One artist that we've proudly endorsed here on gogoyoko is Sindri Már Sigfússon. Sindri is a 27 year old musician and visual artist from Reykjavík, but most people know him for his musical outings as either
Seabear or
Sin Fang Bous. He's about to release his 2nd album as Seabear on
Morr Music and a few months ago he blessed us with the Sin Fang Bous album Clangour (also released by Morr Music in Berlin). Both these projects have been really well released, enabling him to tour both projects extensively around Europe to a large audience. Check out either of them on the player here to your right and read on..
We wanted to get to know the man behind the music a bit better and he happily agreed to talk to gogoyokos' Gylfi Blöndal via email.
gogoyoko: Tell us a bit about the making of the new album. Seabear has grown from being your solo project to a 7 person band. How has that affected the songwriting and recording process? And how did you pick the line-up of the band?Sindri: "The new album has taken pretty long to make I guess. The
first album I had already written most of the songs, but after playing a few shows we decided to make this into a band so we wrote the album as a band. Just started the songs in the practice room and then played some of them live and then recorded them. I think everyone in the band started out as supposed to be a session player or just play one concert and then they just joined. I still work as the bands producer so the recording process is pretty much the same but it's a band now that works together and everyone has their say. It takes longer then when you are working alone but it's very rewarding in the end."
gogoyoko: I got to hear a few raw tracks from the new album recently, as well as seeing you on tour and I've noticed that many of the tracks have a definitive hit-potential. Where is your music heading and where do you see Seabear in five years?Sindri: "I think we're moving away from the folk/country area and the new songs are more experimental indie rock stuff. In five years we've hopefully made another album and toured a bit"
gogoyoko: Which brings me to this next question. I've been so fortunate to see Seabear live numerous times in the past and I've noticed that as the shows stack up, Seabear start sounding less like a folk band and more like a rock band. I guess that means that your getting tighter. Is this process intentional? Sindri: "I dont think it's intentional but when you're playing it's always the most fun playing the upbeat, loud songs I think. When we were doing the songs for this album we thought about making songs that would also be fun to play live. I still have a soft spot for folk and country music but it's not fun always doing the same sort of thing. I find what works best for me in art and music making is to be open and searching which means not doing the same thing over and over again even if you have gotten comfortable."
gogoyoko: I sometimes find it hard to imagine what kind of music you used to listen to as a teenager. I read somewhere that you were mostly into rap and hip-hop, and your first band‘s music reflected that. Care to elaborate on that?Sindri: "As a child I listened to everything. I was obsessed with Michael Jackson and went through my mom and dads' vinyl collection. My dads' favorite band was Pink Floyd and my moms' Frank Zappa. They had some good stuff but I also sat by the radio for hours taping songs I liked. I used to buy the german magazine Bravo and hang pictures of various metal bands on my wall even if I'd never even heard their music. I really loved bands like Metallica, Guns 'n' Roses, R.E.M, AC/DC and Rage Against The Machine. It's funny to think about that you used to go to your friends house just because he had some good record that you wanted to listen to. Now you can just go to the bands Myspace or look it up on Youtube. When I got into my teens I got really into hiphop and listened to lots of that until I was 16-17 when i discovered Radiohead and some post rock music."
gogoyoko: When is the new Seabear album being released and what‘s it called?Sindri: "Early 2010
(on Morr Music). It's called
'We Built A Fire' right now but it might change."
gogoyoko: You recently released the amazing album Clangour under your own Sin Fang Bous monicker. You started Seabear as a solo project and as we know, it‘s fair to call Seabear a band now. You‘ve been touring Sin Fang Bous with a live band; how did Sin Fang Bous come about and aren‘t you afraid that will also turn into a full-fledged band as well?Sindri: "I just wanted to do something by myself also. With a band it takes a pretty long time to get things done, especially with a seven piece band. But I'm always in my studio so I just felt that I had enough music in me for two projects. I've started working on the new Sin Fang Bous album that will also come out in 2010. I'm going to keep that project as my own little thing. I got some of my friends to play with me live and that's super fun but I'm going to keep the live thing open. I'd like to play some shows by myself also."
gogoyoko: Do you ever find it hard to divide your time between these two projects?Sindri: "Not really. I just work on whatever project has to be finished next. Right now I've been getting the Seabear songs ready for mixing but also sometimes I work on Sin Fang Bous demos in the meantime while the computer is rendering the Seabear songs. I feel like these projects are coming from different places and I have two seperate books for them where I write in my ideas."
gogoyoko: You‘ve done pretty well so far for a young artist like yourself. Do you have any piece of advice for other young artists trying to get ahead in the music business?Sindri: "Just work hard and don't give up. You have to make hundreds of crap songs before you come up with anything good. And a mixture of believing in yourself and being very self critical is good. My motto has been to be open and searching and that has worked very well for me."
gogoyoko: Any tour-plans in the works? I heard that Sin Fang Bous will support múm on their US tour in the fall..?Sindri: "Yes, we'll be opening up for múm on tour in the US. I'm really excited about that as I've never been to the US. No other tour plans for this year but you never know."
gogoyoko: Finally, what are your thoughts on gogoyoko? What are the benefits for a musician like yourself?Sindri: "I think this is a very good developement. We have to find some way to make this internet music stuff work. It's insane the amount of plays Seabear has on
Youtube and
Myspace. We're talking a few million plays. If we got 10 kr for each play we could pay for our next three albums! I mean most people love music and listen to music on a daily basis. Alot of it on the internet and the music on peoples ipods and phones are downloaded from the internet. I think more and more people pay for it and thats a great thing but there's a generation of people that are used to getting everyting on the internet without paying for it. It's a weird thing that's been going on for the last few years. There's a site called
last.fm where you can see how many people have been listening to your music on their music players that they have in their computers. These are the stats for Seabear: 1,938,880 plays (133,183 listeners), and i think the Seabear album has sold about 20.000 copies including internet downloads. That's 110.000 people that are listening to it without paying for it, and that's just the people that use that site! Don't get me wrong, I'm honoured and really happy that so many people seem to like the music and want to listen to it but something's wrong here when the band can't even afford to tour. I think the internet service providers should take some responsobility for this. I think those companies have made the most money of all out of this. I hope i don't sound too bitter. I don't like to think about this stuff actually. It's better to just concentrate on the music."
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