Assemblage 23 - February 2010

Interview with

Tom Shear of Assemblage 23

After the great album ‘Compass’, coming out right after the ‘Spark’ single in October 2009, made my interest in ASSEMBLAGE 23 stronger, I decided to visit their live show in Moscow and enjoyed this amazing sound immediately. Not less pleasure was offered to me by a nice chat with Tom Shear in Moscow club Tochka, sitting in a chill-out zone. I’m glad to share this conversation with you…

Daria: I want to start with the new album ‘Compass’. Which song is the closest to you? For me, no doubts, it is ‘How can you sleep’. I like it so much and always offer it to my friends who want to listen to ASSEMBLAGE 23’s music.
Tom: Thank you very much. You know, I think to ask me what is my favourite song is the same like to ask a mother what is her favourite child. They all are very special. But if to look at the way of life performing, the loveliest song for me to play live on this tour is ‘Alive’ because the crowd becomes so relaxed for some reason. It is amazing. And I can say that this is the first album which I can be proud to say that I really finished it. And can not look back and say: "hmmm...I’m happy with it, but the sound could be more like in my head". I’m really happy with this. It took me 10 years and 5 albums to get this. It’s a pretty good feeling actually.

Daria: You are working on songs and albums alone, isn’t it hard for you sometimes? There is no one near you to share responsibility…
Tom: Ok. When I was starting an electronic music project I didn’t know anybody else who was interested in such music. I really had nobody to help me. But I became custom to that way of working. And now I can say it is very difficult for me to work with other people because anyway you depend on them in some way. If you involve more people - people have different ideas, so there will be disputes sometimes, and someone has to be right in the end. I don’t want to compromise the ideas and the visions that I have for the songs. And it is a lot of work and a lot of responsibility. So in the end, if everything will be great and the fans respond to, I’ll be the one main person in it… So the same is if in the end something will be wrong, I could say "yes. I was wrong this time." So that’s why this is really the way that I prefer to work. I supposed that it is a little unusual, but it is me...

Daria: Which bands or maybe musicians do you want to work in the future, to write a song together or to make a remix?
Tom: I really have interest to work with bands outside this scene, with bands that will have more mainstream sensibility. You know, I would like to make remix on somebody’s songs like BJÖRK. It is one of the most amazing voices I have ever heard. I have done remixes for rock bands. It brought me a lot of fun because it has so big difference from dance music. And when you are trying to adapt with the rock music, it is hard, but very fun at the same time. You always have to challenge yourself to keep yourself progressing. Without getting too specific I just like to work with people who are doing something really different from what I do, because you can learn a lot from them.

Daria: Which concerts do you prefer, small clubs or large stadiums?
Tom: For me the size of the audience is not important at all. This tour has been a great example, we played in London, we played the biggest show that we ever had in London - about 600 people - but we also played in Paris with 90 people. But that 90 people were so glad that we played there. And Volgograd is another pretty example where we saw about 150 people there. But it was the loudest and craziest audience ever for us. As for me, I’ll be more glad to play for 10 people, but for people who will be really glad to see and hear us, than to play on a festival where people will say :"oh...hmm.. It will be more another 20 bands playing today here... I’ll better reserve my energy on them". Some time ago we played for 20,000 people. I never played for a crowd that big, so I just stepped on the stage and was in shock! But this was very great too. It was a very enthusiastic audience. One more aspect… When you are playing for a big crowd you have a big distance between you and the audience, but when you play for much less people you can get an eye and physical contact, you know, with each from this audience. So it is a different experience but both are really cool.

Daria: Are you happy with this tour in Russia? Are there any differences between the audience in Europe, USA and Russia? And what kind of audience do you prefer to see on your live shows?
Tom: Hahaha... You ask me difficult questions… You know the difference can be not only between countries but between different cities too... So if to be honest, this kind of music is very popular in Germany. Some cities there have very loud and dancing audience. Everybody smiles and sings along. At other places, people are very quiet and they want to be impressed, because everyone came there thought. But as for Russia, we never had bad experiences here. And the people are so warm. The audience is always very nice. I think if you’ve visited the concert you’ve seen that the crowd could say better then me. They all were singing… I should mention the trouble that we had to get to Moscow because of the weather. So when we did the show tonight we have been up for 26 hours straight and maybe only 2 hours sleep at the hotel. So we were so tired. But when we just came on the stage and the audience got us so much energy the people were so exciting that we really forgot about all these. Russia is a special place for us to play and this is our second time here in general and I can say it won’t be the last.

