Q.: How did What Slave come into being ?

Caspian :
Originally, we were just Dan. Then gradually, Dan decided that doing everything himself was a bit too tough for a live act. You try playing bass guitar, synth and drum machine at the same time while singing!! And he asked some people to play with him... after that experience, he liked people so much that he asked me and Andrew to join for a concert or two... then we found (or did she find us?) Vibeke and we were no longer a one-man project.



Q.: Who does what in What Slave ?

Andrew :
I play guitar and help compose guitar parts.

Caspian :
The main man behind What Slave is Dan. He does a large percentage of the lyric writing and writes the basic chord progressions and the synth lines. The rest of us add our parts after the synth and vocals are written, to compliment them.. really, It's a group effort, But Dan's the leader, i suppose.

Daniel :
Well I wouldn't say I'm the "leader", really. I do play keyboard synth, program the sequencer and drum machine and write most of the songs. And I also tend to be the one doing a lot of the producing, arranging and engineering type of stuff, but that's kind of by default and not by lack of ability by any of the other band members or anything. I mean, the group did start with me in that role and I also happen to be the one who owns the hard disk recorder that we use, so whenever I'm home, I'm usually tweaking and twiddling with a song we're working on. I always try to get the band's input before any major mixing decision is made though. We're pretty democratic about things like that.



Q.: What can you tell us about the EP you released this year ?

Daniel :
It's really more of a single than an EP. An A-side and a B-side. The remix is only available on the DAM CD version that can be ordered on the internet. It came about from a desire to just have something at all out there for people to listen to. We were doing gigs and had nothing to offer people who wanted something to take home after the show. We're always recording demos ourselves so we put out the two most recent ones at the time that we did. The cassette of Madonna and Child is still available but if you want a crisper, clearer version on a multimedia CD, with the remix as a bonus, you can order it at www.mp3.com/whatslave for pretty much the same price as the tape.



Q.: Why did you decide to start making music ?

Andrew :
I started playing when I was 16 and was very much inspired by the likes of Prince, Duran Duran as well as pop music in general.

Daniel :
Well, I have been playing music since I was about 12, learning the guitar for about a year and then teaching myself guitar from Led Zeppelin albums. Then about four or five years ago, I started getting into electronics and, already having a musical basis in guitar, I found switching to programming beats wasn't too hard since guitar is such a rhythmic instrument- the way I play it, anyway. Then I got really into synths, although not too much into samplers. I guess I had, and still do have to some degree, a romantic notion based in the '60's and '70's about programming your own sounds from a raw waveform into something with recognizable timbre, or at least into something that sounds cool! That all happened around the same time I started to write my own stuff and not just play Led Zeppelin songs anymore. So I recorded it all thanks to a 17th brithday present of a 4-track, and pretty much arbitrarily gave it the label "What Slave"



Q.: What band influenced the way What Slave sounds the most ?

Daniel :
It's impossible to pin it down to just one band. But it is possible to narrow it down to some. We're not trying to be "eclectic" in the coloquial sense. For me, it's early 80's/late '70's electronic artists like Human League, Soft Cell, Anne Clark and Depeche Mode, some early industrial, and modern electro pop like Portishead come into play as lessons on how to play keyboards and arrange songs. Depeche, along with Tori Amos and maybe a couple of other artists really influence my song writing style, the music and the lyrics too. Skinny Puppy also used to be a big lyrical influence, and maybe TOO much of a musical influence; now I try to write more prose-like lyrics these days instead of the Puppy-style freethought. They're not as dark anymore either. Probably because I'm happier now. So I guess happiness is an influence lately too, isn't it. The music still comes out somewhat dark though, strangely enough.

Caspian :
For me, it's everything I hear... i listen to alot of The Cure, and some very dodgy punk and folk bands. i also spend waay too much time in this one club, Mean Fiddler, But that's 'cause I work there. They play dance music and techno.

Andrew :
I think What Slave takes a lot of the sounds and superficial stuff from synth pop, but the song writing can be very intimate. We're not into writing songs about island women and blow.


Q.: How do you write a song ?

