The right still does dominate, we have to recognize that. If we back off, they’re just going to swallow even more. At the same time, that shouldn’t be the role for every progressive organization. Once again, it’s about what is the message of that organization, where do they fit in the overall progressive media landscape, what impact do they want to have?

From GRITtv to Mother Jones to the Nation, everyone’s doing it, but how much do you want to make it of your strategy, how in-your-face and transparent are you going to be about it, and what’s going to happen because of that?

SJ: Cohesiveness was easy when we had Bush to hate. These days we’re fighting each other as often as anything else and it gets very nasty. I rather worry that we’re using the same strategies we honed on the right.

TVS: We’ve gotten too good for our own good. It’s difficult to watch in one sense because over 2004 to 2008, the relationships that were built felt really profound. The actual personal relationships that were built were really fundamental to all this work happening. I’m not in all the conversations and fights and all the different fractiousness, but unfortunately the learning curve when you’re back in sort of “power”–it’s not a fight over one monolithic enemy, it’s a fight over legislation and policy.

I’m hoping that the relationships that were built were cemented enough that the fractiousness and fighting can go back to actually having conversations with each other. And that’s not to say that everyone needs to be on the same message, or they need to do the same thing, but we don’t want the verbal flamethrowing.

SJ: Rick Rowley said on GRITtv that the success of left movements comes from “one no and many yeses” but it seems at times like the many-yeses part gets forgotten.

TVS: We were united a few years ago, and in every one-big-no movement there’s all sorts of little disagreements. I’m sure on the right now there’s all sorts of little disagreements, but we feel like we’re fracturing. It’s really important to think about what do we want as a landscape, as a movement, as media production. How do we get there?

SJ: Before this got to be so messy, health care organizing was led for a while by FDL and HCAN.

TVS: What FDL did was they moved from just preaching to the choir to assembling the choir, where the transparency and relationship they had with their users, the trusted opinion and reporting, really allowed them to take the step of saying, “Let’s take this action collectively.”

And it had profound effects on different elections, on different media moments. How we can start replicating that and going back to that is really important on a larger structural level.

Some things are going to shake out and be OK in six months, and some things are going to fracture. But once again, media organizations individually, collectively need to start thinking about the overall long-term success both of the progressive media and democracy itself.

SJ: Obama’s response to the netroots for a while seemed disdainful, but do you see the return of Plouffe and the quick response to Citizens United as hopeful signs?

TVS: It was interesting, wasn’t it? I think he was probably going to come back for the 2010 election cycle anyway. From the debate over OFA to how the White House has engaged with the netroots, there was sort of a strategic recognition that they’ve lost control of driving the message, not just a moment-to-moment level but for the long term, and they needed that.

SJ: How do you see this model expanding to global media organizing? How can we network not just within the US but around the world?

TVS: In many ways I think the world is doing it better than we are sometimes. In developing countries in Africa, everyday people are using their mobile phones to report on what’s happening and it’s being housed and coming back to them—we’re not doing that here. But that’s also because in many of those places they don’t have an established media system, and as many stones as we can throw at our mainstream media system, it exists.

I think there’s a lot of lessons that we can take from around the world in terms of engaging citizens in the process and what that can do for news production and dissemination of information.

I hope we can learn from humor from other countries as well. Sometimes we seem very serious with our politics. I think we need to not lighten it up, but create media that doesn’t just appeal to our political senses, but to our other senses. That’s how you’re going to start engaging other communities in the information and the news that is really important for their lives.

Kirsty: Recently it seems like you’ve been experimenting with slap bass. What brought on your interest in experimenting with other techniques? Are there any other styles you’d like to try?

Toshiya: Hmm, I’ve always had an interest in slap bass. But I never really planned on doing it. Lately… I felt like it was one way to play and started try to play that way. As for new techniques, right now, I’m not really thinking of any. But I would like to gather new techniques.

Kirsty: It seems that you only wrote maybe one song on the last album. Will you be writing more for the next album?

Toshiya: Though I am thinking of writing a couple songs, we all bring material and all five of us do it– it’s not like only one person contributes; everyone works together. It’s like that.

Kirsty: In the promotional picture that your management sent us, I noticed that you’re wearing a skirt. Why did you start doing that again?

Toshiya: From the last album, UROBOROS, when we released it, I felt like the past and the present connected within me somehow. Because of that, I wanted to look back at the past, review and renew it in my own kind of style in the present.

Kirsty: Are you thinking of not only in terms of visual style but also musical?

Toshiya: Yes, I think that. Next month in Japan we’ll be releasing a new single, and as part of that we’ll be re-releasing remixed versions of our old songs. And in that song from the past, it’s like we’re playing it as the five people we are now.

Kirsty: Are the old songs completely rearranged?

Toshiya: There’s one that’s completely rearranged. One more song–there are three in total; one completely new song and two old songs. Of the two older songs, one of them is completely rearranged yet keeping a shadow of the past. The other is where everyone changed their own part or phrase and made it work in one take.

Kirsty: A while back it seemed like you guys weren’t getting along very well, and you in particular have made allusions to that in interviews. Are you getting along better now?

Toshiya: Well, if you continue a band for a long time, it’s like a married couple…or, well, there are times when we act cold to each other and when we all get along more at times. We’ve cycled around that and right now we are all moving along well, especially as a band, we’re all moving toward the same direction. It’s going really well.

Toshiya. Photo: Kirsty Evans

Kirsty: It’s often a complaint of bass players that no one takes them seriously or that they don’t get to have much say in how their bands evolve over time. Do you feel like you’re able to express yourself within the band and have an influence on its music and image? Does it feel like enough of a creative outlet for you?

Toshiya: I think it’s the same with everything – if you were to do everything by yourself, you’d be able to express yourself 100% to your liking. But since there are five of us we agree that it’s not going to be 100% by one person, and that working to get to 100% with the five of us is the best way of working. This is also related to my parts as bass. It’s not all 100% of the sound I want to input, but as the bassist and one of the five members of a band. I feel strongly that I want to contribute my bass part as some percentage of the 100% that five members produce.

Kirsty: You were in art school for a while, right? Is that something that you’ve maintained an interest in?

Toshiya: I can’t say that it’s not influencing my music. I think that we like the process of creating something by ourselves.

Kirsty: Does it have an influence over the visual imagery the band uses?

Toshiya: For that, all five of us have a discussion and decide together. Whether it be for the music or our looks. For us, Dir en grey, we move as a whole.

Kirsty: What kind of music do you personally listen to? Is that what you’ve always been into or has it evolved over time?

Toshiya: Since Japanese music was always nearby to me, I’d been listening to the Japanese music scene for a long time. As time went on, and I learned that there were other kinds of music from around the world, and then I started to listen to different sorts of music. But lately, there’s nothing in particular category that I listen to. I just leave my iPod on shuffle.

Kirsty: Sometimes when you’re playing in the West fans get a little wild and aggressive, how do you feel about that watching it from the stage?

Toshiya: During the show- if, for example, if there was a mosh pit starting or if everyone started getting hyped up – I’m the type of person who thinks that it’s fine like that. The music we make, we don’t even sing the lyrics in English, and singing them in Japanese, maybe it’s not reaching out to the fans. But on stage we try to use our actions as a way of expressing ourselves. And for the fans, I don’t mind if they express themselves the way they do but I’d just like for them, if possible, to not hurt themselves.

Kirsty: Your band has occasionally encountered some hostility when performing in the West and opening for American or British bands. What’s your approach to those kinds of situations? Do you get angry or frustrated or do you try to win people over?

Toshiya: I do get angry; But instead of trying to take in those hostile fans as new fans (for Dir en grey), I do my best to get our message across.

Kirsty: You yourself seem a bit more upbeat in general than your band’s image would suggest. Is it ever hard for you to behave in a way that’s in keeping with the band’s image?

Toshiya: If I were to say one or the other, I am… really gloomy. (Laughs) And to be seen as cheery would be my own way of battling against it. To have people think that I’m a happy person would be pretty lucky for me.

Dir en grey. Photo: Kirsty Evans

Kirsty: It’s not like you’re forcing yourself to be dark, right? You seem to be laughing in all your photos.

Toshiya: Nope, not at all. But, I feel like smiling is more approachable than having a scary face on.

Kirsty: Since we’re running out of time, final question. If and when the band breaks up, would you want to join another band or do something completely different?

Toshiya: Well… I think humans can do anything if they put their mind to it. Maybe it’s okay even if it’s not music. If I’m still able to express what I want to do, maybe that choice is fine.

