Present yourself to the readers
We're February, a post-indie band from Ostrava, Czech Republic. Vlad and I play guitar and sing, there's another Tom on bass guitar and Adam on drums. We got together in 2015.
Who composes ?...How does it work in the band ?
I think that we have no established way to write music. We have songs written solely by me or Vlad but also song which are nearly unchanged renditions of our jams.
Basically, when not written just by him, Tom came in with some ideas, riffs and sketches in the past, but they needed to be "planted" into more complex compositions, which is where my work comes in, mostly. As I think about it now, I might be something like an output editor.
Who writes the texts ?..What are they talking about ?..How does inspiration come ?
Me and Vlad both write lyrics for our singing parts. Vlad's lyrics are more confessional and focus mostly on love, mine are more abstract and darker in a way with no predominant theme. My lyrics usually end up as some sort of collages. I like the idea of singing about both good and bad things in a song - you can find me singing about romantic love and terroristic attacks in a single song, or about weird morbid dreams and my experience with a paperboy part time job. I also like cultural references - in "Life Is Not A Film" I quote Joy Division and sing about a character who is a mixture of Syd Barrett and Sid from the British TV series Skins.
As Tom mentioned, my lyrics are very personal and focus mostly on love and other feelings. Confusion, crippling self-doubt, isolation, depressions, thoughts of life and death, it's all there. Basically, what fills my head up until it starts hurting, I vent out through the lyrics. Basically, Hide Me Under Autumn Leaves is written with my thoughts on death. Which is funny taken with a fact that it's an album opener.
Why the name FEBRUARY ?
We talked about our name a lot, there were several ideas and we even made something like a poll and voted, finally agreeing on my idea of February, which at that time was connected to my exact and clear idea of sound - very deep and wide-ranged, mostly clean guitars with a ton of reverb and delay, which would make an ambience, that would literally sound cold as winter. Then, as we played and evolved, distortions and howling guitar feedbacks came along. Most of our new material doesn't sound like our name at all, but it will always carry the memory of that very start. Also it's the name of my favourite song of the band Film School.
What are your personal musical tastes and your influences ?
We all listen to a lot of stuff and have a lot of different influences. My favourite band is Animal Collective, which certainly inspired some of the more experimental parts of our record. We certainly are influenced by some of the modern post-punk bands like Interpol or Preoccupations in our heavier songs and by post-rock and emo bands in softer spots. I also adore Kevin Shields' and Brian Wilson's style of production.
What's your opinion about the current music scene in Czech Republic ?
The underground scene is getting better and better. A lot of great and interesting bands emerged in the last few years. Bands like Role, Acute Dose, Market, Places, Ghost of You or Plusminusnula all released great albums and deserve international recognition. The DIY scene here is full of friendly and helpful people for which we are very thankful.
What's your best live memory ? And why ?
For me it was definitely our album release party. I was a bit drunk, just to the point of a very good mood, though. That night, we had two drummers, everything was rehearsed very thoroughly, the sound was huge, the crowd was awesome, everything was perfect, just in its right place.
In studio, what was the ambiance for the album BRANCHING TRACKS ?...etc.…
We recorded the drums and bass in the studio of a famous Czech band Buty, who lended us their drumkit, which was really kind. The rest of the album was made at the Wavetime Studio ran by our good friend Łukasz Feber. The atmosphere in his cozy studio was so friendly and calm that we later gave him the privelege to spill the champaigne over our new CD.
