Can you give a brief introduction to Akron?
Akron were founded in December 2002 between YiannisG (me ) and SimonS.
Akron consists of you (Yiannis) and Simon, how did the two of you meet and why did you start a band together?
Me and SimonS have been friends for years. We met December 2002 in a friendly house celebrating New Year's Eve[ I was in rock band back playing bass, nothing official, just doing live shows in clubs, featuring some bands]. It was only few weeks ago that I had come up with the idea of doing a new music project where I would combine soundtrack themes and electronic trance, an idea that came in my head while listening an In The Nursery remix. We discussed the possibility of cooperating to create something unique and here we are today with our second album almost finished.
How would you describe the music of Akron, it is a pretty unique combination of styles?
At least this is what we are trying to achieve. You know trying to combine those elements can be pretty hard especially with the electronic parts. I think that the orchestral parts are doing well but trying to add electronics in 10 orchestral channels is not the easiest thing in the world especially when you do not want to belong to a specific genre. Some people describe it EBM, other Trance while we just want to achieve electronic soundtrack music.
How is the music created, do you play the symphonic parts yourself or is it sampled? What is the most tricky thing for you in combining ebm with symphonic music?
I am happy you made that question because a lot of people ask me through my space what kind of samples we use, where do we find the themes, what instruments etc. There are absolutely NO samples in our music in terms of wave files or short length orchestral themes. We compose every single orchestral part step by step, channel by channel with hardware and software. Every single key you listen is composed on keyboards. No arpeggios, no wave files. All midi work. If you see a typical Akron song in our sequencer you’ll see 16 channels or so. It is very complicated and we have dedicated a lot of time in this. I have even attended neo-classical concerts just to see how they arrange the instruments live and I try to give the same feeling when doing the mix even if that’s impossible because no matter how good a plug in is, it is still a plug in mimicking a live instrument. And that “mimicking” part is that makes the difference between electronic instrument and live ones.
The most tricky thing in combing EBM with symphonic is the EBM part. Nowadays when you say this is EBM, people expect to listen something similar to what is tagged as EBM such as VNV Nation, Nizzer EB or even Covenant ( I am not going to state which of these bands truly represent EBM, rather what comes to people’s head) musically and vocally wise. To be honest with you personally I don’t know what EBMrepresentanymore. I think there are a lot of bands and artists out there labelling themselves as EBM. Well how most of these bands sound is nothing close to what I personally think EBM is but then again who am I to judge? When they ask me what music we play I classify Akron as an orchestral dance project, which I think is a pretty fair description and prevents any misunderstanding as to what genre We belong to. Calling us an EBM band is not very accurate. On the contrary if someone comes to me and says that we sound like EBM, or synth pop or trance based on his/her preferences and ideas who am I to debate something like that? Tagging is inevitable and should be accepted.
This is a list that can go forever. I could mention a couple of band and composers but the truth is that our whole musical background influences our music. So from neo classical to electronic to rock etc.
In 2007 you released the debut album “Origins of the deadly 7 sins” , did it do well, where the comments good and how do you look back at it?
Origins is one of these albums that you are going to love or hate. So I only got positive comments as I believe that those who hated the album didn’t even bother to send an email. Reviews were very positive from most electronic media and the album did fairly well, I suppose this is why they offered us a new 2 cd contract deal. If I take a step back and listen to the album I would say that the electronic sounds were not the best to use but we didn’t have money to buy plug ins so most sounds were created with free ones and hardware so I think we did pretty well considering we were walking blind with only a vision in our head. We had a generic idea as to what to do but it is not that we tried to sound like a specific band. Just combine stuff. After the album was released we did a couple of remixes with the one we did for Helalyn Flowers being the most popular one. It was included in their debut cd in a limited box set edition released from Alfa Matrix.
After the release of the album, things went quiet on Akron, what happened, did your move to the UK had to do with it?
Now you are making a question that most people ask. I even can’t remember how many times I put on MySpace profile updater the sentence “Album almost finished”. You’ll hear a lot of different explanations about this. Moving in UK and having to set up a new studio, laptop crashed, thoughts of abandoning the project, new music direction with other projects etc. Well all of these are 100% true but my main problem was the communication part with SimonS, it still is, as it might take more than 2-3 months to communicate. As you understand when it takes so long to reply for a simple melody or a bass line….well, it might take 2 years to release an album.
Now the new album “Pain is a personal feeling” is about to be finished, what progress have you made when we compare it to “Origins”?
Well it is the next step, no doubt about it. Recently, I was re-evaluating the songs and was like “maybe I should move to something completely new that appeals more to our age”. I discussed this with SimonS and he told me that we shouldn’t make rush decisions and stick to our original plan and eventually he was right. So you can see this as the natural next step from Origins. Now might think, what’s the next step? To start with the compositions are much more complex and we have worked more on the electronic parts. On song “Hanna” you will hear a theme that was created from scratch which is similar to the one you will listen to epic soundtrack movies. There is much more experimentation with drums in 1-2 tracks, some cool collaboration like the one with E.S.A from Tympanic and Stigmata NL and ofcourse we now have vocals in 2 songs something that takes the whole project to the new level. The surprise to this though is hidden in 2 new tracks which are nothing close to Akron in terms of our layer and sound. What I mean by this is that you will hear electric guitars, bass guitar and a couple of new electro sounds, nothing close to dance floor songs. If you have heard “Origins” and you hear this let’s say without someone telling you it is Akron I can guarantee you, you wouldn’t guess.