Kirsty Evans sat down with frontman Jyrki right before the first show of the tour in San Francisco to talk about cartoony horror bands, old school rock and roll, and what makes Finnish bands unique.

Kirsty: This isn’t your first time in San Francisco, right?

Jyrki: No, this is the 4th. We’ve been here a couple of times headlining ourselves and then we played at The Fillmore with Cradle of Filth, which was brilliant.

That’s a strange combination.

I don’t think so. Cradle of Filth is kind of a cartoonish black metal band and we’re kind of the same, like a cartoon rock band.

That’s interesting, because when bands that audiences here aren’t familiar with open for American bands, the audiences can sometimes be a little hostile.

In our case it was a perfect combination because we were introduced to a new generation of kids. The best feedback is when after the show people come and tell you “I never heard of you before but you guys rocked.” I’m sure that on this tour there will be a lot of kids who saw us back then and realized that hey, there’s this good band that we like.

We’ve been touring for 20 years so why do we still exist? The point of touring and making new albums is that I’m sure there are a lot of people who would love our band but they still haven’t heard us. Even though we’re a household name in the worldwide metal scene, people have seen our pictures and know our name, they know that the drummer has funny hair, but they probably haven’t actually heard our music or seen us live. There are a lot of people who have a place for 69 Eyes in their hearts and that’s why we still make records and tour, because I want to reach these people because I know they exist.

Listening to the new album, you almost seem to be channeling the late 80′s LA metal scene. Was that a deliberate choice?

Well, you know we are an 80′s band since we started in 1989. Our roots are there, more or less. I think it took about 10 years for us to come up with our present day goth and roll 69 eyes sound.

What did you sound like when you started out?

69 Eyes is the prototype of a band where we put all the influences of our own favorite bands in there musically and visually. When we started we loved Danzig and the Sisters of Mercy but at the same time we loved Guns and Roses and the New York Dolls, so the question was how to make all these elements part of our sound.

There’s also a horror movie element to it.

Of course, that’s always been there since the beginning. I was a big Cramps fan so I thought it was more fun to be a horror movie related rock and roll band than sing about my emotions.

There aren’t very many bands left in that horror-influenced space.

Yeah, it’s sad. The Cramps are gone, and since they’re gone I think we need to carry on the torch. Of course we would like to be the next Halloween band; The Cramps were the ultimate Halloween band. All these bands that have never been fashionable or trendy, but they’re eternal.

Cult bands

Exactly. When we were doing the record in LA I had some time so I went to this Fangoria horror magazine 30th anniversary convention at the Staples Center and there were 30,000 people, these horror freaks, and I realized that’s pretty much our audience. Somehow, when we play or whenever there’s a horror convention these people come out from nowhere, they do exist.

They’ll also turn out to see bands like Slipknot.

Sure, it surpasses trends. That’s what we’ve been doing for the past 20 years. Our original influences are still there but we have our own sound and we’re not a retro band, even though the bands that I’m talking about are older. We always want to have a current hard sound while still recycling the old classic values like leather jacket, dark glasses, black hair.

The thing that jumped out at me right away given that you’re from Finland is the Hanoi Rocks influence. I was never sure how popular with the mainstream they were in Finland. Is that something that you guys grew up with?

Oh yeah, they were the biggest, most famous band among teenagers in Finland during their active period in the beginning of the 80′s. Every girl or boy tried to look like Nasty Suicide or Michael Monroe.

At what era was this?

Early 80s, 81 till 85 or something. And then all of a sudden in 85 Hanoi Rocks broke up and then a couple of years later all these same kinds of bands started to come out from LA. Guns and Roses had their record out and all these guys tried to look like Hanoi Rocks, and that was very interesting for me.

Izzy Stradlin kind of looked like Andy Junior.

Yeah, exactly. I was excited, like wow, this is really cool, all these band trying to sound like Helsinki rock bands, because of course when Hanoi Rocks existed in Helsinki there were a bunch of other bands that existed who were influenced by them, and of course, naturally, we are influenced by them.

Is that where you picked up the 50′s rock and roll influences?

No. It’s a crazy thing, in the Finnish music scene, I think, Finland is very isolated, or it was very isolated, and we have our own music scene there, which means…the rock that Finnish people like is metal, ACDC and Metallica. Finland has always been a rock country.

Photo: Kirsty Evans

I can’t think of any pop bands from Finland.

No, and no R and B or anything like that. It’s a rock country and strangely enough I think we have great knowledge of the history of American rock. In the 70′s, the biggest music that was fashionable among teenagers was 50′s rock. I guess it was everywhere because of Grease and Happy Days. I was a kid back then and when I started to listen to music it was Elvis and 50′s rock. I’m still a big fan and it still excites me. I just got this as a present from a fan [pulls out Elvis LP], it’s pretty cool. So that’s where it comes from, but it’s pretty interesting that you’ve noticed that, it’s something that we have in common.

It’s something that you hear on the choruses in your songs, that 50’s sound.

Yeah, yeah. And you know the vocals on this album, I recorded them at Matt Hyde’s house in Van Nuys, which is this low rider, American Graffiti kind of area of Los Angeles. I grew up on 50′s music and I’m not a metal guy. I don’t think the 69 Eyes is a metal band, we’re a rock and roll band, and my roots are in the 50′s.

The metal scene was closer to that in the 80′s but now it’s gone in a very different direction.

Yes. That’s the difference between say us and HIM, they’re inspired by Black Sabbath and bands like that, we’re inspired by The Stray Cats and Elvis.

Since you mentioned HIM, other than yourselves and them are there any other Finnish bands right now that you’d recommend that people check out?

Well, Children of Bodom, of course.

Which is a totally different sound.

Yeah, that’s really hard metal, but that’s a great band. And also Amorphis which is also a metal band.

It seems like everything from Finland has a slight goth tinge to it right now.

The thing is, the way we write the music and the kind of melodies we have in the music are always melancholic. That’s the similarity between HIM, Hanoi Rocks, and us, for instance. We have similar melancholic melodies in our music. It’s just in our heart and that’s how we write the music.

Isn’t it sort of a cultural thing?

It’s definitely a cultural thing. In our hearts we’re always longing for something. When winter comes and the migrating birds leave…

It’s a long winter.

It’s long and the birds fly south to Africa or something, but we can’t follow, we stay to face the winter and the dark period. We are always longing for the south or towards the sea or the adventures that might lie ahead. That’s something that every Finnish band has in their sound.

It seems like you have kind of a cult following here in the US. At what point did you realize that you had fans here?

We started meeting people at our shows. The world is not that big any more. We did a headlining tour 3 years ago and we had a cult following because of our MySpace, which was relatively young then. The three tours we’ve done, all of them have been based on our MySpace activities, we never really had a supporting record label who would get us press.

The back catalogue was released here at some point though, right?

Yeah, but we’d never done for instance any press in the US before this. So now we have a really active record label.

You signed to The End, right? They’ve been picking up a bunch of interesting international bands recently.

Yes. It’s interesting to do this tour and to be doing far more promotion than we had been before.

Now this is always kind of a dicey subject – what’s your approach to illegal downloading?

Well when our album was just about to come out I heard that it had leaked to the Internet and someone had counted about 2000 downloads. I’m happy that people are eager to hear our new stuff, naturally, but I sort of wish that the fans had waited for when the record officially came out so we’d have everything ready for the package deal. It’s hard to say, I mean I’ve never [illegally] downloaded anything. I would say that if I buy a record from iTunes, if it’s good I really want to buy the physical product as well. I hope that those people would still buy records because we don’t want the record industry to die.

Photo: Kirsty Evans

Are you putting any thought into how you can persuade them to actually buy the hard copy in terms of how you put the package together?

We sell them at the shows and there are different packages, like there’s a vampire edition which is with a DVD, and there’s a special tour edition with a t-shirt and stuff. The record companies are coming up with new ideas about how to sell.

I found it interesting when I was doing some research on you guys that there are a lot of pictures of you doing meet and greets and things like that, posing with fans, and a lot of cult bands won’t do that.

Really?

I think some of them may be kind of nervous around their fans, and I’m curious because you guys seem like you’re very comfortable.

It’s like KISS said, the fans are our bosses and we tour for them. What the hell, you know? They’re our friends, we party with them. We don’t draw any distance between us and our fans.

What’s the typical fan profile for 69 Eyes? Who do you see coming to your shows?

Sometimes there are teenagers who’re very open and they want to rock, they like the Crue and the Misfits and now they like the 69 Eyes. Also older people who were around back in the 80s and they still want to rock and who understand our values and what we’re about.

