09/05/2004 |
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Interview with Hubi Meisel
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mail interview by dalia "gryphon_spirit" di giacomo__ 09/05/2004 organized by Mr. Hubi Meisel and GryphonMetal review EmOcean
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ABOUT 100 m HIGHER THAN THE CHEOP'S PYRAMID dalia - Hi Hubi! Your bright new great work "EmOcean" has been recently released. Can you tell us a bit its story: how did you come to prepare a concept album about this voyager in the Atlantic Ocean facing the myth of the lost continent Atlantis? Was there a tight cooperation between the musical composition and the text-writing? Which artists were involved and how long did the whole preparation last?
Hubi - The
ideas for the concept story were the result of some very captivating
and vivid dreams that I had at night, and the morning after I simply knew
that my next disc must be entitled “EmOcean” and that the album would
deal with ocean-related mysteries, the underwater life and also ancient
Greek mythology. I
had some FANTASTIC musicians “on board” of EmOcean and the final
result of has also a lot to do with them and esp. the cooperation with
Vivien Lalu. He’s from Paris and he e-mailed me 2 ½ years ago because he
had visited my site and knew me from a CD with a former group. His
abilities really impressed me and since he liked the “EmOcean” concept
very much, I asked him if he would like to play the keys on the album. I
soon realized that he understood very well what kind of vision I had in
mind for this album, and so we soon agreed that he would also compose the
instrumental music according to my directions. We discussed each song in
detail via MP3 and arranged the material together; then I started writing
my lyrics & vocal melodies. That cooperation worked very well! The
“EmOcean-crew” was finally completed by my Swedish friend Daniel
Flores (Mind's Eye - drums), Dutch guitarist Marcel
Coenen (Sun Caged, Ex-Lemur Voice), who
had
already played the guitars on my first solo album “CUT”, and French
bass player Jean B. Affonço a.k.a. "Bamby".
Bamby lives in Paris, too, and actually plays in a hardcore band called
Absolute. On the two bonus tracks “Crystal Moon” and “Tears
of an Enchanted Sea” you can hear Joop
Wolters from the Netherlands on guitars & bass. The other
musicians of course had the freedom to interpret their parts in their own
style and to include their own ideas and creativity. All of them did a
real great job on EmOcean! The
preparations for “EmOcean” only took about 2 months, but from
beginning to end the realization of the album took about 15 months.
“EmOcean”
is not mainly an album about Atlantis… it actually deals with the sea
and the underwater world in general. But it’s true: Atlantis is still
one of the most interesting mysteries ever. The tragedy of its highly
developed culture touched me very much, and people on earth could avoid
doing the same mistakes than our forefathers.
Thanks!
That’s exactly what I wanted to express with my vocals J
Well,
I have been influenced by rather different kinds of music. At the age of
13-17, I was mainly into NWOBHM. When I listened to Dream Theater and
Queensryche for the first time, I was totally thrilled and discovered my
love for progressive music. Vivien is also very much into Prog
music, as well as Daniel and Marcel, so I think you can clearly hear
progressive influences. Nevertheless I don’t consider “EmOcean” as a
typical Prog CD… it contains many different styles that are hard to
classify.
In
the “EmOcean”, the sea god Poseidon is definitely a good and
supportive character: His hint opens the door for the hero to find the key
to the mystery… Ancient Greek mythology tells that Poseidon once sent a
dolphin that should convince Amphitrite, the daughter
of Nereus, to marry him. She
hid in the ocean, but the dolphin found her and could manage to convince
her. As a reward, Poseidon immortalizes the Dolphin by transforming
him into the star constellation of “Delphinus” :-) So you see that
there’s indeed a special connection between Poseidon and the star
constellation that appears in the “EmOcean” story.
