Interview - Omer Ephrat of Ephrat, Oct/08

Multi-instrumentalist Omer Ephrats sits down to talk to us about his debut album, "No One's Words", the music scene in Israel, Yes's Relayer, and his future projects.

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ProgArchives: So can you give us a quick runthrough of how you got here and how you met your bandmates?

Omer Ephrat: Well, you know, in this band everything happened upside down. It’s not the normal story of a few guys with a few good ideas get together and form a band. It was completely different. There was no band, there was no idea of a band until I gave a taste of my music to Steven Wilson of Porcupine Tree. You know, these things I did in my studio, not thinking too much of what’s going to happen… and the next thing you know I have a contract on InsideOut and it’s the stupidest story of how everything got together and got started. At first I thought this was just going to be like a solo project, like a one man band, and it was, like, 2 years ago, and when the time slowly progressed I got the idea of forming a band around me, and that’s when I got Tomer Z – he was the second into my band, that’s how the heart of the band got formed. It’s very weird how the band got together, because most of the material was written for when the band was not in existence. You know, it’s a very funny story, kind of like a big Cinderella story.

PA: So how long has this album been in the works then?

OE: 2 years ago I called with Steve Wilson and got the contract, and there was like a song and a half ready. So it took, like, two years to do everything. To record everything, to write everything to form a band – and you know, it’s not like just get together and do a rehearsal and write the album and record it – I need to think much further than that, because there was no band. Most of the time was decision making time, I think I wrote the album in 2 and a half months, I recorded it in like, 4 months… the rest of the time was thinking about how the material would appear, and thinking about the next few steps, stuff like that. But the formal answer is 2 years.

PA: So I guess you’re pretty satisfied with the way it turned out, then?

OE: Yeah, I’m really satisfied. You know, it could have been much shorter than that. It could have taken 1 year, a year and a half, but I didn’t want to make any mistakes, or make decisions that I would regret like taking the wrong vocalists, because I had a few vocalists added… and they were ready to record everything when they were in the studio, but in the last moment I regretted and I got new singers in. So I’m very satisfied with how it turned out in the end. I made sure I wouldn’t regret anything.



You were working with people like Daniel Gildenglow and Petronella Nettermalm, did you find it threatening to work with these people?

OE: Well, it wasn’t so hard to approach them because we were under the same label, I just wrote a letter and it reached them. But to work with them it was a dream come true because Steven Wilson is a musical advisor at times and someone who can mix and master. And to work with Daniel and Petronella… it was a dream come true! It was a lot easier to work with them than the rest of the band because they have a lot of experience, especially Daniel – it took like 2 weeks to record the whole thing! I don’t understandhow he can record… I think it was 20 channels of vocals for a 10-minute song… I don’t know how he can do that! But he did an amazing job.

PA: Did they have much of a say in the direction of the songs, or was that mostly up to you?

OE: Oh, that’s a complicated question. First of all, it wasn’t only me and the other guys and the guests because I had a piano player and a cello player and a brass section a lot of hired musicians who did exactly what I told them to do. It’s not a democracy, this band – I call the shots, but I give a lot of freedom to these members, and I give a lot of freedom to the other guys in the band, especially the drum and bass. You can hear the drum and bass are very tight in this album… that’s because I gave them a lot of freedom, more than I thought I was supposed to when I thought it was a solo project. They set a certain tone for this album… In the bottom line I was the dictator there, I called the shots, and I made the final decisions. Even if sometimes there were other ideas that I hadn’t thought about that entered the album.

PA: As for Steve Wilson, do you think he’ll be around for other projects? And if so, do you think he’ll have a bigger role in it?

OE: Tough question… I don’t know. I just don’t know. I don’t want to think about future projects because it took three years to get this first one, and I don’t want to think about future – I’m even holding myself back from writing new material… I’m really holding myself back, because I want the new material to be evolved after touring and after some time of accumulating ideas. But it’s a possibility, and I’ve been thinking about it because he did an amazing job mixing and mastering this album. Amazing.

PA: You mentioned taking this on tour. Are there plans for that now?

OE: Oh yeah. The planning is starting right around now, but it’s going to take a while because it’s very hard to do this [laughs]. Because there’s the 4 of us, but then I count as the keyboard player and 2 guitars and you know I can only play instruments one at a time – I try! But I can’t. – so we need hired musicians to join the band for touring. Production wise, its going to be very, very hard working on this now, but I don’t know what it’s going to be because it’s very complicated. And we’re from Israel! So that costs a lot. We’re finding it very hard. Everybody wants it, but only the future will tell.

PA; I know you said that you don’t want to think about the next albums, but who would you want to collaborate with if you had the chance?

OE:  I already have plans! You found the dark side of me! [Laughs] I tried to hold back… But I have a lot of ideas, one of them is Opeth, the lead singer – I’ve had my eyes on him for a loooong, long time. And also there’s 2 Israeli singer/vocalists that I want to join me on my next album. Oh, just the sheer thought of it makes me happier [laughs].