Another unusual thing about you is that you have a master’s degree in Analytical Chemistry. How did you end up going from being in graduate school to being in a rock band?

Well, you know, what can a poor boy do but sing in a rock and roll band and be a student? That was my youth.

Did you originally intend to keep following the academic path?

Yeah, I mean I may still do that. I don’t want to limit myself in any way; I enjoy practicing science as well.

Given the music scene being as it is, do you ever feel pressure to dumb yourself down or not sound too smart, in that sense that that’s not what some people may be expecting from you?

No, I find it strange that people think it’s amusing that someone has brains and uses them in some other way than just trying to poison them with booze and sing in a rock band. That’s a very old stereotype. I would be ashamed to say that I’m just a singer in a rock band, so of course I have multiple options what to say when I meet a girl for instance.

The other interesting and unusual thing about you is the UNICEF connection. How did you get involved with that?

I was first asked to be a spokesperson for a child trafficking campaign, which is very much happening in West Africa, and I did that for a year, and I guess I was so good at it that they asked me if I wanted to be a Goodwill Ambassador.

What kind of things do they ask you to do?

As a Goodwill Ambassador, my mission is to answer your question in this interview about it. As I mention UNICEF I hope that somebody who reads this will go surf and investigate what UNICEF means. And then maybe next time when Christmas comes they’ll buy UNICEF Christmas cards, which is one of the easiest ways to contribute.

So maybe having someone like yourself involved might spark the interest of someone who normally might not be paying attention to that kind of thing.

Talking about UNICEF is always the last question in the most extreme metal magazines and stuff, so hopefully through me the message of even just the word “UNICEF” will get printed in some different media than before.

Some people will see it who otherwise never might have before.

Exactly. I think that’s my mission. I’m happy if after somebody reads this, some girl goes to surf and finds unicef.org and then gets interested in taking part in what UNICEF does.

To wrap up, for anyone who isn’t familiar with 69 Eyes and happens to just stumble across this interview, sum up 69 Eyes up for them. If they were to come out to one of your shows what should they expect?

Well, I came up with this definition – the 69 Eyes are like Elvis meets Dracula in Helsinki. It’s rock and roll and some emphasis on the dark. Old school values that never die, and the vampires, they never die either.

Sitting down with this fierce ideological opponent (I should get this out of the way quickly – I am diametrically opposed to Kukharchuk’s views), I was struck by what an enormous, uphill battle sexual minorities face in Ukraine today.

Natalia: So tell me about your organization – you’re the founder, right?

Ruslan: Yes. It started in 2003. It wasn’t really an organization then. I found out that a lesbian parade was going to be organized in downtown Kiev, and sprung into action. We only had 10 days to act, but we made them count. The local authorities eventually, as they put it, “discouraged” the parade from taking place. On the day of the parade, we passed out anti-gay fliers. I guess the lesbians also had some kind of tent. From then on, it became a tradition for us, protesting homosexual propaganda in the streets of Kyiv. We have what we call “Family Carnivals,” we just had one this past Saturday. In 2006, we gained legal status. In 2009, we nationalized.

Natalia: The word “God” crops up quite a bit in your promotional materials. Are you a religious organization?

Ruslan: We’re a social organization. Of course, all of the world’s religions protest homosexuality, but our arguments go further than that. We want to reach people who are not necessarily religious, and we want to reach them with this message: deviance is bad for national security.

Natalia: National security?

Ruslan: Of course. First of all, the homosexual lifestyle spreads AIDS. Second of all, it contributes to the demographic crisis in Europe. Third of all, it undermines the family, and families, traditional families, form the basis of any nation. Without family, a nation ceases to exist.

Natalia: I haven’t noticed gay-friendly nations ceasing to exist yet, but I have noticed in one of your brochures the following statement: “Homosexuality interferes with personal development.” Would you like to explain what you mean by that?

Ruslan: There is this prevailing myth in our society – “gays are talented,” but homosexuals are more depressed and suicidal, actually. They can’t reach their full potential.

Natalia: Well, wouldn’t that be because…

Ruslan: Because they’re oppressed? No. That’s the argument many people use, but it’s wrong. These people just have a hard time living with themselves. Look, I believe that sexual deviance is a mental illness. There are many factors responsible. It’s a condition that people have. This is why our organization is 100% opposed to violence. These people need help, they don’t need to be beaten up.

Natalia: Speaking of violence, you don’t suppose that your rhetoric actually fuels it?

Ruslan: No. Violence is real, but I think it’s mostly caused by individual circumstances. It’s very much a politicized issue, so it can be hard to tell. That’s not true in every case, I understand that. There was a case in Israel recently, a gunman attacking a gay center. Obviously, we know what his motivation was. Though I don’t think propaganda of their lifestyle helps gays stay safe.

Natalia: And what do you think about gay honour killings? When families kill their kids if they are outed?

Ruslan: I understand that’s a problem in the Muslim world. I’m not an imam, so I can’t really comment. But our organization believes that homosexuality is caused by many factors. So if your child is gay, your question should be – “What have I done to contribute to this situation?” It shouldn’t be – “What’s the best way to kill this child?”

Natalia: You’ve spoken about challenging so-called “gay propaganda” in court. What Ukrainian laws actually support your position?

Ruslan: Well, our family codex is quite good, actually. It defines marriage as something between a man and wife. Of course, that can change, and we don’t want to let that happen. It’s like – you should know about this – when the American Psychological Association decided that it wasn’t going to list homosexuality as a mental condition anymore. Why did they decide that? What’s next? “Schizophrenia has become so widespread, we can’t call it a bad thing anymore either?”

Natalia: And are you also personally opposed to other non-traditional lifestyles? It’s a big world out there, many freaky people, doing freaky things.

Ruslan: I’m an Evangelical Christian, but I’m not necessarily against people who go against the grain. I don’t care if someone is emo, for example. I hate it when people like me are painted as total conformists. I look at emo boys, I say, “they’ll grow out of it.”

Of course, I oppose adultery and lust and sin in general. I’m not telling people what to do in their bedrooms, mind you. I don’t even care what gays do in their bedrooms. People do whatever they need to do. I might think it’s a sin, but that’s not the issue. The issue is when they impose a dictatorship of their ideas.

Natalia: Dictatorship?

Ruslan: Read the news. Everywhere you look in the West, somebody’s getting disgraced because they said something against gays. Well, excuse me, it shouldn’t work like that. I should be able to say whatever I want. It’s how democracy should work.

Natalia: The counter-argument to that, of course, is the entire idea of minority rights and how society is fundamentally stacked against certain people from the outset, resulting in inequalities that must be corrected somehow.

Ruslan: Rights? Look, there is such a thing as natural rights. For example, let’s say I’m black. Someone discriminates against me, that is not OK. But what does a deviant sexual lifestyle have to do with natural rights? Nothing. And I should remind you that we’re on a slippery slope here. Two hundred years ago, the very idea of a lesbian parade in this city would have been unthinkable. Now suddenly people have this idea? So what will happen tomorrow? A parade of zoophiles?

Natalia: Two hundred years ago, most people also thought that slavery was pretty great.

Ruslan: Well, I’m not saying that history is singular. That’s not what I mean. Society doesn’t move in one direction, it’s more complicated than that. I just look at the statistics to determine what is going on, what’s good and what’s bad. Did you know that gays, proportionately, have a higher rate of pedophilia among their ranks?

Natalia: Is that statistic quoted from an independent source?

Ruslan: We take all of our statistics from this Russian website. They translate a lot of studies, which are independent. I’m wouldn’t play fast and loose with numbers anyway, that will only be used against our organization later.

"Homosexuality = AIDS" March in downtown Kyiv. Photo: Vladimir Antonov

Natalia: So you and I have been sitting here and discussing so-called deviance, and I’m curious, what do you make of straight men who get turned on by the sight of two attractive women kissing?

Ruslan: [laughs] Attractive lesbians are a myth. Men have been brainwashed by porn and glossy magazine covers into believing otherwise. But it’s not real.

Natalia: All of these men. So turned on by ladies making out. Where do you think that impulse comes from?

Ruslan: I’m telling you, it’s from brainwashing.

Natalia: So it’s a totally modern phenomenon, in your understanding.

Ruslan: Totally.

Natalia: Are you against “sexual deviance” when it crops up in, say, a relationship between a married, heterosexual couple? I mean, you have this equation in your brochure: a man plus and woman equals a family with kids, but not all sex out there is procreative.