Not at all! The concept story points out that Zeus was forced to damn the Atlanteans into the deepest abyss because they had abused their knowledge. That represents a parallel to our world and society… The world is subject to polarities: good and evil, love and hate, wisdom and ignorance. I do think that it’s very important for mankind to evolve, but since humans are too much dominated by their urges and desires, it’s clear that growing knowledge can lead to the misuse of power and finally result in a tragedy. But I do believe that such mistakes sooner or later help mankind to act wiser in the course of time, even if the consequences of these mistakes can be very disastrous sometimes. It’s a rather long-winded process, as humans often have to make the same mistake over and over again until they finally see that they were wrong. In “EmOcean”, the Souls of the former Kings of Atlantis want to warn us and to awake our willingness to learn from our mistakes and the former mistakes of other cultures. “EmOcean” is an album about many topics… the sunken continent is just a wheel to transport this warning message to the listener.
Plato
compiled the first written books about Atlantis and traveled a lot, to
Egypt too. Is there a connection in your EmOcean between Egypt and Bimini
Road? There
is no explicit connection in the concept story. But there’s a passage
about Edgar Cayce in it, and this man considered Bimini as one of the
mountain tops of the ancient Atlantis. According to Cayce, a hall of
records that contained the records of Atlantis had been constructed
somewhere in the region of Bimini Road. He claimed that the hall of
records was identical with the one in Egypt under the Sphinx. In the song “Fantasea”, the hero and the dolphin are passing big crystal pyramids. Some scientists call Egypt the “child of Atlantis” as they consider the pyramids of the ancient Atlanteans as archetypes of the Egyptian pyramids. The newspaper Newsweek once reported the discovery of a massive pyramid below the Bermuda Triangle with a height of about 260 m, which is about 100 m higher than the Cheop’s Pyramid. EmOcean
is very different, concerning the conception from the previous CUT, that
was a cover album. I have listened to the sample The Sun always always
shines in TV and it's a miracle how you turned that moaning poppy song
into an excellent Hard Rock track. But among those 7 pieces chosen in Cut
only two gets my utter admiration in their genre: Broken Wings and Drive.
And i see that "your" Drive presents many instrumental
techniques that will be blooming then in EmOcean!! I
think that the progressive music scene is not very big, but I got the
impression that those people who are open to different Metal/Rock style
becomes more and more interested in progressive music, too! Many listeners
are probably not really aware of the artistic efforts and all the thoughts
that are put in such an album, but that’s OK… the most important thing
is that they like it.
I’m
sure that the people that have been listening to Rock during the last 15
years ago will also like that music throughout the next 30 years… but
teenagers of today won’t be interested very much in this kind of
music… I guess they just like commercial stuff like Nu Metal… but
we’ll see! Maybe there will be a revival of 80s/90s rock in some
years… you can never know what happens!
Producing
solo CDs gives me a lot of artistic freedom and I’ve always dreamed of
realzing CDs like “EmOcean”, which would not be possible if I were
still a steady member of a group… However, I will keep on participating
in various projects and perhaps I will also join a group as singer again
sometime in future… who knows?
Yes, I want to learn a lot in this life and I would like to release lots of interesting CDs…
Which
is the kind of literature you prefer, which are your favorite books and
authors? My
favourite authors are: Horváth,
E.E. Kobi, Franz Kafka, Hermann Hesse, Sir Peter Ustinov, and many more… My
favourite books are: Great
expectations (the modern version by Deborah Chiel), The Ultimate
Prophecy (Moshé Zwang).
No,
I don’t think so! To me, mysteries are phenomenons that we cannot (yet)
explain and understand, but that does not mean that all mysteries are
inevitably connected with a tragedy…
My
main focus is definitely on my next solo-CD, which will become a concept
album again. In some weeks I will enter the studio and start with the
recordings. Apart from that I will
be part of some other projects: Last year I
recorded vocals for the song “Eternity”
of Mistheria’s upcoming album “Messenger
of the Gods”, which will be released by LION MUSIC (this CD features
lots of great guests, e.g. Rob Rock.). Recently I also recorded vocals for
3 songs of a cool Melodic Power Metal project called “Book
of Reflections”, featuring Vitalji Kupriji, Lars Eric Mattson, Andy
Engberg and other international musicians. This album will be released
through LION MUSIC as well, as far as I know in June 2004.
I would kick out Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin and save Dream Theater…
Thank
you so much Hubi!! You’re
welcome! Thanks a lot for your kind interest in “EmOcean”!
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