Posted on July 14, 2009 - by Mark Zonda

Thomashead

“For one day I wanna drown in  your precious arms, I wanna listen to the siren songs, she got me down, into the water, as you got me wrong”

Thomas Feiner is cool sounds from Gothenbur. Yet yes, no. We’re not talking about the next indie band from a coloured little room.

In the cinematic musical world of Thomas Feiner Sigur Ros meets Brian Eno to ketch Bjork and Chris Rea at the same time, down in the most suggestive movie you’ll never have the chance to see. Still Thomas’s got a very strange fashinating project to present a really a lot to say. Let’s ask him some questions…

Mark Zonda: When and when did you began to compose music?

Thomas: That started in my early teens. My younger brother and I had always been encouraged by our parents to get involved in music. We played trumpet and saxophone respectively. Later on we developed a fascination for electronic instruments – synthesizers and such. That’s when we started delving into making music of our own…

Mark Zonda: Did you ever came back to the use of trumpet and saxophone? How this influenced your way of approaching to music?

Thomas: Yes, I played the trumpet solo on For Now. I’m very much out of practise by now, but managed to put together something that worked for me emotionally. The trumpet playing put me in certain orchestral contexts as a youth. I played in a youth symphony orchestra among other things. My fascination for the orchestral sound probably stems from this period.

Mark Zonda:  Why sophisticated and classy songs instead of dumb cheap catchy indie pop?

Thomas: The latter is pretty big on the Swedish indie-scene actually. You’re constantly being encouraged to be thirteen years… I just don’t feel at home with that at the moment.
Mark Zonda: But still haven’t you put yourself on test writing cheap songs? Even if to try to impress a girl?

Thomas: I’d like to say no, but actually, sometimes it’s pretty hard to know what moves in the depths of one’s subconscious… Something might feel very honest and elevated at the point of writing, only to discover a couple of days later that it was utter nonsense.
Mark Zonda:  When it was the first time that someone told you your voice was great, and how did you reacted? Have you always been conscious of that?

Thomas: That was just after my brother and I formed some sort of a band and recorded our first demo. I have some dim recollection of climbing into a small closet recording vocals for the first time. I wasn’t really very confident with the result, but there was this friend from whom we had borrowed a synthesizer. He was extremely impressed. Of course, with my current frame of reference and taste it was downright awful. Around that time it was fashionable to sound a bit like you urgently needed to go to the bathroom…

Mark Zonda: Can you tell us more about your first demo?

Thomas: I’d rather not. In fact – looking back at one’s early efforts is, most of the time,  either uninteresting, embarrassing or downright painful. Luckily I have a rather cloudy memory in this regard.

Mark Zonda: For those who still doesn’t know it, can you sum up for our  readers the story of “The Opiates”. It was a struggling birth indeed!

Thomas: Today all of that is a bit of a blur for me. But yes, it was a long and rather winding road. We started out as a band, but fell apart during the process of recording the album. The recordings took place in a rented space at first, but as we disintegrated I ended up finishing the project in my graphical studio. Working with my graphic stuff during the days, and recording at nights, when the rest of the building lay empty. At one stage we involved the Polish Radio Symphony Orchestra, which took me to Warsaw. At the end of the whole project I was drained and burned out.

Mark Zonda: How did you got in touch with Polish Radio Symphony Orchestra, and… was it expansive?

Thomas: It was our record label manager at the time, Andreas Schaffer, who first suggested it on a pre-production meeting. I had hopes in this direction and was very happy he brought it up himself. The label set us up with orchestral producer Peter Siedlaczek and orchestrator, arranger and conductor Manfred Honetschläger. After some preparations and discussions I joined with them in Warsaw to attend the recording session. The money the label put up for the session was such that I think no small label would ever do anything like it in the current climate and the changes the record industry is undergoing now, which is a bit sad. Today I think you’d have to find other cheaper solutions somehow.

Mark Zonda: Ever worked for a filmscore? I which movie or by which director  would you find comfortable in?

Thomas: During 2003 I was invloved in the soundtrack for Love in Thoughts (Was Nützt die Liebe in Gedanken) by Achim von Borries. It was an interesting and rewarding experience, but not necessarily one that I would embark upon again. I am really fascinated by the combination of music and image, but it is rather difficult to subordinate oneself to someone else’s vision. And the long format of a movie forces you to think a lot in terms of context and coherence: a short piece of music might fit wonderfully to an isolated scene, but heard in context, it might deviate too much from the rest. And you don’t really know until you actually heard it in it’s proper context. Maybe it’s a question of experience…

Thomas Feiner – “The Siren Songs”

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