Ruslan: Honestly, I think married couples should do whatever they want, as long as both parties consent. There is this misconception, as if the church actually can advise people on positions during sex or something like that. Well, it can’t. I guess we keep coming back to this point: people are going to do whatever they want, behind closed doors. It’s when you begin to advertise it that the trouble starts.

Natalia: I’d like to ask you about the upcoming Ukrainian election. Any favourite candidates?

Ruslan: I’m a public person, the face of our organization, so I’m not naming names. I will tell you this, though, the things that divide Ukraine right now? They need to be put to rest. There are five issues: NATO, EU, relations with Russia and Russian as a second state language, competing religious confessions, and the fight over the legacy of WWII, and we need a moratorium on all of them. We can’t fix up the country if the country is torn apart.

Natalia: You know, it’s interesting that you should say that. Have you ever heard the English expression – “let’s agree to disagree”? Perhaps your organization might benefit from it.

Ruslan: [laughs] It’s a good expression, I must remember it for later use.

He took some time to talk to Sarah Jaffe about the book and what he learned, both about our culture and himself, from the process of writing it.

Sarah Jaffe: You tell the story from a personal angle rather than a detached journalistic one. Other writers would’ve looked at gamers as strange outsiders, or been too involved. This is kind of a hybrid memoir and journalism and yet it gets inside the material the way many others wouldn’t have.

Ethan Gilsdorf: I think I’m fortunate that this idea came to me when I was reevaluating these things in my own life. People are really wondering what online gaming is about—is it gonna suck my child’s soul dry? Yet the stuff is infinitely more acceptable now than when I was playing Dungeons & Dragons back in the Reagan administration.

I do a lot of travel writing. One of my favorite models for that is to go try something new that I’ve never done before, like go hiking in the French Pyrenees. There are some good opportunities for humor and self-reflection when reporting in the first person, though in travel writing it can be abused. If I was going to do a book I wanted to do it as an outgrowth of my work as a journalist.

S: I think this story really works better with a personal guide into the subcultures you explore.

EG: That was definitely something—one of the things that I very soon learned was one of the things I needed to get clear with anyone I was going to speak with, they had questions for me: what was my geek cred? Was I going to make fun of them? Particularly people who role-play in costume–they get made fun of the most. I would be like, “Look, I’m one of you, I have a soft spot for this in my heart, I am trying to figure out what to do with it in my mind, the desire to visit this imaginary place. How do I deal with that in my adult life?”

Once people accepted that, that I was one of them, for the most part almost everybody really accepted me and I dove into it.

S: The subcultures that get made fun of a lot have to police their own boundaries.

EG: I definitely felt like people didn’t understand me when I was in high school. Anyone who’s been burned enough times is going to be suspicious of each other’s motives.

It’s a bias that our culture has, that we let people do certain things. Like sports fandom, whether it’s fantasy football or just being an obsessive fan and painting your face purple and orange, that’s acceptable. But if you want to wear a purple robe and paint your face blue because you’re a Fairy from the Land of Nod or whatever, look out.

S: You spoke to a lot of women for the book, which made me happy since the gamer world is so often stereotyped as male.

EG: I did make a point of seeking out women in greater proportions than the men because I wanted to see if the stereotype existed. When I played D&D there were women that played but it seemed they played because they were interested in us as boys, not really die-hard gamers.

Certain activities and subcultures are definitely more popular with men. GenCon is still a pretty male-dominated event. Strategy games are still a man’s world, whereas when you go to a live-action RPG [role-playing game] where people are dressing up, or SCA [Society for Creative Anachronism], or readers of fantasy it’s split right down the middle. In many ways it’s possibly easier for them—women are expected to make costumes and that’s sort of OK. It’s OK for women to dress up.

But the gamers that I met, they’re all adults, and they’ve reached a point in their lives where they’ve decided that this is who they are and if you don’t like it, screw you. They’ve moved past their adolescent neuroses about it, where in a way I hadn’t.

S: In the SCA and classical fantasy the gender roles are very strict—do you see any connection between that and the appeal of the game in a world where gender roles are much more fluid?

EG: Women can become knights in the SCA—not knights, but they can still advance and fight. As they talk about it, it’s the middle ages without the bad stuff. They don’t have to just do the hospitality stuff.

A game designer that I spoke to, who did Gamma World, he said that the boys always wanted to kill the dragon and the girls always wanted to make friends with the dragon, make a nest with the dragon.

World of Warcraft is currently the most popular MMORPG in the world

S: With online gaming, it’s different—you’re not restricted to your body.

EG:For a while I did play a female character, and it’s kind of interesting—in World of Warcraft, you’re looking at something all the time and to be looking at something that’s a representation of yourself that’s a woman—online, there are no repercussions. There’s a lot of behaviors that are permissible on the online world—people feel more at ease because they know they aren’t going to be ridiculed.

S: Which can be problematic.

EG: I think most people playing, they’re behaving well, but there’s definitely a lot of antisocial behavior online. But I remember playing these games when you’re a kid and doing things that were sort of antisocial. We would take out our frustrations by backstabbing each other when we were supposed to be cooperating.

S: You note something about the black-and-white worldview in general—do you think fantasy and roleplaying are more popular during troubled times?

EG:Film theorists have said in certain times in the culture, things are being expressed in the culture in funny ways. Monster movies in the 50s and 60s came out of the Cold War and nuclear Armageddon–it got expressed in a sense of paranoia.

The stories we’re telling each other now are a return to when things aren’t so murky. The Lord of the Rings—it’s not perfectly black and white, but you have easily identifiable foes. I think that there’s an appeal to knowing who your enemy is. You could argue that Vietnam was the last war where people’s opinions of fighting the good fight started to deteriorate. In Iraq, people want the troops to come home safely but it’s not nearly as black and white.

The other appeal is that we have become very detached from our sense of control and direct action in our lives. If you have a dispute with someone there’s a filter—if I’m pissed off at my boss I can’t challenge him to a duel. You have to go through all this bureaucratic stuff, which is very frustrating. There is something, I think, hard-wired in the human nervous system that does want to do things directly.

We’ve lost touch with rites of passage: when I’m a man or a woman, this will happen, I’ll go through it and I’ll be a fully formed adult. Even if you’re imagining doing it, there’s something satisfying about saying that here’s my sword and we’re going to do battle. That stuff is very cathartic.

S: That relates to the chapter in your book about Guédelon, the castle in France being built with medieval tools.

EG: The irony with that project in France is that they don’t know how they built those castles, very few records exist. They’re learning techniques as they go; it’s learning by doing.

I found that place incredibly enchanting and fascinating, and there’s nothing fantasy about it. It’s not a magical, mythical past that they’re trying to recreate, it’s almost like historical reenactment. It was hard not to imagine the Orcs and the dragons and whatnot, though.

S: While we’re on that topic, I think it’s interesting that fantasy and sci-fi get lumped together when one is concerned with the past and the other the future.

EG: I definitely borrowed some of my ideas from writer David Brin, who wrote essays around the times of The Matrix and The Lord of the Rings and what those movies were appealing to. His idea, which I agree with, is that science fiction is paranoid, it’s fear of the future. The computer will get too smart, too big, the machines are going to take over, and then it ends with some apocalyptic thing where men and women get back to the original state of things.

Fantasy goes back to a simpler time—in a way there was no choice, which made life easier. There was some comfort in that. It sucked if you were a peasant, but if you were lucky enough to be born a king, there’s a real sense that the individual person can really make a difference. It’s sort of like an Eden—the world has yet to fail, though there’s always impending doom.

You could argue that something about the SCA [is] appealing to some people [because] it provides order. What’s interesting about that society is that no one is a peasant, everyone’s royalty. There’s no disease, there’s no religious persecution, women aren’t being kept down, but you know what the social order is. If you want to be a knight there’s certain things you have to do to fit into the order of chivalry. These are things we’ve forgotten in the 21st century, what it’s like to be loyal, to sacrifice yourself.

One of the guys in the book said “This is my core belief system, if I have a decision to make I think about what Sir Gareth, my character, would do.” It was very hopeful. They’re very charity-oriented, they do volunteer work and fund-raising. They really try integrate it.

S: Like your character is the best part of yourself.

EG:The argument can be made that some of these games have taught these kids—who might have been awkward, geeky kids—how to be brave in some small way, how to be articulate. If you can apply it in some small way to your life, to someone who’s a villain in your life–to be brave and face that villain down. It’s not just about gore and bloodshed.