Daniel :
The process varies, but its getting to be easier the more songs I write. Usually it's something like this. I come up with some lyrics or a beat to begin with. Both are rhythmic. I usually begin with the backbone of the song. Next comes the melody by either coming up with chords to match the words and then the vocal melody to go over that. The guitar parts and bass parts usually blend in well with what I've come up with. Depending on the song, the parts that the other guys play can be very stuctured and arranged, or they can be just the opposite, very elastic with room for them to come up with their own parts. But by the end, the song's structure is pretty solid, not really a lot of room to jam over because of our setup. Like, if we go onstage, we play just like we rehearsed it. As for the lyrics, I usually try to avoid the confessional "diary-entry" type of lyrics which tend to be pretty chessy and overdone lately. I tend to just go with a topic or idea or story and let the lyrics come from that idea. But some of the best lyrics I have written have been without a base idea and only months later do I even realize what it was about, and it totally makes sense to me!

Caspian :
It's a big car crash. Dan gets in his little Idea car, drives it towards me and Andrew drives in the same direction as Vibeke, and it turns out we're all heading the same way... then we hit one another, and the result is a new car with more bells and whistles than the last one.

Andrew :
I listen to what Dan and Vibeke do and then Caspian and I argue about what chords contrast best, our "cars" usually complement each other well.



Q.: You use a lot of guitars. Do you find it difficult to incorporate this instrument with electronic sounds ?

Caspian :
No. I'd like to think that they're related, but Andrew plays the guitar, and i play bass... i'd hope that it's present and obvious too!

Daniel :
Well part of what we try to do is blend electronics into something organic. Guitars help a lot in that because they are less electronic just by the way they are played, no matter how many effects Andrew plays through, which is usually quite a few. But the way Andrew plays is very unique too. Our sound is very dependant on either the way he can recreate the guitar parts I write on guitar, or come up with something that seems to fit the song so perfectly, it was hard to imagine I ever wrote it without his part at all! And Caspian provides a means to the same end. Because the base rhythm is electronic- a drum machine- Caspian's live bass guitar, with all it's human variations, adds a vital element in making our version of electronic music sound more natural, flowing, and organic.

Andrew :
It's tough playing a traditional instrument in such an avant garde band, guitar effects help because sometimes it's more desireable to sound synthetic than organic. Generally though I try to bring a bit of rock and roll to the songs. Bowie, Suede even some industrial music comes out in my playing.



Q.: How did Teranova end up remixing your song "Madonna & Child" ?

Daniel :
Nova has been a friend of ours for a while and we just thought it would be a kick for him to do a remix that we could put out as a B-side. He just came over to my apartment- where our digital studio is- with a sampler in hand, and sampled some sections of tracks from the original recording of the track that he thought would go well in his interpretation of the song. Then he took the disks of samples home and after a few weeks he came up with an intense drum and bass remix! When I first heard it I was blown away at what he had really reconstructed and recreated more than remixed.

Andrew :
Dan and I played a show with Teranova not long ago. Instrumental techno is where a lot of the most original ideas are coming from, like Aphex Twin, LoFi Allstars and Gus Gus, but there's also a lot of boring crap which puts people off like the Crystal Method and new Prodigy. Playing guitar over computers is strange, it's tought to assert my presence in songs sometimes but when I really listen I can usually find a place for myself.



Q.: What are your plans for the near future? Will you be re-releasing "this product is tested on animals" ?

Daniel :
From now on we'll be putting out similar singles to Madonna and Child, but probably only on the internet initially. You'll be able to download them, and buy them too probably. But we'll see about that. It's just in the works for now, but as I said before, we're always recording so we just have a vault of stuff to do thing with. As for "This Product", don't hold your breath for a re-release! I did it by myself when I was 17 and 18. It was the first thing I did and it was on 4-track, very DIY. By which I mean it was bad; full of teen angst, lots of distorted sounds, bad tapes, cheap synths and guitars, and my voice, which is far from pleasant. Also, it sounds absolutely nothing like the music we do now as a full band, so even if it had been recorded well, written well , etcetera, I doubt a re-release would be in the forseeable future.



Q.: Any concerts coming up ?

Daniel :
Well, we always try to do a show every few months. Our last show was already 5 months ago, so right now we're trying to book us something for mid to late summer in Montreal.