Morten@Amaranthe

I had a great interview with Morten, Amaranthe's drummer, yesterday. The band is from Sweden, so I thought he was a Swedish but he's actually a Danish. He did air-drumming before he got a drumkit. He says it helped him when he first sat behind the kit and it still does as a practice to improve his weaknesses. Good tip for younger drummers, isn't it? ;)

I had to work on something and didn't go see their show the day before. But I did yesterday evening after Morten's interview. The venue was packed and it was lots of fun! Great show, really! Since one of my fellow mag editors gave me a copy of their "Nexus" album last month as my homework for Morten's interview, I knew some of the songs they played but even those songs from their 1st album, which I heard for the first time at the show, sounded good. I guess their catchy melody lines do its work very well.

Some prefer complicated performance in complicated music but I'm a simple person who prefers complicated performance in simple pop music with the band's own flavors to it. Japanese musicians and music lovers tend to love players with incredible techniques and talk a lot about the technical aspect of a player. Technique is important but what they do with it in the form of music is way more important than that. That shows how creative a musician can be.

So called "ear candy" is not bad at all as long as it's got some twists and uniqueness to it. I guess "originality" comes from how they put their colors into music, not necessarily from being able to discover something no one ever did. As our brain's basic function, we get a sense of affinity when we hear something familiar, something we feel we've touched, smelled and heard somewhere in the past. I can hardly deny that's a trigger to make me interested in something.

Anyhow, I got positive vibes from their show as well as Morten's interview. Oh, by the way, one of their singers Andy looks a lot like my drummer friend Louis Sesto! I was about to say, "Hey, Louis, what are you doing here?" when I saw Andy in the dressing room... Louis, if you are reading this, check it out! :D