There’s a guy that I mention in the chapter about LARPing [live-action roleplaying] who transformed himself into this gallant knight. I never would’ve thought in a thousand years that they were the same person. If he keeps playing that role long enough, maybe he’ll start to import that into other parts of his real life.

S: One of my favorite things from the book was where you noted that “we all engage in some form of minor dress-up and role-playing.” It’s true; we all do it all the time, and yet to formalize it seems weird to many people.

EG: For some people, it feels more like a mask, it seems more of a stretch than others. I think some people move in and out of these worlds very easily, and others think that if this feels like I’m putting on a role then maybe I shouldn’t be in this job.

I did an article a little while back where I asked my friends what role they played when they went home for Christmas. I wrote it a long time ago, but I think that helped inform this idea.

The other thing I think is happening with online culture, whether it’s online dating or Facebook or whatever, you’re putting this alternate version of yourself out there. There’s a fine line between putting your best foot forward and stretching the truth a little too much. I found some of these profiles seemed a little deceptive.

I worry about technology, that people are going to lose sense of what is real and what isn’t. If people are satisfied with virtual travel or virtual landscapes, and they feel like they’re getting out in nature because their little dwarf warrior is out in the woods, maybe the value of those real experiences will be diminished. There’s a sense of like a ten or twenty or fifty or 100 year outlook, what on earth is our life going to be like?

DragonCon or Dragon*Con is one of the most popular annual multigenre conventions.

S: You also wrote a lot about your relationship and how you wanted to meet a girl who would understand your geekier side. Can you tell me more about that?

EG: I remember interviewing someone at DragonCon, and I think he was just explaining, “I went on this date with my wife when we didn’t know each other and finally one of us got up the courage to tell the other.” And it turned out that they both had this huge collection of Lord of the Rings books. But the guy was terrified at first that she would reject him.

My relationship was with someone who was very skeptical–who is this guy who is kind of a kid at heart? These were huge questions for myself, whether I would want to have kids and so forth. All these game related things and fantasy related things, in my mind, speak to a larger question: does this mean that I’m not ever going to grow up? I was looking to get some answers.

It doesn’t feel good to feel that you’re being judged in some way. I think there’s some education you can probably do, and I’m hoping that that will be a good use of this book, if someone does have someone in their life who does play these games and they don’t understand why it’s important. I hope this book will kind of help the uninitiated or the confused get it.

S: Well, I think the approach you took, walking the line between your own questions and insecurities and interviewing others about the book, gives a lot of varied perspectives.

EG: One of the things that my agent and my editor said was, “You are a character in your book, even though it’s memoir. You are the eyes through which people see this stuff. You can’t turn them off, you can’t lose their trust.” It was a lightbulb moment for me, the way any writer can introduce any person to any subject if the frame is the right one. I hope that people will go along with the ride with me, but I didn’t want it to be just my story.

As someone who teaches writing, I’ve always told my students that the difficult place to resolve, whatever that dark troubling area is that you’re afraid of, you have to put it out there. Interesting connections happen with the reader when the writer is really putting themselves out there.

How much of my own deep dark thoughts did I want to put into this book? I just chose to try to be as honest about it as I could and evoke it in the best possible way and that the darkness of it gets people engaged in a way that hopefully doesn’t feel gratuitous.

Kirsty Evans: Hi, welcome to San Francisco. You’ve been here before, correct?

Yoko: Yes, for the past six years we’ve been here once every year.

KE: I read in an interview that a previous trip here made quite an impression on you – wasn’t that part of the inspiration behind your album “Metropolis,” our skyline at night?

Yoko: When we came to San Francisco three years ago we arrived by car across the bridge, so we could really see the scenery, and we took that image for our album because we thought it was very beautiful.

KE: So are you glad to be back? Have you done anything fun here so far?

Yoko: In April this year when we came we played a show and also recorded a few songs at a local studio.

KE: How long were you here for?

Yoko: Three days. We only recorded three songs.

KE: That’s very fast! Speaking of which, since you travel a lot, what’s your favorite city skyline?

Yoko: I used to like New York the best but now I like San Francisco better.

KE: So you’ve been coming here for six years now. When and where was the first time you performed in America?

Yoko: We came for the first time in 2003 to perform at the CMJ event.

KE: How did that first show go? Were you playing to people who knew who you were and what to expect?

Yoko: We didn’t have many fans at the first show, nobody really knew us.

KE: What kind of response did you get?

Yoko: We really had a good time playing because the crowd really welcomed us.

KE: The last time you were here was opening for The Pillows?

Yoko: Yes

KE: How did you get involved with the guy from The Pillows? You’re on his label, correct?

Yoko: We have the same management company, so that’s how we met.

KE: How many years has Noodles been together now?

Yoko: We started with 4 people 17 years ago, but then one left, so it’s been 5 years with just the three of us.

KE: When you started out did you think this would be your career? Did you think you would still be doing this 17 years later?

Yoko: We started the band as just a fun thing, and we really didn’t plan to play for this long.

KE: So were you in high school together when you started?

Yoko: (Laughs) Yes, about then.

KE: I heard that you opened for the Breeders once, was that here or in Japan?

Yoko: In Japan

KE: Were you fans of theirs when you were younger?

Yoko: Yes, we were fans.

KE: So it was fun to play with them?

Yoko: Yes, we were so happy and excited to play with them.

KE: I’m curious because back then there were very few all women bands. I was wondering if it was influential for you to have bands like The Breeders because they proved that women could rock.

Yoko: We thought they were very cool. We admired them.

KE: What other bands influenced you when you were starting out?

Yoko: The Pixies. Also a Japanese band called VIP. Before the Pixies became big I also listened to a lot of British bands.

Noodles. Picture: Kirsty Evans

KE: Is it fun to be part of an all woman show like today and tomorrow? Other than the Breeders show, is that something you’ve ever done before?

Yoko: In Japan, it’s very rare to have only girl bands. We have more chances to do that in the US.

KE: That’s what I’m curious about – how is it different to being in an all girl band in Japan? Is there still resistance to women being in rock and alternative bands? They don’t segregate the girl bands like they tend to do here?

Yoko: There is a sort of border between girl bands and guy bands, and there are fewer girl-only bands on the scene. It’s true, we have the same issue. But sometimes it’s an advantage, because it’s so rare, so it depends.

KE: So if you’re really good maybe it can actually be an advantage because there are so few girl bands?

Yoko: There are so few girl bands that we’re all unique, since there are so few of us, so in a way we get more exposure.

KE: What kind of fans do you have in Japan? What kind of people go to your shows?

Yoko: Not so much teenagers, more late twenties and early thirties.

KE: Are they fans you’ve had since the beginning that grew up with you?

Yoko: No, most of them are more in their late twenties, adults but not college kids, so not the fans who started out with us.

KE: And what kind of people normally come to see you here?

Yoko: We can’t tell how old they are. American people tend not to change their fashion with age so much so we can’t tell, but what I’d like to see is for more young people to be able to come to our shows. Usually we play at venues that are over 21 only, so I wish we could also play at venues where younger people would be able to come.

KE: Have you looked into that? There are a few venues that are all ages, usually at least one in every city.

Yoko: We have played a few places without an age limit, today is one example.

KE: Do you find that when you do play those venues kids do show up?

Yoko: I think that if the ages weren’t restricted there would be more young fans, and we’re hoping to attract younger fans.

KE: You’ve been around for a while now, how has your sound evolved over that time? Has it changed?

Yoko: We’ve pretty much kept the same style over time.

KE: Since you lost one of your guitar players, how has that affected how you approach your live shows?

Yoko: When we used to have two guitars the sound was louder and more complex. Now that we only have one we’ve had to modify the songs to a simpler version of the melodies, so we did have to adjust a little bit.

KE: Before that did you play guitar while you sang?

Yoko: No.

The Tingler film

Yoko. Picture: Kirsty Evans

KE: Has it affected how you compose your songs? Who writes most of your material?

Yoko: Both of us (Yoko/vocals and Ikuno/bass) are involved in writing both the music and the lyrics.

KE: Do you (Ayumi/drums) write music at all? Did you ever want to?

Auymi: It’s very hard to write music with drums, I have to rely on someone to play guitar or some other instrument to write good songs, that’s why I prefer to just focus on practicing drums rather than writing music.

KE: Have any of you ever done any side projects? I heard you were involved in a TV project?

Yoko: They used one of our songs as part of a TV drama but none of us really appeared in it.

KE: Did you write a song specifically for them or did they pick one that was already recorded?

