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Interview with Poets of the Fall, by Margarita Khartanovich
January 2011. Helsinki. We’ve met with Marko and Olli of Poets of the Fall and found out why they were running their own label in Helsinki, what the future of the Finnish music industry holds and how to find time to do something creative in your life.
How does it feel to be Poets of the Fall? Marko: The fall is definitely our time. I was in Ireland some time ago, and they have 50 days in a row of rain. They say it makes people more intelligent for some reason – it brings out emotions! It is truly a good time for creating things.
Olli: Winter is a different time. I do not mind the darkness – it is really nice to go out with my dog when it is so quiet and nice, no people around. But when it is -20 outside, you have to put on too much clothes. So, it looks nice but it feels horrible!
Do you think that people need and read poetry nowadays? Marko and Olli: Oh yeah!!!
Marko: Poets were always the rebels. They always produced things that we now think to be a great art. Nowadays poetry just doesn’t get ‘mainstream’ – it is more of an underground thing.
Olli: If people want to keep their life and mind in balance, they need something moody and healthy like poetry. There should be a balance between their hectic everyday life and other things. What poets do is reflecting the world around us, and then people can read the poems and get into its ideas and probably understand better how things work in our life.
Marko: That is true! Most of us are so lost in everyday life, doing things we have to do, that we simply don’t have time to think about life in general. It is good that there are poets who have made their occupation to go through such things and collect life experience. When you drive home and listen to some song, and there is this line in the lyrics, and it just suddenly gets to you! And then you think: “Oh, it is this how it is supposed to be!”
What do you need to be called a ‘good poet’ except for being able to rhyme words? Olli: You should meet as many people as you can and keep your eyes and ears open! You should never stop learning. And, of course, you need some spare time to spend with yourself, to think and try to realise what you are feeling. That is what WE do!
Marko: Yeah… You have to be really happy and you have to be really broken to be able to write about these things! You should go through ups and downs and get experience and only then you can be a poet.
I am sure that lots of people would prefer doing something creative and artistic like poetry or music or painting to working in the offices or wherever else just to earn their living. What if they simply don’t have a chance? Olli: Everyone has a chance to do that. Well, you should do office job to get money and you need a bank account to be happy. But that is not the way to think about it! You have to believe in what you are doing and stick to it. You need to think about and do things that are important to you personally. Someone can be really happy about his or her office job and be creative there if she or he chooses this way.
Marko: We also have an office job because we run our own label. It takes a lot of time and sometimes it causes a lot of frustration. We make music and produce it ourselves then we do the promotions. We actually have two jobs.
Olli: What you should learn is to give yourself time – that’s what you need!
Marko: And you can learn how to do that! It is not that you grow up already with this skill: the society tells us what we should do. It is a learning process how to take those 15 minutes to relax and think what you want, who you want to be and learn about yourself and how to control your life so that you could actually get what you want.
Is it possible for a musician to earn his\her living? Marko: The way I see how it goes – it goes up and then it goes down. Like there is this zero line and the earning goes above and below it. With some things in music you can go up and with others down. If you fail to make money then you should look at yourself in the mirror and admit that there is something wrong with you and your life and not just blame it on other things. You still might be able to fix a lot.
Olli: Money is just money, a means of living. Well, people think that being a musician or a rock star is 24/7 party and fun!!! But everybody wants to make it big and successful and you can’t achieve it without being commercial. It is a comeback to reality: you need to realise that, go over it and do the work!
How are things going with your music label? Olli: As well as they can go under these circumstances you know. We do sometimes really good and sometimes really bad. We are constantly learning. But it is so great that we can decide the whole product from the beginning to the end. The bad side is that we don’t have any other resources.
Marko: And we can’t concentrate only on making music. It would be nice, of course, to have some other guys doing office job.
Will big labels loose out to small labels one day? Marko: It is great to have small labels around. But there is one problem: music material is quite huge and lots of people and money are needed to produce it. If there are 300 labels and they all come up with their own songs it is not going to work - it will be one big mess and nobody will be really up there to control it. Big labels are sort of filters that collect all the music which is worth working with. But this is just my opinion.
Olli: Big labels are the ones who can bring new artists, who have the possibilities for that. Of course, they make more money on Robbie Williams and the likes. I am a fan of Paramore – I think they are a kind of the band that should be brought up. Our small label doesn’t have the money to bring them, for example. There are lots of other music genres like Jazz. They also get tiny bits of that money but still the big labels give them money to produce the albums. So, all these other genres can survive with their help.
Have you ever produced a band? Marko: We have done that with the band called Phoenix Effect, their first and second albums. It is a really good band.
Olli: I am friends with the frontman. And once he was a bit down. And we started writing music together, that is what we like doing. And we were writing songs and started making an album out of it. We decided to release it on our label. After that he found the guys that joined the band. They are really good musicians.
Would you prefer to make music or to run a label? Marko and Olli: Music!!!
Olli: Absolutely MUSIC! We actually need a music label only to have a chance to make music. Otherwise we would do gardening or whatever!
Marko: I would do some design work if I were not in the music business. I have been doing that during all these years being a rock star - just nobody knows that. I am a designer by education.
Olli: And I am basically a guitar teacher.
Finland is known for its metal bands. How does it feel to be a different kind of a band? Marko: We are a cross genre band and it demands a lot of work. It is more difficult.
Olli: In terms of marketing, it is good to have a particular area or genre. But from the point of view of a musician music is feelings. We express ourselves musically and we need a variety.
Marko: And there are no good metal bands!
How do you see the future of Finnish music? Marko: At the beginning everything in Finnish music was taken from other countries and adapted. In 80-s we started to have our own bands. We had ‘punk wave’ and then we had ‘glam’ and ‘metal’ which formed this huge ‘metal scene’. And then we also have pop (laughing).
Olli: You know Finland is a young country with a young music industry. We have a bit of Nordic and East European moods, a bit of melancholy in music maybe that’s what attracts people to it.
Marko: It is the same as in movie industry. They make the same types of movies every year because each year there is a new generation of people who wants to go to the cinema and see a new movie. There will always be 15 years old boys and girls who want to start a band and be a rock star. It is never going to stop!
And what is the future of Poets of the Fall? Marko: We’ll have to think and understand where we are going. And we’ll start writing new material pretty soon which is very exciting.
Olli: We need to take some time from normal routine and let us really be ourselves.
Marko: You must be in this moment of the life. No past, no future. When you learn to be right here and stop worrying about the future or regretting the past then you start hearing your own voice. It works this way but people don’t quite pay attention to it so they don’t understand what they really want and who they really are. If you want to understand your way and see what your talent is staying in the moment is the thing to start with!
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