BEND THE FUTURE: Emotional Twists
Grenoble, France quintet Bend the Future was formed in January 2019, and in the span of the next few months they wrote, recorded and self-released their debut album entitled ‘Pendellösung.’ The group opens our recent Progotronics compilation with the song “Kiss n Fly,” and in a new interview for Prog Sphere they talk about the album, and more.
Define the mission of Bend the Future.
Bend the Future is a passionate progressive rock band that strives to inspire people to confront and to appreciate the peculiar and the unusual through tunes with carefully-thought musicality that incorporate a wide range of emotional twists.
Tell me about the creative process that informed your recent album “Pendellösung” and the themes it captures.
We have many mountains around Grenoble, the French Alps, where we live. Just looking at them makes one feel pretty small and unimportant sometimes, yet allows one to see their personal troubles from a broader perspective. We think that without doubt this has something to do with the creative process. Another important aspect in the creative process is the chemistry of the band. Most of us did not know each other before the band, yet musically we really understand and complement each other. This helped creating a lot of things almost effortlessly.
As for the themes the album captures, we can say that the album explores themes of isolation, confrontation and yearning. In fact, the album tells the story of a hermit in a secluded forest who is a pilgrim in his own memories, memories which are recorded in his writings addressed to an unnamed loved one.
What is the message you are trying to give with “Pendellösung”?
There are no particular messages, it is up to the listener to take whatever they feel like. The album has lengthy tracks over 6 minutes given its prog nature. Thus, there are quite a few different feelings within the same track.
What we like to do is giving the listeners a journey with each song, and hopefully a consistent feeling throughout the album.
How did you document the music while it was being formulated?
Most of our music usually have their foundation in the forms of demos made by our guitarist Can Yildirim, then we rehearse them together. We record all the rehearsals, with an iPhone or so, nothing fancy. But this helps a great deal to go back and listen, and extract any existing nice bits we may have played as we improvise. Then we arrange the tracks accordingly.
Is the dynamic flow of the pieces carefully architected?
We do think about what we want to give in a certain track, how it should be structured and what it may be lacking in terms of fluidity. It wasn’t bad what we achieved in the first album, yet we want to improve, to make things sound more compact and together, glued more elegantly let’s say.
Describe the approach to recording the album.
We had already decided to record an album in 2019 even a month after we formed the band. We played some live shows and in the meanwhile prepared demos of each track. Then we booked a studio called “Little big Studios” close to the city of Grenoble in August.
We wanted to record it live; meaning all five of us plays at the same time, looking at each other, feeling the music at the same time as we play. Then did some overdubs for the necessary instruments and that was it ! It went much better than we expected. We planned to record 4 songs but in the end we were able to record 7 tracks, about 50-55 minutes of music that we could use.
How long “Pendellösung” was in the making?
Creation process, the composition, took about 3 to 4 months. Recording time was rather short, a total of 5 days in studio, including the first day’s set up. Mixing and mastering was not long, it was done in 2 weeks and then the rest was about release and promotion dates.
Which bands or artists influenced your work on the release?
Camel, King Crimson, Tigran Hamasyan, Snarky Puppy and Opeth can be given as the artist we were influenced.
What is your view on technology in music?
It is a massive part of the music industry at the moment. It helps for many things and must definitely be used. Yet due to the ease it bring, meaning the ease in making music, we think that it saturates the market quite a bit with a lot of “ordinary” or already-existing music. We always try to force ourselves on what we could put on the table, we always strive to create interesting and fresh stuff. We know it is hard given the exponential rise of the amount of music, yet it is worth trying. Another issue is over correcting. Of course using technology to make a tune sound as good as possible is the way to go, but this should not be at the extend of converting the music to something inorganic, soulless.
Do you see your music as serving a purpose beyond music?
Not really. If someone listens to our tunes and feels inspired to do certain things, well, we may say that it is another measure of success!
What are your plans for the future?
We plan to keep up our pace and write new music. Hopefully in 2020 we will record our second LP, before which we shall release a single from the last studio session, a song we haven’t released yet. We also have couple of shows lined up, and our plans include playing in large-scale festivals!
Pendellösung is out now; order it from Bandcamp. Follow Bend the Future on Facebook.
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