Yoko: They asked us to write a song specifically for them.

KE: I noticed that as far as I could find “Metropolis” was the last album you made. Do you have anything new coming out?

Yoko: Since then we also released a new album, “SNAP,” in October last year.

KE: How fast do you usually work?

Yoko: We try to release one CD a year.

KE: After this trip to America is over, what do you have coming up next?

Yoko: In October, we’ll be releasing the songs we recorded in April in San Francisco, plus a DVD.

KE: This is a live DVD?

Yoko: It includes scenes from the America tour.

KE: And after that are there any plans to come back for another American tour soon?

Yoko: We’re not sure yet, but we’re hoping to come back again next year!

Can we talk about why this book was written? What were some of the challenges of writing it?

The USSR conducted extensive espionage operations in the United States in the decades leading up to the Cold War, and hostile American public reaction to revelations in the late 1940s about the extent of that espionage played a significant role in shaping public and government attitudes in the opening years of the Cold War. Consequently, an accurate account of Soviet espionage assists in more fully understanding the history of that period.

The chief challenge of a reliable historical account of Soviet espionage in this period has long been the paucity of archival documentation. The investigative files of security agencies such as the FBI, trial transcripts, and testimony before congressional investigative committees are useful but only tell part of the story. The continued closure to research of the leading Soviet intelligence agencies has been a major barrier to a more accurate account. But the combination of the release by the American National Security Agency of some 3,000 deciphered KGB cables (mostly 1943-1946) and, more importantly, the 1,115 pages of Alexander Vassiliev’s transcriptions and summaries of KGB archival documents allow a much more comprehensive account.

It is still early to say too much about the reception of the book. But those specialists in espionage history who have had the opportunity to examine the book and its underlying source, Vassiliev’s notebooks, are impressed. The June issue of the prestigious Journal of Cold War Studies carried five articles by leading historical specialists all based on Vassiliev’s notebooks. The articles themselves were earlier presented as papers at a heavily attended conference in May at the Cold War International History Project at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, DC. There is, of course, a shrinking group of academics who loudly insist on the innocence of Alger Hiss and Julius Rosenberg, dismiss Soviet espionage as a vastly exaggerated myth, and desperately seek to keep doubt alive by explaining away the new evidence rather than, as is a historian’s job, to explain the evidence.

In the current academic climate, does it sound politically-incorrect even just to try to explain the motives of someone like McCarthy?

There is a widespread misunderstanding about Joseph McCarthy’s role in bringing Soviet espionage to the attention of the public. He was, in fact, a Johnnie-come-lately to the issue. He was not publicly identified with the issue until 1950, when he made exaggerated charges that the Truman administration had failed to remove security risks from the State Department. But the issue of Soviet espionage had been a public matter for several years by that point.

Senator McCarthy did not take up the Communist/espionage issue until 1950, and his chief use of it was as a partisan club to accuse key leaders of the Truman administration of being participants in “a great conspiracy, a conspiracy on a scale so immense as to dwarf any previous such venture in the history of man.” McCarthy’s charges against Acheson and Marshall were utter nonsense without documentary support then or now. Senator McCarthy’s contribution to the anti-Communist cause was negative due to his wild exaggerations and use of the issue for partisan purposes.

Did the KGB attempt to infiltrate either the Republican or Democrat Party? Any links between the KGB and groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union and American Federation of Labor?

None of our research has shown any KGB interest in the ACLU or the American Federation of Labor. The KGB did recruit several of its engineer spies from the Federation of Architects, Engineers, Chemists, and Technicians, a tiny union of the Congress of Industrial Organizations led by secret members of the Communist Party. FAECT’s role, however, was chiefly that of a recruiting pool because many Communists with engineering and scientific degrees joined it.

Nor did the KGB target either major political party as an organization. It did recruit for a few years in the late 1930s on a monetary basis (not ideological sympathy) one corrupt member of Congress, Representative Samuel Dickstein (Democrat-New York). The KGB also provided secret campaign funds to William Dodd, Jr., an already recruited KGB agent, for Dodd’s attempt to unseat an incumbent Democratic House member in the Democratic primary in 1938, but Dodd was defeated. The KGB also recruited one congressional staff member who was a useful source of information for some years, Charles Kramer. But with the Republicans taking control of Congress in 1946, Kramer lost is congressional staff position and never returned to U.S. government service.

In the book, confirmed spies such as Alger Hiss and Alfred Dean Slack were Ivy League graduates or well-known universities such as Wisconsin-Madison. These people were part of the most educated group in the country back then. What factors drove great men and women to the Communist Party?

Communism was never a mass movement in the United States, and public sentiment was generally hostile to it. But in the 1930s a small segment of young professionals from elite and Ivy League backgrounds were radicalized by the economic deprivations of the Great Depression and the emergence of Nazism and Fascism in Europe.

Most spies illustrated in your book had Jewish background. Example include Harry Gold, Charles Kramer ( Charles Krivitsky) and Maurice Halperin. Do you find a relationship between American anti-Semitism and the large number of spies being Jewish?

Certainly there were a number of Soviet sources who were Jewish, but there were plenty who were not. For example, of the spies in the State Department noted above (Hiss, Field, Straight, Duggan, and Wadleigh) none were Jewish and one of the unexpected finding of Spies, the long hidden identity of the Soviet atomic spy hitherto known only by the cover name “Pers,” was Russell McNutt, a Kansan of old-stock Ango-American origin.

There was also an evolution of attraction to the American Communist party. At its founding, Slavic immigrants from Eastern Europe dominated the movement. But by the mid-1920s the largest ethnic group in the American Communist party was Finnish Americans. In the 1930s the party’s ethnic makeup shifted again with Jews constituting the largest group.

While receding, there continued to be widespread anti-Semitism in American society at the time combined with illusions that communism in the USSR had ended anti-Jewish prejudice likely contributed to the attraction of a minority of Jews to the Communist Party. Concern about the violent anti-Semitism of the rising Nazi movement in Germany further reinforced this attraction. This also coincided with the second generation of Jewish immigrants obtaining higher education, particularly in technical fields, and during World War II the KGB recruited a number of its technical/scientific spies from young Communist engineers of Jewish background.

Did Soviet spies inside the American government try to influence American foreign policy in the Middle East?

In the period dealt with in Spies, the 1930s and the 1940s, the Middle East was a very low priority to the KGB stations operating in the United States, and there is no documentation of any KGB interest in influencing U.S. policy toward that region in that era.

The book ends in the context of the 1950s. Had the KGB made attempts to establish a spy network inside American soil after that? For example, did the KGB try to recruit spies during the waves of Soviet Jewish immigration to the United States from the late 1970s onward?

After the 1940s, while there continued to be occasional recruitment of Soviet spies on the basis of ideological sympathy, most Soviet espionage recruits were motivated by more traditional means: money, resentment against superiors or other personal grievances, thirst for adventure and intrigue, and occasional sexual blackmail. Given the overwhelming anti-Communist and anti-Soviet attitudes of Jewish immigration from the USSR to the United States in the 1970s and later, it is extremely unlikely that there was any significant KGB recruitment from that group.

What kind of lessons would you perhaps like your readers to take away from the book?

Ideological spies present a particularly disturbing challenge in a country where citizenship has never been defined by blood and heritage— with the partial exception of blacks and Native Americans—but by commitment to a set of democratic ideals. Citizens accused of allegiance to a foreign power have engendered outrage, whether it was Aaron Burr, allegedly seeking to dismember the Union, or German-Americans suspected of disloyalty during World War I. But those who have rejected the principles of the Constitution for another vision of government have earned particular wrath. No era of American life saw so many accusations of espionage and covert activities on behalf of a foreign country as the decade after World War II.

The McCarthy era has long since attained iconic status in American history as the symbol of paranoia about “reds hiding under the beds.” Although the postwar attack on the CPUSA preceded Senator McCarthy’s rise to prominence, the picture of a relentless governmental persecution of a perhaps annoying but ultimately harmless movement is regularly invoked as an object lesson in the erosion of civil liberties.

Most American Communists were not spies; the KGB did not need or want the CPUSA’s fifty-to-sixty thousand members as agents. But the documents in Vassiliev’s notebooks make crystal clear that the CPUSA’s leadership in the 1930s and 1940s willingly placed the party’s organizational resources and a significant number of its key cadres at the service of the espionage agencies of a foreign power. The CPUSA as an organized entity was an auxiliary service to Soviet intelligence. Dozens of its members working for the American government or employed in scientific research handed over information, sometimes with the full knowledge that they were serving the Soviet Union, sometimes comforting themselves that they were only informing the CPUSA leadership, and occasionally willfully deceiving themselves about the ultimate destination of the material.