Ha! Robert is my nemesis and I am his evildoer as he calls me through myspace. It all started back in June 2007 when Robert sent me a myspace message saying that he likes our music and that he would like us to do a remix for his debut album. I heard his tracks and I got hooked with Nefalim (Class Y Felony) so I worked on that song. I asked for some midi files and samples but Robert lost the files through some hard disc transfer so all we had was an mp3. So we did the song from scratch and the end result can be found in our new cd. I really like his music, I think he is a very talented person and we have discussed the possibility in doing some stuff together after the album is completed. I am already very excited about the end result.
One of the things we missed on the previous album were vocals, on this album Lis of the band Misery delivered vocals for “Exchange” and “My Soul”. How did you get in contact with her and was it hard for you to compose tracks that would have vocals?
Hah!! It is your fault and you know it!! I first contacted cyberangels for a podcast I was doing to a Greek live radio show. I sent you a cd for review and then we start chatting. At that time I was thinking to add a part-time vocalist in our cd and you told me about Lis and Misery and we exchanged myspace links. Even if I have never met Lis in real life I really feel lucky to know this person even through the internet. We have spent a lot of hours at nights talking about the tracks, exchanging mp3s, reviewing each other, chatting about life and personal stuff. Weird thing about Lis is that in a way she was reacting like she knew me for years, something that active people in my life haven’t achieve yet so I knew that she could do the same with our music and guess what…she did! I feel that a mutual respect was built and she really sang her guts in our songs so I can only be grateful. As far as the composition part NO, not hard at all. She is pure talent. She was always discussing with me about the song before recording to get herself into the concept and then she was doing the rest on her own. Quiet remarkable isn’t it?
Grabbing the opportunity let me make something clear about the vocal cocnept. I sent the tracks around and had discussions with a lot of people about this issue. When Side Line wrote “but reconsidering this aspect by the add of a singer would seriously improve their work!” then you can imagine that many people were asking for this.(all reviews about origins can be found here: (http://blogs.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendId=123432429&blogId=230012538 ).
Even some labels I spoke with for the e-zine I edit insisted in releasing a full vocal album instead of instrumental songs and that is because “Ressurection” from Origins where Alkisti sings was quiet succesful in podcast and clubs not to mention the commercial opportunities. A good EU label approached me and offered me a better deal IF I had a full vocal album. I disagree with this because that will ruin the whole concept of this project which is to create soundtrack electronic music and that’s that. “ This is what we feel” music is what we produce. Ofcourse the labels don’t give a shit about what I or SimonS thinks or what we want, rather club hit songs to promote their name which is a fair point in such a hard industry. So I;ve been told to change it but I;ve been told a lot of things in general and if you know me enough you would know that i dont give a fuck and that I choose to follow what I believe, period. TGM might not be a popular label but B.A supports my vision and likes the music a lot so it is between me and him what we will release.
It describes more my personal state of mind rather the music to be honest. Doing the album title was always a special concept for me, a brand new art. Some songs I started composing them in complete happiness and finished them in utter sadness. So many things happened these 2 years, so many losses. Each song captures a frame of my life. Moments, feelings, thoughts. So everytime I work on my album it rips me open and brings me to that state. So each song has a personal moment, like a short film of that feeling...I am thankful for being able to do this, considering I have absolutely no theoretical background in music, it just worked for me naturally, I remember I exchanged 5 cds and a video tape of a live concert when I was 12 for a bass guitar to end up in 2007 with 30 live shows and a record deal under my belt. No big deal, some will say, but it is to me.
All the songs are recorded, what will the next steps be and when can we expect the album?
I am adding some details and final touches on a track I recently finished which I chose to dedicate to a friend who supported me a lot through hard times. I think I owe that to our relationship and want to leave something alive in time for us to remember. I will most probably send the tracks for mastering along with the album in 3 weeks time so we should be ok by March! I am doing the album mix on my own and making sure that the label won’t have to do much on the mastering process. Artwork is a pain in the ass but I’ll try to finish this in time as well.
Usually bands promote their music by doing concerts, is there any chance we will see Akron play live some day?
I would realy love to go and do a live show when i have some free time but there is a big BUT here. I am not going out there on an apple mac laptop to play solo (not to mention i work on pc and not macs). I respect the bands that do this but this is not the thing for me. Since we are instrumental it will be more like dj-ing ourselves which is not what i like to do (and am pretty sure that SimonS agrees with me). Ideally I would like, myself, SimonS a couple of people to do orchestral live and Lis. Doing a live soundtrack would be nice as well so movie/video presence is something i am thinking of. If I can get that group then I’ll create time (even quit my job) and go on a tour rampage. Till that happens to be totaly honest with you it is unlikely to see Akron live unless there is a special occasion like i did in the past when they got me on stage to do 1 song or a <enter band name here> featuring Akron. But as a pure AKRON live it should be as described above. It is unrealistic to believe that I can bring the abovementioned group live but I really hope to achieve it one day :).
Any last words for the readers?
Thank you very much for all your kind comments in MySpace, emails and the support. It is indescribable to receive emails from people who tell you nice words about your music, how they connected with your songs. It gives you the necessary air to breathe and carry on. I really hope you enjoy our tunes and that I’ll pop up to Holland for a featuring live show with Misery or Robert and a nice chat and drinks!! Take care.
www.myspace.com/akronsound