Seid
Printed From: Progarchives.com
Category: Progressive Music Lounges
Forum Name: Interviews
Forum Description: Original interviews with Prog artists (which are exclusive to Prog Archives)
URL: http://www.progarchives.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=81285
Printed Date: December 24 2024 at 09:31
Software Version: Web Wiz Forums 11.01 - http://www.webwizforums.com
Topic: Seid
Posted By: toroddfuglesteg
Subject: Seid
Date Posted: September 18 2011 at 12:19
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Founded in the 90s Seid play heavy psych rock referring to the old 60s and 70s with vintage keyboards and transitions to classic prog and alternative. The band released two albums and three singles so far. I got in touch with them for their story. ###################################################################################
Your
biography has been covered in your ProgArchives profile so let's
bypass the biography details. But why did you choose that name and
which bands were you influenced by ? Jürgen
Kosmos: A father of a friend of ours back in the days in Arendal, was
dating this strange, very spiritual woman. She used to show up at our
rehearsals dressed in this black witch-like costume and dance to one
specific song that she apparently enjoyed enormously. Then she would
talk endlessly about the powers of the “seidmenn” and the
“volver”, which would translate to something like wizards of the
viking age. All mumbo jumbo, of course, and we found it rather odd,
but kinda cool at the same time, so we decided our band should be
called “Seid”.
Jürgen
Kosmos & Burt Rocket: Like all sane youth we would sleep late,
bury our heads deep in the sand and head on out to the western
starland, while listening to all sorts of music. There’d be some
contemporary stuff, like Sonic Youth, Motorpsycho, Ride, Tool,
Primus, Tangle Edge, Helmet, the Smell of Incense, Front 242,
Seigmen, The Cure, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Porcupine Tree, Alice In
Chains, Smashing Pumpkins and of course the mighty local heroes of
Dustsucker, Jughead/Delusion and Samuel. There was also the more
classical stuff like Zeppelin, Hendrix, Sabbath, Alice Cooper, The
Doors and other 60´s/70´s stuff. It’s not that easy to say what
inspired us in writing music.
How
was the music scene in your local area (Arendal) when you started ? Jürgen
Kosmos: It was kinda great. We found some spiritual guidance in a
loosely organized crew in and surrounding the band The Smell of
Incense and the Spang Virr studio and the local rock club. Through
them we understood that some people live well by their own standards
and parameters. I don’t think they necessarily intended to serve as
our guiding fathers, but in many ways they did. Arendal includes a
lot of quite open minded people, musically speaking, contrary perhaps
to what you might think. But eventually, we packed our bags and moved
to the city. Or rather: to Trondheim.
You
relocated to Trondheim some years ago, 400 miles to the north of
Arendal. Why this relocation ? Do you have any problems getting gigs
now and how is the commercial viability of Seid these days ? Jürgen
Kosmos: There are so many good reasons to leave a small town at a
certain age, like there are reasons to return later on in life. At
that point we needed to be in the same town, pursuing a vaguely
defined dream of playing in a band. Trondheim seemed like a good idea
at the time. It’s not “some years ago”, however, it’s
been 13 or 14 years already. We have relocated several times since
then, in different cities and countries. A couple of us still live
there, others don’t. It’s not that important at this point. We’re
not mainly a geographical entity, we make music together. As far as
concerts and getting deals done go, we don’t have any problems, but
our booking agency, http://polarartist.no/" rel="nofollow - ,
may face some difficulties. But no worries, they’re professionals.
We’ve always been used to doing most the managerial work ourselves,
so it’s rather exciting to be working with a real agency in Norway
for the first time. The commercial viability of Seid is hard to
measure, but personally I belive we’re the sound that a lot of
people didn’t know they’ve been missing. Of course, History may
come back and teabag me while laughing diabolically. We’ll have to
wait and see.
I
gather the band members operate under pseudo names. Why hide yourself
under these masks? Jürgen
Kosmos: Why not? We don’t “keep it real”, we keep it unreal.
The individuals in a band are of no interest what so ever. The force
of Seid is a collective, strange, brute power. And the so called
honesty of being “yourself” is something we laugh at and leave to
the bearded americana-clones and hip-hopers. Furthermore, I once read
that acting was the most truthful form of expression, so maybe we
don’t hide, maybe you
are the one hiding.
 Over
to your two albums. Your debut album was Among The Monster Flowers
Again from 2002. Please tell us more about this album. Burt
Rocket: This album contains songs written over a vast period, ca 1993
- 2001. It took almost two years from we started recording it, till
it was finished. Not because we spent night and day in the studio,
mixing songs over and over again, but rather because we couldn´t
afford getting it done. In the end we did anyhow, and I´m quite
happy with how it turned out.
Jürgen
Kosmos: It was a jolly virgin voyage. I honestly thought we would fly
straight through the skies and land on the surface of the sun. In
some ways, perhaps, we actually did.
 Your
second and most recent album is Creatures Of The Underworld from
2006. Please tell us more about this album.
Burt
Rocket: “Creatures” mainly consists of songs we wrote during our
Trondheim-period. The aim was to go even further into space, and also
make things darker and more heavily psychedelic. The album starts
with a kind of dark, medieval and gloomy feel (but not without a
couple of crazy digressions where we use our opportunities to do some
parody on classic progrock-cliches), before the songs get more and
more space-thematic, finally ending up with a flight towards the sun.
We weren´t supposed to live through the latter, but it looks like we
did anyway. We like to think we´re here to stay, we´ll always be
around...
   You
have also released three Eps. Please tell us more about them. Jürgen
Kosmos: 7” vinyl singles to be precise. One of them has a secret
message on the cover. It includes our blood and some of our animals.
The darkness lays upon them, thick as the late 19th century London
fog.
For
those of us unknown with your music; how would you describe you music
and which bands would you compare yourself with ?
Burt
Rocket: We like to call our music “Cosmic Pirate Rock”, but that
may still leave some people clueless. The recipe is as follows:
Combine the spaced out sounds of Hawkwind with Gong´s psychedelic
groove. Add some steroids, to beef things up, some Balkan-music to
prevent it from being boring and just about everything else you like.
This is where the pirate part comes in: If we see something we like,
we steal it!
What
have you been up to since 2006, what is your current status &
what is your plans for this year and beyond ? Jürgen
Kosmos: We thought we were dead, but it turned out, we weren’t. It
seems, what doesn’t kill you, only makes you stranger. So next year
we’re releasing another album. That’s great news to the world,
and hopefully, now that Osama’s dead, the spotlight will be back on
Norwegian space rock again. Since the last album we’ve been doing
different stuff: Some work in the music business, others don´t, a
couple of kids have been born, studies have been fulfilled or
initiated or both, some of us have played with all sorts of other
musicians, and others have hardly played at all. We changed the
line-up of the band, introducing Bartin Viktor as a new member of the
family. In short: life has continued, as it tends to do.
To
wrap up this interview, is there anything you want to add to this
interview ?
Jürgen
Kosmos: It’s a very pleasent and joyful experience to be making
music together again!
Burt
Rocket: We are looking forwards to release our new album, and hope
that the two or three of you who are interested in that sort of
things will find it pleasing. Also we are looking forwards to play
some gigs and kick some serious space-butt again. Preferably German
or Italian, but don´t worry! All shall be served! Thank you to Lars & Burt for this interview Their PA profile is http://www.progarchives.com/artist.asp?id=3470" rel="nofollow - and their homepage is http://kosmonautes.com/seid/" rel="nofollow -
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