It was no witch hunt that led American counterintelligence officials to investigate government employees and others with access to sensitive information for Communist ties after they became cognizant of the extent of Soviet espionage and the crucial role played in it by the CPUSA, but a rational response to the extent to which the Communist Party had become an appendage of Soviet intelligence.

Brahm took some time out to talk to Oliver Pearce for GlobalComment about his book, China’s lopsided development, and how it can change its ways.

Oliver Pearce: What was the inspiration to write this book?

Laurence Brahm: The book idea had been formulating for many years. On one hand I observed the anti-Globalisation protests which occurred at the WTO, IMF and World Bank meetings and I did not feel that the media was giving fair coverage to the issues that were being expressed by the protestors. Often those protestors became very violent. Why were people their own self to risk unless the issues were so important? But those issues were not understood because the media simply dismissed the movement as radical.

I wanted to find out what was behind the movement and I found that it was not all that radical; actually there are very meaningful issues raised by many people, but they are marginalised. Over the past few decades we have seen tremendous economic growth over the world but actually the number of those living in poverty is increasing. 40 percent of our planet is at the poverty level; one sixth is living at the extreme level. This is something we don’t see being in Starbucks, in five star hotels or simply watching CNN and BBC. It’s not being expressed and it disturbed me.

OP: Who is this book aimed at?

LB: This book will speak out to a range of people, from aid workers and activists to university worker, and business in between. All these people need to be part of the dialogue process. I applaud the activist in the street; their voice needs to be heard. At the same time we cannot ignore the institutions. If we ignore the institutions then we can’t have meaningful change because ultimately when the corporations stop getting involved you don’t have power and money then you can’t accomplish anything on a meaningful scale. What we need to do is take very clear voices that are marginalised. We need to widen the goalposts and to bring those voices and ideas into the mainstream, turning them into policy, effective governance and corporate initiative.

OP: You came to China in the 1981 and have stayed in the region ever since. What were your reasons for coming and how has the country changed?

LB: I was very much interested in Mao’s experiment and to see what had happened with socialism and a lot of curiosity. What I found was a shattered economy of no commodities – even if you had money, which people didn’t there was nothing to buy anything because there was nothing to buy. From this I realised there would be tremendous reform, or opportunity for reform, and an opportunity to get it right.

OP: Your book discusses the importance of the philosophies of the major religions from the Himalayan region, such Islam and Buddhism. Do you see the growing trend towards Confucism in China as a positive step?

LB: I don’t see it as a growing trend. I think that actually there is very little being done to bring out the values of loyalty, piety and respect. I think there has been lip service to it briefly, but I don’t see anything being done in a meaningful way. The problem is that China has aped what it thinks are Western values. A lot of these ‘Western’ values are actually discredited in the West. To a great extent the rush to be Western in China has been one which has been misguided. As a result there has been a certain loss of self-identity and aspects of Chinese culture which are of enormous value, and you can’t find these aspects here anymore. Mahinda Rajapaksa, President of Sri Lanka, once said you can have all the economic development you want, but if you lose your identity you have nothing.

OP: Your last point is interesting because a lot of the affluent, urban middle class Chinese students whom I have encountered in China and abroad believe that they are entitled to follow Western consumer and social habits. What are your views on this?

LB: I think it is very sad. To be a good person, a kind person, to care about others and to live one’s life meaningfully is glorious and is what I think is important. The necessary steps were taken to take China out of the mistakes of the Cultural Revolution and what has happened is that it has gone from one extreme to another: during the Cultural Revolution China was a society of spirituality and no materialism; today it is all materialism and no core values. I think this will have to redress itself over time. It can happen. It took the Asian Financial crisis and SARS for Hong Kong people to go from what had been an extreme case of brand fundamentalism and suddenly shift to social concerns. Now you have a great deal of social outreach and care there; people are looking do to things for the environment, to do things at a social level who are readjusting their own framework of living in a more sustainable way. Sometimes it requires a situation or external conditions to wake up.

OP: So you would say that Hong Kong is a kind of model for the mainland?

LB: Hong Kong is very interesting because many things in China have keyed off of Hong Kong, from KTV to real estate. The original land laws of China were based on legislation in Hong Kong. The British have Crown Land – land that belongs to the state – and you have the same in China: the land belongs to all the people. Shenzhen was always the crossroads, the fertilisation ground for taking ideas which had worked in Hong Kong and testing them in China.

OP: China’s economic stimulus plan includes provisions to boost the development of the green energy sector. In your view, what are the opportunities to be had for Chinese companies working in this area?

LB: I think there is a tremendous opportunity for China to develop green technology because China’s needs for energy are going to expand. Demand will increase as people do wish to have a higher quality of living, which they deserve, but we have to find ways of making that affordable, both in terms of costs of to the pocket and cost to the environment. Here China has the opportunity to shift from the coal grid into other renewable technologies. There are tremendous resources available and it’s a question of commercialising those resources, and that needs government funding to bridge between what’s an idea and what’s a commercially pragmatic enterprise. With the stimulus package China has an opportunity of the funding to be used well to develop the technology and to develop the systems to commercialise these technologies.

OP: Corporate Social Responsibility is replacing shareholder value as the major corporate trend in the Western world. Has this trend been picked up in China?

LB: It hasn’t, but it will. It needs to start from the multinational corporations working here because they set the trend. It will start on the outside, in places like Singapore and Hong Kong and then Chinese will begin to wonder [about its value]. The value system in China has to change; it’s not one where people respect or care for someone else, and so this is what the Himalayan values: let’s get back to the values that are inherent in Himalayan religions. But it’s not a question of religion, it’s a question of ideas and philosophies; it’s a question of how to lead your life. Let’s bring these changes into the commercial field and change the way corporations think. This will require a change in the media and in consumer behaviour.

OP: You argue that the community projects mentioned in your book, for example the Tibetan yak-milk farmers and clothes makers, have to be self-sustaining, as opposed to relying on handouts from charities. Is it possible for small, private sector enterprises to make money from such projects?

LB: The role of the small enterprise is very important. I mean many of the projects being done for social outreach and community care carried out by small enterprises. Often the small enterprises don’t just see the value of what they are doing but also the opportunity in doing it. Community work and environmental protection doesn’t have to be loss making: it can be profitable. It’s a question of seeing it as an opportunity rather than seeing it as a burden and many of the small enterprises, because they don’t have the bureaucratic structures and old thinking of the multinationals, are able to respond to change – including consumer value change – quickly and more responsibly. In many ways it is the small to medium enterprises that are actually leading the value revolution and the commercial revolution.

OP: Do you think government intervention is necessary to regulate this sector?

LB: Government regulation is usually a response to corporate interests. It’s usually a response to sectors, and once you see have corporations realise that they are losing an opportunity but not being part of the value change then they will call on the government for regulatory measures, and they will influence government.

Look at the Sichuan earthquake, who got on the plane and went there to help out in the reconstruction? Many of them were very small groups and small entrepreneurs; they were people who cared, and they often used very finite resources to rebuild villages and give assistance. It was a tremendous outreach of many people who stood up and said “I want to help”. This is very rare in any country, but it happened here in China, in a country that’s driven by materialist values. So this group does exist, and it is very large. Their voice needs to be heard and given an economic opportunity to turn goodwill into action, and government policy to support that.

The earthquake was definitely a magnet to bring together people who wanted to help and it suddenly made me aware that these people were there – not just in small numbers, but in large groups.

To find out more about Laurence Brahm and his work, check out his personal website.

Kirsty Evans: When did the band first get together?

Raam: We got together back in the year 2000. Me and Kami met each other at a military camp. We both loved rock and roll and wanted to start a band. He was one of the only kids I knew who actually listened to good music back then. One thing led to another and the rest of these guys joined the band, and 8 or 9 years later, here we are.

KE: As far as music, how much access did you have to foreign music growing up? Were you able to get CDs or to download music?

Raam: I remember there was a time when we still used to just get bootleg cassette tapes and collect them, and then later we got CDs. I miss those days actually – in the 90s, when we used to listen to CDs and we’d listen to whole albums. I don’t really listen to albums that much any more, I wish I did. And then the internet came along and it was a 56k modem and we were waiting hours and hours to download a song.

KE: So the government in Iran isn’t trying to block downloading?

Raam: Well, they do, but kids always find ways to go around that with proxies.