Daria: You have not been yet in Ukraine. Tell me please, did you think about this country? Will you come to make your Ukrainian fans happy too?
Tom: Yes of course. We would love to visit different places where we didn’t play before. So we’re always ready to go to places where people didn’t see us before. You know, the time goes on and I don’t want to be an old man and say someday: "oh… I wish to come to Ukraine… I had a chance but I never did it". Because of course it’s very interesting just to meet the different people, enjoy the different culture, taste different traditional food and enjoy the history of this country. As more places we visit as more I realize that people are the same, they all want the same things. Everybody wants to go out, forget the troubles, dancing and singing on the concerts, everybody wants grow over the head, everybody want that the family and friends be saved and bad things will not happened. They can really forget about all their problems and other things and just enjoy the music.

I definitely want to come in Ukraine. And I think the power that music has it helps in communication too. I have seen this especially when we played in small towns in Russia - most of the people that we met don’t speak a word of English and we see that the audience sings with us. It is very amazing to have a communication with somebody that you never met before and you can’t communicate directly because you don’t speak the same language. But you can share an hour and half just through the energy and the power of music. So have holidays from the every day life. We are playing live since 1996 and it is something that still surprises me. It always amazing me and it’s something that makes me feel very good.

Daria: I’m sure that you have other places which you want to visit?
Tom: Oh yeah, absolutely! We would definitely play in East Europe. We have not been in South America yet. And it will be also nice to play there too. Over to Asia too... The one thing that we really like to do, to be only one band that played in this region. We played in South Africa a few years ago and last tour we played in Bulgaria. And we were the first band with such kind of music there and you know it was such a good feeling… the crowd was not so large but it is cool to say: "we have been there first", hehe… I am also happy to know that such kind of music is very popular in such places like Japan. Someday, I hope, we’ll play there the same as in Ukraine.

Daria: Before I came to Moscow to your concert I talked with my friends from underground and rock shops. As I see, in Kyiv it is impossible to find your albums .Are you going to change this situation in some way? Any ideas? This problem opens for the fans only 1, the easiest, way to enjoy your music: to download it from the internet. I guess, now, the original CDs became rather a privilege of really BIG fans or collector…
Tom: It is really a complex situation. In Europe in general piracy is a big problem, yes. The US has such distribution as ITunes and other services and Europe almost the same. It is anyway hard for people to get things that they want, because it took some time. It is difficult especially I think for young fans that don’t have so much money to get exactly what they want. In USA there is a show on MTV… it shows life style of rock stars. Their cars, houses, other things and people think that it is true music industry in general. But they don’t understand that, especially in our scene, bands don’t sell between 1,000-3,000 albums, of course people that do this are lucky.

I think it’s nothing that we can really do to stop it. But if you make them aware, I guess if people want something from bands they admire, there needs to be some services to help them. And it doesn’t mean only to buy albums, to help people if they want to visit concerts, buy T-Shirts wherever. It is very difficult in such places as Ukraine for example where there is not such strong distribution structure, people can’t just go out, drive to the shop and buy the original CD or anything else. It is hard to make an argument when people can sit in the living room, underwear and downloading something at 3 in the morning if they want it, it is much easier. I think you’ll agree with me. I think musicians have to give some trust, support to their fans. Have to find some new ways to get all this.

Daria: I want to thank you for the Interview and for the good concert .It was a big pleasure for me.
Tom: For me too. Thank you.

Interview by Daria Szegeda for Ukrainian Support Project Diary of Dreams / Diorama (http://dod-dio.org.ua/)
Special thanks for helping with preparation of this interview to Daria Volkova and Kristina Diyakova.

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