PlanetMosh Keeping it Metal
Planetmosh recently caught up with Lunocode’s drummer and co-composer Perseo to talk about the current album ‘Celestial Harmonies’ and the bands history.
Firstly many thanks for taking time out to talk to us here at Planetmosh. I’d like to begin by asking you how the band came together in the first place?
Hi to you all, the band formed in 2004 under the name ‘Anima’. At that time we had a different vocalist and played mostly covers. Then, in 2010, we signed a contract with Spider Rock Promotion who published our first E.P., called ‘Last Day Of The Earth’, and at the same time changed our name to Lunocode, which is a wordplay between ‘lunokhod’ ( a Russian space probe) and ‘code’.
In 2012 we published, again through Spider Rock, our first full length album ‘Celestial Harmonies’ and here we are!
Getting straight down to the latest album ‘Celestial Harmonies’, it seems worlds apart from your previous EP ‘Last Day Of The Earth’, and yet you chose to re record ‘Heart Of The World’ which featured on the EP, did it have any special meaning for you?
Yes it definitely has, it’s all about the lyrics, I feel very connected to it, it’s my utopia. The song is an anthem for a better world, hope for the future. I think of it as ‘my’ song, the song that represents me the most, and so I came up with idea of composing an acoustic version and asked my friend Dora to compose and play the flute parts. Listening to this song still brings me to tears.
The first four tracks on ‘Celestial..’ have very much their own identities, in particular ‘Indifference’ which features Olaf Thorsen on guitar, how did you come to ask him to contribute?
Through Spider Rock, we asked them to contact Olaf and from that I spoke to him direct. Olaf is a great person, very kind. He played a great solo on ’Indifference’ (the songs middle solo) which added a lot to the song and made it very precious.
Of course the biggest part of the album is taken up by the epic ’The Origin Of Matter And Mind’ which runs for nearly 30 minutes. Tell us the background to the track?
The suite tells a very complicated story, with some philosophical meanings that are hard to convey in an interview. The main theme, however, is the connection of the act of ’thinking’ and the act of ’creating’.
This is a theme that has always intrigued me very much. I also took inspiration from experiments Americans carried out with animals in Space, particularly Monkeys. Mixing all that and adding various references to works by Carl Sagan, Arthur C. Clarke, Olaf Stapledon, Phillip K. Dick and Arthur Schopenhauer, I was able to produce the lyrics and the fiction behind ’The Origin…’
Being so hard to cover a theme so complex, I decided to open a blog http://lunocode.blogspot.com to give an in depth explanation of the concept , so, check it out and give me some feedback!
Did you always intend the track to be as long or was it something that developed?
The latter, fellow band members Paride and Giordano started to write music and arrangement’s, and then I came up with the concept, and, by putting it all together, words and music, the result is this suite in six movements. We usually don’t plan anything as such, we simply let things develop and click together naturally .
Daphne’s female vocal adds very much to the atmosphere of the whole album, have you always written with a female vocal in mind?
When it comes to the vocal melodies, yes. We always write with Daphne’s vocal style in mind, it couldn’t be done any differently really.
After writing what must have been a very challenging and complex album such as this, how difficult is it to start thinking of new material?
It’s not difficult at all, I always have hundreds of new ideas in mind. I can tell you we have some new material and ideas to develop in the next few months, so you’ll definitely be hearing from us again soon!
I guess Lunocode could be put in the Progressive Metal genre, are you still developing your style and sound?
Yes, I think we are not a band that repeats the same songs, album after album. We like to develop new ways to write music and to approach composition. I think certain elements will remain the same but others will definitely evolve over time.
Have you any plans for live shows at all and would you attempt to recreate ‘The Origin…’ on stage?
We’ve just come back from our European tour supporting Theatres Des Vampires . We toured mainly Eastern Europe and got to play in some beautiful venues and countries.
For now we prefer not to play ‘The Origins…’ in its entirety as our sets tended to be 30 to 45 minutes in length, we wanted to take on stage a well balanced tracklist, with progressive songs but also including songs such as ‘Sin Cara’ and ‘Indifference’. However, we plan to play ’The Origins…’ in the future when we have a longer set time to fill. On this tour, we played some of the movements, such as ’Tree Of Life’ and ’The Cosmic Architect’, and people seemed to enjoy them very much!
Turning to the album artwork, I understand the airplane featured on the cover has special meaning, tell us the story behind that.
The cover artwork shows a red Airplane, it has special meanings for two reasons. The first is a metaphor, man always tries to make great things, to achieve ambitious goals, and when this is not possible in the real world, then he dreams on, thinking about possibilities and hoping that in the near future the dream comes true.
In a sense the airplane represents this process. A man is attracted by the sky, the stars, the universe but they are not always within reach, so he builds an ‘airplane of imagination’, this is the metaphoric meaning of the artwork.
The second reason is that my Grandfather, Aldo, built this airplane, it serves as a weather vane right outside my house.
Finally for those yet to hear the band how would you describe yourselves?
This is always a difficult question to answer. I think our music is very melodic, maybe classy, and so I think that anyone searching for those two elements might appreciate it. We also have a philosophical background to our lyrics, which is very important in the musical landscape we are trying to build.
Musically we are between rock and metal, I think it’s difficult to describe our music without listening to it. By checking our official website with it’s links to You tube, My Space, etc, you can check out the music yourself.
Many thanks for your time and many best wishes for the future.
Thank you for this great opportunity to talk to Planetmosh readers.
To you readers, I would like to say that I hope you enjoyed reading this interview and hope you will check out our official website www.lunocode.com and our blog to keep in touch with us. We also have a face book page at http://www.facebook.com/LunocodeFan so click the ‘like’ button to receive regular updates, and to get the chance to interact with us.
I hope to get some new internet friends soon!
