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Joined: March 04 2008
Location: Retirement Home
Status: Offline
Points: 3658
Topic: Nathan Mahl Posted: November 20 2011 at 17:14
The band, based around the figure of keyboard player Guy Leblanc, puts together a very potent mix of sounds to produce this mostly instrumental work. Their music is both dark and light, complex and largely symphonic prog, loud and quiet, yet always stretching way beyond. Their musical style incorporates elements of YES, ELP, GENTLE GIANT and even a bit of Frank ZAPPA, blending it together to create a style that is very much their own.
I got in touch with Guy Leblanc and here is the Nathan Mahl story.
Your biography has been
covered in your ProgArchives profile so let's bypass the biography details. Why did you choose that name and which bands were
you influenced by ?
The band spent the first 7-8 months of its life
without a name. One night, in the Gatineau provincial park, under the influence
of trendy chemical amusement aids, I invented the name and it stuck with
everybody.
We were playing a lot of originals at the
onset, but also some covers of our favourite bands, like UK, Gentle Giant, Yes,
Genesis, Zappa, Billy Cobham, Deep Purple, KC and many more.
To a degree we were also influenced by the
fusion greats of the 70s; Mahavishnu, Return to Forever, Jan Hammer, Jeff Beck
etc.
This is an archive based interview also intended
for the fans you get well after both you and I have passed away so let's go
straight to your albums. Please give us your views/some words on your albums,
starting with.......
Parallel Eccentricities from 1983
I was always pushing for the band to record our
music and make records. We wound up borrowing money from a couple of family
members to make our first LP, and then we tried to book the band and sell the LP
at our gigs, but even back then it was hard to book our kind of music in bars.
Also, because most of our original songs were of unusual length, picking songs
for the album which would make it a more full-length LP became impossible, and
so we settled for the 5-song EP.
There is a long break between Parallel
Eccentricities and your next album. What happened ?
The band imploded in the Spring of 1984; the
drummer had already quit in late 1983 and had been replaced. Learning the whole
repertoire over again with the new drummer was a painful process for me, and I
pulled the plug on the band at that time, but kept working with bassist Don
Prince for a short while after that.
In 1986 the original line-up tried to startup
again, but guitarist Mark Spenard left after the first rehearsal, and the
remaining 3 members recorded 4 songs and quietly disbanded again.
Another attempt was made in 1989, this time
with second keyboardist Garth Boyd and no guitar. The product of this line-up
was 7 or 8 songs, 5 of which were recorded (but of course never
released).
This line-up imploded in 1990, and the band
continued with a different rhythm section for over a year.
My desire to make another self-produced record
precipitated this line-up's demise.
The Clever Use of Shadows from 1998
I actually composed a lot of the music for this
disc in 1995-96. A few more line-ups and recording sessions came and went until
production started on Clever Use in April of 1998.
We spent 8 months in the studio, once or twice
a week, a few hours at a time. Quite a painful way to record a disc, but in
retrospect it was ok. In the end it wasn't exactly the record I'd set out to
make, but it was close enough, and certainly good enough to release, so against
the wishes of my co-producer, I released the cd in January of 1999 myself, and a
few months later we were invited to play at the first NEARfest.
Heretik Volume I: Body of Accusations from
2000
Not wanting to repeat the experience of
recording piecemeal in someone else's studio, I built my own studio at the end
of 1999, just in time to record Heretik volume one. I'd fired the guitarist and
replaced him with the original (Mark Spenard). The drummer quit halfway through
production, so I finished the drums myself. It was my first experience as a
recording engineer, and I know it shows, but I figured the music was good enough
to warrant releasing.
Heretik Volume II: The Trial from 2001
I was composing more and more during this
period, and Heretik was quickly becoming a trilogy. For volume 2, the band
welcomed back Dan Lacasse on drums (another original member). Also, the making
of this album was documented in writing by American author Michael McCormack.
His book is called "the People wish to be Deceived...", and it was released in
early 2002. The albums were selling very well and getting good reviews, and I
wanted to keep the momentum going with one release per year, but shortly before
starting volume 3, I had a falling out with bassist Claude Prince, and he was
replaced with Guy Dagenais for volume 3.
Heretik Volume III: The Sentence from 2002
I was told I had a lot of nerve, for releasing
a cd with one single 54-minute song. No breaks, no cues... a real reviewer's
nightmare :-). On the other hand, many people have told me it's their favourite
of the trilogy, so maybe there's hope for us composers of long songs :-)). The
song is an instrumental piece, and I let the music tell the story... lots of
soloing, flurries of notes and chords, all building up to a tragic
ending.
Shadows Unbound from 2003
After the trilogy was done, and it seemed like
Nathan Mahl was going to be a studio band, I managed to get all the original
members together (in the studio), add the singer we'd had briefly way back in
1983, and re-visited the "Shadows" album that I'd simply given to Jose Bergeron
back in 2001, since he thought I was robbing him of royalties for Clever
Use.
It was a very interesting experience for me to
do some of the same songs over again with the original members; I also liked
having the opportunity to add 4 songs that were meant to be on the original
album.
Live at NEARfest 1999 from 2003
Chad Hutchinson from NEARfest Records contacted
me to tell me that they wanted to release our set from the first NF. To this
day, I believe it to be the only recording from the first NF to be
released.
I can clearly remember everyone's surprise who
saw us that morning, and our surprise as well at the enthusiasm of that great
audience.
Exodus from 2008
Our first album for Unicorn Records. Another
major personnel shuffle. I'm very proud of this album; I feel it's more of a
"band" album than many of our other ones. A lot of passion and energy went into
it. We lost one member while mixing it, and of course that didn't help to
promote the album, since we now had to groove in yet another new
guitarist.
How is the availability of your albums ?
I've just made a deal to secure worldwide
digital distribution for our entire back catalog. Aside from that, we also sell
most of our discs online through my website and other prog vendors in many
countries.
You have also contributed to some compilation
albums too. Please tell us more about these contributions.
In 2005 we were invited to contribute a song
for the Colossus/Musea epic "Odyssey: the greatest tale".
This was so much fun to do, that we agreed to
do another song in 2007 for the epic "Inferno".
Now I continue to do some of these
collaborations, but as a solo artist.
Your music has been described as symphonic fusion.
But how would you describe your music ?
Some of our stuff is definitely symphonic
fusion, but then again there are many influences and styles that come with each
new player in the band. There's some Canterbury flavour, then some hard rock
stylings. Sometimes even the kitchen sink.
What have you been up to since the release of
Exodus album in 2008 and what is your immediate plans ?
I had planned to start another album in 2009,
but the band wanted to focus on getting some gigs happening, so we rehearsed for
many months and did one show in late 2009. Then I took a break from the band
and started writing again. A couple of players came and went, and now I've
begun assembling what I consider to be the most solid line-up of Nathan Mahl
ever. And we are working on a new album, which I'm calling "Justify", and after
the album is done we will be preparing to perform in order to promote the new
disc properly; something that we didn't have a chance to do for Exodus, since my
wife had passed away just as Exodus was released.
To wrap up this interview, is there anything you
want to add to this interview ?
I am grateful to all those good people who buy
our music and keep supporting us by coming to see us play when we get around to
doing that.
I hope to have the opportunity to take my band
to Europe and other lands in the near future.
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