PA: Coming out of Israel, do you find you often get compared to other acts like Amaseffer and Orphaned Land?

OE: I don’t know. In Israel they compare us all the time because us and Amaseffer are signed to the same progressive label, and everybody thinks that we know each other… and we don’t! I think the big difference between Orphaned Land and Amaseffer and us is that they are a ethnic based band. The ethnic side of them is the main part, that’s what’s special about their music. The ethnic side to our band is just one of the spices, one of the influences, not the main thing, and we’re trying to be a new progressive band with our own side and not focusing on the ethnic side – Which is very important for me to say! Because everybody, “okay, Israel! There’s going to be, like, flute and percussion, and violins and I don’t-know-what!” That’s not the case here, this is progressive rock, this is about music from North America and Europe that I was influenced by, and the Ethnic part is only one of the… you can’t escape it here – the ethnic influence, because it’s all around you. But it’s not the focus in this band.



PA: So would you consider yourself influenced more by progressive rock, or by the metal scene?

OE: Well... I think equally. You can say that Prog is in my mind, but metal is in my veins. Progressive music is for the mind… you can sit and enjoy and evaluate it! Metal is beyond that… it’s all about your mood at a certain moment.

PA: How about the reactions to the album so far? What do you think of the reviews you’ve read?

OE: Well, it’s my first album, so I was very, very curious to find out what people think of my album – which only makes me more confused. Because one guy thinks I’m a genius, and the next guy thinks my music is sh*t, and I don’t know what to think! It’s very confusing. So I learned that I don’t need to hear what other people think. I need to listen to what I think and that’s it. One guy will say that, “hey, this is the best song on the album” and guy will say, “this is the worst song on the album” and I don’t know what to think anymore, it’s very confusing! So I keep my thoughts to myself and people I trust and that’s it.

PA: Can you give us some background on the album’s longest track, “Real”?

OE: The writing process of Real was different from any other song. Because I wrote Real parallel to writing every other song. I wrote, for example, The Show, and while I did that I did the first section of Real. Ect. Ect. I wrote it in a different way, it was like, I had a really good idea, a really good melody. And I thought to myself, I wanted the big song, I wanted the 20-minute epic, and it was like, I want the 20-minute epic to be the best song. Of course it doesn’t work like that, it’s not a matter of good or bad, it was very different to work on this song, and it took the whole 3 months to write. Of course I put the most resources into it. I brought in the brass sections and the percussions and things like that. That’s it! I gave the song to Lior Seeker to write the words, the lyric part, and I’m very happy about the results.

PA: Do you think you’ll be doing more epics like this as you go on?

OE: I don’t know. But I have a lot of ideas! I don’t know if I should tell all of my ideas, but one idea that I have is to have my next album only a 1-track album. That’s one idea that I have, I even have a direction and a few starts about how to do that. But I think my writing is all about motifs, you know, taking one melody and repeat it in a few other sections in the song in a different way – that’s what I’m good at. I think, anyways! That’s how my mind works. Combine something that I already did in another part, but in another scale, another key, with different rhythmic changes. That’s my take on music, and that’s the direction that you can never know what’s going to happen. In one year when I start the new album and I have other ideas… we’ll just have to wait and see.

PA: Do you see the Israeli scene as one that’s hard to break out of?

OE: It’s a hard thing because there’s no… Israel is a tough place. Not only politically, but musically as well. Because there are more musicians than fans, I really think that. There’s a lot of musicans, but no actual crowd that will go to see shows, and musicians from Europe and the US hardly ever come here. You have a lot of musicians here whose only chance is to break out to Europe and the US, and they don’t have the option to have a crowd in Israel. I see a lot of great bands here to try to arrange a show, arrange a studio or a gig, and it just doesn’t work. You don’t have anyone to see the show or buy the album. The only chance you have here is to start immediately from the US or from Europe, and that’s the only chance! That’s what happened with Amaseffer, that’s what happened with Orphaned Land, and a lot of bands who originally made it in Europe and not in Israel. People don’t know them here at all! That’s the only way to break out from here, ironically.

PA: I’m coming into my last question now, and that would be: What was the last cd you listened to?

OE: Eehmm… wait a minute, don’t tell me… I think it was Opeth’s Watershed. But I think I heard something else… ah! I heard Yes – Relayer!

PA: Nice!

OE: Excellent! Excellent album! I think Yes is my biggest influence regarding writing music. Because when you hear Yes and you hear other bands in the 70s and it’s completely different from everything else, and you think to yourself, “How did they do that? How much drugs did they take?” [laughs] I don’t know. It’s unbelievable. So I thought to myself, “if they can do it, I can do it”.

PA: [laughs] Do you think you’re ever doing to try for the “Tales From Topographic Oceans huge double album epic fest”?

OE: Oh… that’s going to be the dream! If something like that were to come true… that would be a dream. Write that down, in a few years there’s going to be an album and we’re going to have to talk about it.

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No One's Words is out now on InsideOut Records



Thanks to Omer for taking some time for the interview, as well as the guys at InsideOut for setting everything up.