KATRE: Explorative Statements
Berlin-based instrumental post-rock four-piece Katre return this September 30th with the release of their sophomore full-length effort entitled ‘Behind the Resilience.’ About the upcoming release, guitarist Hasan Koç and drummer Okaner Ertuğrul speak for Prog Sphere.
Describe the musical frameworks your new album “Behind the Resilience” explores.
Okaner (Drums): It is a story of four people who have been listening to progressive music for many years and got together for a post metal project but at a certain point, asked themselves like “why not prog dude?”. The answer is the album, apparently.
Hasan (Guitars): Concerning the album, we are telling a refugee story with instrumental songs. This statement sounds kind of explorative, because a story is usually related to some textual artefact, in this case lyrics. We do not have them and this explorative character can in my opinion mostly be represented in musical terms with progressive approaches.
What are the biggest challenges you’ve faced and lessons learned during the creative process for “Behind the Resilience”?
O: We didn’t face a major challenge actually. A band with this much distance between members are the challenge itself so it is pretty hard to challenge us more i suppose. Lessons are too many within the process but to signify the one, shared hearts and minds never care about the distances, different backgrounds or any other obstacles when it is time to speak.
H: Information exchange between the band members is certainly a challenge. I am on the same page with Okaner, it is sometimes really hard to communicate the ideas by sending bits and bytes. We all miss this dimension of routine jamming, but we also try not to let the distances keep us from making music together.
What do you try to specifically tell with the title track?
H: Encounters is an optimistic album. Behind the Resilience is not. Resilience is a concept about standing up even after getting so many punches. When we look at the geographies where many people are left with no choice than leaving their home, in Africa, Anatolia, Middle East, we see those resilient people. They learned to win by learning to lose. This process of having to leave everything behind is so hard, even the most resilient is helpless. Those are the people, who have no ability of survival anymore, I mean not physically, but psychologically. That’s why the closing words of the album reads “After all, what can be more difficult than taking the ability to survive from one person and still keeping it alive?”. Hence the title track “Behind the Resilience”. Make sure to check our webpage katremusic.com to read the whole story.
To someone who hasn’t heard the album, what can he or she expect from “Behind the Resilience”?
O: It is a beautiful, sad, complex expression of a very humane story which is not recked enough.
H: Absolutely. I can add two elements to that. First, it is a heavy but still an emotional album. Second, I guess it is an album which might surprise the listeners due to the variety of the sound and the approaches.
How has your perspective on the possibilities of song arrangement expanded over the years?
O: Everybody who are into music most probably listen to a lot. We do the same. This kind of development occurs when you curiously ask why and how and educate yourself ambitiously and continuously.
H: The more time passes, the more I personally learn to be empathetical and think about the stories of the people that I want to tell. This is the most important driving force behind the arrangements. Furthermore, as Okaner points out, listening to the other bands, studying them, trying to get the ideas that they reflect is helping us to progress in the song arrangements.
What evolution as musicians do you see across your recorded works?
O: Mostly, better sounding songs and album. Current trends on metal music or other genres we listen to also influence us in terms of style, playing as well.
H: Certainly. The first album, Encounters sounded crispy, it incorporated high-gain guitars although the songs were more towards the post-rock/ambient style. In this one, the overall sound of the instruments is closer to each other, the guitars have as much gain as required. I had the possibility of trying out many different amp profiles due to the possibilities offered by Kemper. Furthermore, Chris Edrich (The Ocean, Klone, Leprous) has done an extraordinary work, having him with us was a pleasure.
What types of change do you feel this music can initiate?
O: It is hard to foresee. Change is rapid in everything, it is unpredictable. As our feelings and ideas change as well, the way we express them surely will change. I don’t think we have some sort of limits, rules or red lines etc. in terms of our music. So we’ll see.
H: Oh well, in this regard I think of Tarkovski who says that cinema is a way of compensating the past, the time we lost. The audience looks for this missing time and memories in the scenes and stories. I would like to think that this is what happens with any music, including ours as well. Maybe this is one reason that music is so universal, may be this is why we can talk to the universe without using a spoken language.
Do you tend to follow any pre-defined patterns when composing a piece?
O: Instead of being hardcore metal-heads, not at all. (= This usually effects the way we arrange songs but composing, not that much.
H: No, I do not think so.
What non-musical entities and ideas have an impact on your music?
O: For me, I’m pretty much into many visual forms of art, cinema, photography, illustrations etc. Things I see there certainly have an impact on the way I create music.
H: The fact that we are killing the nature, the living entities therein, wars, floods, modern dictatorships, man’s greed, the will to power… All those things challenging me to leave a better world behind to the kids of this world have an impact.
What advice or philosophy might you impart to other musicians, be it in forms of creativity, technical stuff, the business side of it, or anything else?
O: In terms of creativity, the hardest thing is having something to say. If you believe that your words would matter, please say it in the easiest way you can. People should not get stuck in picking the ways to speak but to the speech itself.
H: This is a hard question. I think I do not have anything special here, but one thing that comes to my mind is the necessity of having faith in your songs and musical work. This is not too easy, because it is very cloudy out there in the wild, there is so much noise.
For more about Katre visit their website.
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