KE: How do your families feel about you guys taking this route as far as being involved in music?

Raam: All of our parents are so supportive and proud of what we’re doing. Our is very conservative, you’re raised to be a doctor or an engineer, and for us to sort of go against the tide and want to become rock stars was a bit difficult for a lot of people to understand, but our parents were very cool. We used to rehearse in our living room and my parents would be sitting there reading the newspaper and we’d be going crazy. They love what we do and they’re supporting us all the way.

KE: When you guys first got started where were you able to play? There aren’t really any actual venues in Iran, right?

Raam: Just underground parties in villas out of town.

KE: Parties in people’s houses?

Raam: Yeah, in basements, stuff like that. It was cool, because the adrenaline rush we’d have at those shows was something that was very unprecedented. It’s one of those things that we haven’t experienced so much in the States, because everything is legal over here, there’s no element of fear involved.

KE: So you had a local following in Iran?

Raam: Yes

KE: Are those people still following you now?

Raam: Yes, our hardcore supporters who helped us out. We feel we owe it all to them, all the kids back home in Iran who believed in us and helped us get this far.

KE: How did you end up deciding to move to the U.S., when and why?

Raam: There was no specific plan. We always dreamed of coming to the States, of course, and we got the chance to come perform at the SXSW festival. We had to go through the whole visa process and it got denied, and then we had to get a New York senator involved. By the time we got here we really didn’t have anything planned but that one festival. We didn’t know any people; we had a round trip ticket for two weeks that turned into two and a half years. How, I have no idea, one thing just led to another.

photo: Kirsty Evans

We just kept getting better and better and playing more and more shows. The story was very intriguing; we got a lot of press coverage when we first came here. There was so much hype about what we were doing. But I really think that for us it’s about the music first and then everything else. the music speaks for itself and we all really believe that. We believe in the music more than we believe in our story.

KE: How has it been adjusting to the very different music scene here? Do you feel like you’re finding your footing and figuring out where you fit in yet?

Raam: It’s very competitive and you have to work really hard, because there are so many good bands now in the States. The whole show has to become an art of its own and you really have to master that art. We live for this, there’s no better drug in the world than performing live.

KE: When you first got here obviously the media was focusing on the fact that you came from Iran. Do you feel like there’s a lot of pressure on you to represent the Iranian music scene or to try to interpret for Americans what’s going on in Iran? Are people asking you political questions?

Raam: Oh yeah obviously, like “what do you think about the nuclear situation.” I’m like, what the f*ck do you want me to say about it? Am I a nuclear scientist? As a citizen of Iran, I can say what my personal beliefs and opinions are about the subject, but when it comes to our music, we just want to represent our nation in a very positive light, because it gets a lot of bad rap in the media.

I didn’t decide where I came out on this planet. I don’t believe in boundaries. I feel the music is something that transcends all these barriers and that’s always been our motto, that rock and roll has no boundaries. So at the end of the day, hopefully, the more success we achieve, the more people become proud of us, the more hope it gives kids back home that they too can achieve what we’ve achieved. Dreams do come true, you know? If you really really believe it, as clichéd as that sounds.

KE: Do you keep in touch with any other bands back home? If you guys break through then it might open doors for other bands from Iran to follow.

Raam: It already has! There was a big documentary that won a prestigious prize at the Cannes Film Festival. I’ve gone to festivals with other kids from Iran to bring them over here to the States. I have so many people who contact me and I want to be part of a network for all these kids who need a voice. When we were growing up we always wanted someone else to help us out, but we never really got that chance.

KE: Do you feel like since you moved here you’ve encountering any sort of prejudice? Are there people who don’t want to take you seriously or listen to you because of where you come from?

Raam: Sometimes our reputation does precede our music, but if people come to our shows I think the music speaks for itself. We don’t want to tell people where we’re from when we’re on the stage and we’re performing. Obviously, when we first came over all the attention was about us being from Iran, but now I feel it’s much more beautiful when people first enjoy our music and they’re like wow, they’re f*cking good musicians, and then, wow, they’re actually from Iran.

KE: Since you’ve been helping to bring other bands over here – do you think that’s always going to be the way it has to be, that bands have to come over here, or do you think eventually there will be enough of a scene in Iran that they can stay there?

Raam: Well, the underground scene is huge in Iran.

KE: Do you ever see it breaking through to where it doesn’t have to be underground any more?

Raam: Iran is still a very traditional, conservative country, but the majority of the people there are under the age of 35, so as the younger generation grows up and newer generations come into society I think gradual reform will reach that point where music will become a bit more accessible and mainstream. But it’s not going to happen overnight, it just needs time.

KE: Do you think if that ever happened that you guys would move home or are you firmly settled now in the States?

Raam: Home is a tricky word, nowhere is really home for us.

KE: Where are you based now?

Raam: Well, we lived in LA for a while, and then we moved to New York. Now we live in Brooklyn but we’re always on the road. We’ve already had offers to go tour in Europe, Japan and Australia. we always want to be on the road. We’ve been living in the same suitcase we came to the States with two and a half years ago.

KE: So what are you up to right now? You have an album coming out, right?

Raam: Yeah, our debut album, we’ve been waiting a while to release it.

KE: But there’s already a lot of your stuff on YouTube – did you release some singles?

Raam: Yeah, we had a couple of singles, we also released an EP. We’re waiting to release our debut album. We’re anxious to get it out. Nowadays the industry is at a very fast pace, so we just want to make sure that we catch up and make the right decisions. Even though we have offers, at the end of the day we want to make sure that whatever decision we make is in the best interests of the band.

KE: Do you have a headlining tour planned for when it comes out?

Raam: It’s still in the grey. Hopefully within the next couple of months we’ll have a more clear vision of what exactly our plans are.

KE: To give everyone kind of a preview, what should we be expecting from this album? What kind of direction are you going in with it?

Raam: I think we’ve all just really grown as musicians; we’ve all just been working really really hard to make sure we reach this point where we’re respected as musicians. We’re never satisfied.

photo: Kirsty Evans

Kodi: We’re pretty strict when it comes to rehearsal. Usually when we talk about our first album that’s going to come out very soon we see it as a prologue to the Hypernova journey. “Through the Chaos” is basically about our lives in coming from Iran to here. It’s truly like a prologue in that it’s introducing you to who we are as human beings, and then hopefully the next album and other future albums will be just chapters in our lives and something totally different. Prologues are short and sweet and give you just a hint of what we’re about.

KE: Do you have any idea where you’re going with the new chapter yet? Do you feel like you’ve found your style and this is it or are you still changing?

Kodi: This is definitely not our style. I mean this is us now, but musicians evolve, you know? You don’t stick to a certain sound. We’re bringing electronic elements into our music and adding more stuff and making it more interesting not only for us as musicians but for people who are listening.

KE: Thinking long term, you’re sort of established here now – you’ve got your record deal, you’ve got your album coming out. Are you making long term plans? Where would you like to see yourselves being five years from now?

Raam: As cliché as it sounds, I want to be a big f*cking arena band. I want to be playing in front of hundreds of thousands of people. I want to play in all the cool big festivals around the world.

KE: What’s the biggest crowd you’ve played to so far?

Raam: Well, we played Pangea Day, that was broadcast to like five hundred million people. The audience was a couple of thousand though, maybe four thousand. We also did a tour with the Sisters of Mercy.

Kodi: We played with so many musicians and the problem with them was that when they were at practice they didn’t see long term huge goals. You gotta aim high and that’s how it is.

KE: Do you have anything planned for the release of the new album? Are you already confirmed to go to Europe or Asia?

Raam: Well we’re still working on visa issue, so as soon as that’s confirmed.

KE: So, you’re presenting yourselves to a group of readers most of whom have probably never heard of you before. How do you want to describe yourselves? How do you see yourselves and how do you want people to see you?

Raam: We’re just a bunch of crazy kids who had a dream. I really do hope that our story inspires others to pursue what they love and are passionate about, because there’s nothing more important in this life than pursuing your dreams.

Kodi: Our sound is very hard to describe. When I think about the music we play four words come to my mind – sex, fear, ecstasy and happiness, and little political messages. Music means joy and that’s what we’re trying to do.

KE: So ultimately even if you’re talking about dark subjects you’d rather leave people uplifted.

Kodi: There are too many bands talking about death and despair. We do have those kinds of topics that are in our lyrics but we like uplifting music. I listen to very dark, depressing music myself, but when it comes to our music it’s just about how to seduce your audience in any way you can.