Present yourself to the readers
My name is Torstein, and I play bass in Manes. Mostly, at least. Sometimes I do other stuff as well.
What’s the story for SLOW MOTION DEATH SEQUENCE ?
That is a weird question, but sure. Well, our latest album “Slow Motion Death Sequence” is not a pure concept album, but there is a sort of red line running throughout the whole thing that deals with death and dying in many ways. Some have said they hear nothing but darkness and despair in the music, and some say they can hear a bit of hope and light there as well. We like that people immerse themselves in the music, but I must admit that the hope and the light was unintentional.
Why the name MANES ?
The band has been around since 1992 I think. I started just after the dawn of the new millennium. The name MANES has many meanings. It can mean the souls of the dead in latin, I believe, it can mean menstruation blood in another language, and I think it is the name of a museum or gallery in the Czech Republic. It might have had some sort of meaning for Cern when he founded the band years back, but it’s just a name. Like mine or yours.
What are your personal musical tastes and your influences ?
In MANES, our music is the sum of all our influences in a way, or none of them, so it might be hard to trace my favourites back to what we do there. Anyway … I listen to all kinds of stuff, really, and I jump from genre to genre and band to band all the time. Today I’ve been listening to Boards of Canada, Odd Nosdam, Morbid Angel and Townes Van Zandt. Tomorrow I’ll probably listen to something different. Some albums that has stuck with me through the years are albums like Mezzanine, Under a funeral moon, Kid A, Close to a world below etc.
What's your best live memory ? And why ?
We rarely play live with MANES, so I guess it would be our last gig approx 2,5 years ago or so. It was in Bergen here in Norway, and it was quite cool, since we tryied a completely different way of doing things there. I won’t bore you with the details. We also did a cool show many years ago, where we played a vernissage at this art gallery. We played semi-accoustic, and we played a few things we’ve never done after that. Jammed around some dark hypnotic stuff. No amps has blown up or anything like that.
In studio, what was the atmosphere for the album SLOW MOTION DEATH SEQUENCE ?...etc.…
We go to different studios multiple times before an album is done, and have done so for many years now. We make a lot of the music in the studio, and some of us have their own studios as well. We never rehearse. Only if we have to, for a gig or something. It’s much more fun to create than to re-create. But the atmosphere? Relaxed and inspired, I would say.
