“In der Ruhe liegt die Kraft.”, besagt ein beliebtes Sprichwort und wird durch das dritte Studioalbum von Aidan Knight mal wieder bestätigt. Dort führt uns der Kanadier mit bardenartigem Gesang und sanften Kontrabass-Klängen durch ein märchenartiges Musikerlebnis zwischen Ruhe und Klanggewalt. Ab dem 22.01 liegt “Each Other” im Plattenladen deines Vertrauens und läutet damit Aidan’s große Europatour 2016 ein. Was Schneebälle mit Songwriting zu tun haben und wofür man sich mal richtig schämen kann erfahrt ihr hier:
Hey! Last time I saw you at Golden Leaves Festival we had a really good conversation about pickles!
True! We can talk about pickles now if you want to!
No way! Let’s talk about what you’ve been up to since then. I stalked you the other day and I read something about you moving to Leipzig?
We talked about Leipzig but then we settled on Berlin. We have flights booked and coming here in January.
That is great!
When I first listened to the album I had to think of this classical vinyl of “Peter and the Wolf“ and your singing is almost bard like. Can you tell me a little of your life while making the album?
That’s awesome! I love that! Well, the time in my life the album draws from is this on that we are talking in right now. The process of it started in 2014 where I got together with the band, that is Olivier, David, Juliet and Collin we really wanted to work on the musical ideas right from the beginning all the way through. It was either gonna go really badly or really well and I am glad it went really well. There was a lot of hard work, frustration and banging your head against the wall to come up with ideas. Generally, for 70% of the time that we were working, it was really great and a lot of interesting moments and conversations between the 5 of us happened. We took those things and recorded them and now you can hear them on this album.
After all that, how did you feel listening to the album for the first time?
That is a really great time for me. Well, ultimately good and bad. What is great is, you hear it and for the first time you hear how the lyrics go together and the music goes together. Sort of what you’re trying to say, what you are trying to capture there. I think almost all records are a great time capsule, a portrait that you can always look back to and see your entire life. Also, how much further you’ve gotten. I’m looking forward to looking back on this record in two or three years and either being embarrassed, which I probably will be but also see that there was a lot of great stuff.
Embarrassed? Are you embarrassed about you last record?
I am embarrassed about all sorts of things that I did before.
Really? Because I looked up the first video of you on YouTube ever and it’s like 8 years old and you have really long hair.
I remember that show. It was in this chapel somewhere. My mom was singing. I can remember all these things but I don’t really like watching videos of performances.
This is something that I’ve been thinking about. If photographs and records and paintings and physical things are portraits of something…there is something about experiencing live music as a performer and also as someone in the audience, no Instagram photo or professional photo, no video can be the same as physically being there.
The new album has an undertone that seems so much more grown up. Imagining I had never meet you before, I would almost say it sounds like someone who looks at the world in a less romanticized way than before.
The funny thing is I’m looking at the world in a more romantic way. Less romanticized but parts of the thing are love songs. Not as typical, they are not „Oh i love you so much oh baby, baby, baby…“. I view this recording as more focused and I have been doing this for a longer amount of time. I’ve been playing with the same 5 people for almost 8 years, but I have known a lot of them even longer, so the ability to communicate musically and personally and having that trust with them, allows me to not be embarrassed to show them the very beginning of song ideas. Just little things that I am excited about and then turning that thing. It’s like a snowball that rolls and rolls and rolls and becomes this perfect ball of snow, if you want to call a song a ball of snow. Well I just did. It is not a great metaphor, but it is a metaphor for what songwriting can be. All of your experiences and emotions are just expanding and growing and eventually, because of gravity it must stop. It’s funny, maybe the best metaphor is that you have this giant ball of snow and you break it up into little pieces, which are the ideas of songs.
You know, actually I think it’s a perfect metaphor. Also, because you’re from Canada!
But where I am from in Canada it doesn’t snow. In Victoria it doesn’t get too hot and it doesn’t get too cold. If it does snow then only about 2-3 centimeters.
Great. All my Canadian stereotypes are crushed now. But let’s talk about the video for “All clear“ which starts with this seemingly depressed guy who goes to some sort of hospital, then ends up being sucked into a virtual world where he can fly and do all sorts of stuff.
There is this character played by me who is sort of detached and not very responsive to anything that is happening in the scenes. Then he goes to this new age kind of place with crystals and aroma therapy and it’s very experimental. Once he get’s pushed into this room he becomes a CGI character and comes out on the other side. Not necessarily better but just not understanding at all what happened.
How did you come up with the concept?
The directors William and Oliver are friends of mine, young guys and I said I’d like to make a video with you, let’s figure out a few ideas. So we pitched some back and forth and some were a little more standard, a little more dreamy and slow. Will and Oliver came to me with the idea of the video almost exactly formed like it turned out to be. I was skeptical at first, but the thing to take away is that they were really excited about it and one of my guiding principals is: Let people do what they feel really good about and they will do great. You are not putting all this restrictions on them and they are able to execute their vision. There were some times were I was like, I don’t know if this is gonna be good. It was very low budget, we filmed it in only two days but they did some rendering and stuff for about a week and it turned out amazing. Then there was this period where I had to send it to the label and worried what people were gonna think about it. The response has been amazing so far, so I am working on another video with those guys and I am also working with the Amazing Factory Guys. I want all my videos to have this feel to them were you think this is weird but you can’t stop watching.
