Information
Author: Bosj
Lineup:
Kevin Kentie - Bass (Weapons & Tactics)
Sarban Grimminck - Drums (Engines & Navigation)
Gerben Van Der Aa - Guitars (Captain & Pilot)
A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away, three guys were playing the hell out of their spaceship, as they discovered the stoner genre. We have the pleasure to talk to the crew from Gigatron2000 battleship, currently Dutch, originally from an universe beyond our comprehension...
Welcome aboard the Aristocrazia Webzine shuttle guys. Please, introduce your spacesh...erhm, band to our readers. When was the project born, and how? And who the hell had the idea of such a monicker?
Hello earthlings! We are the crew of the interstellar battleship Gigatron2000. We have our Captain and pilot Gerben, Sarban, our main engineer and navigator and me, Kev, as weapons and tactics expert. We boarded the Gigatron2000 in 2011 of your eearthyears. The monicker is obvious, as it is the name of our vessel!
"The Cosmic Desert Cruise" is your first release as Gigatron2000, but it comes as a full lenght album already, and the sound is very "mature". In short, you do not sound as a new, debuting band at all. You all have other experiences in the music world, would you talk about them? Did you all work your way up?
We have all been functioning in other formations in the past and are still going in others at present. We all have a lot of experience and I guess it shows! I myself also am a member of Abysmal Darkening (dark/doom), Funeral Goat (primitive bm) and Verbum Verusn (bm). Sarban is also involved as drummer in Faal (doooom) and gerben used to be a member of One Inch Men (stoner metal). Gerben is the owner of Double Noise studios and both Sarban and Gerben are soundengineers, so hence the good sound on the cd.
Self-production. This is a very typical question of mine, because these days, being into the underground, very often the most interesting works have no labels, just as yours (excluding the tape for Tartarus Records). Why did you choose this way? Are you currently looking for a label?
We decided to just do a cd ourselves instead of trying to find a label. The tape release was a chance thing, friend of a friend and such. However, if a label is interested in releasing our future work, we are always open for collaboration!
While writing the review I asked you about the intro of the album, and you told me it was the recording of the first moonlanding. I'm curious now: what other "samples" did you use? There are a few in the album.
There are some recordings of NASA, your Earth's space agency. We picked those up and they pointed us towards your small planet. Further there are short recordings from a spaceship, the wreckage of which we found near a Planet of the Dinosaurs...
Those recordings are the only voices in the album, since it is a completely instrumental one. A particular and very appropriate choice, I would say, even if a singer would allow some kind of conceptual lyrics. Why this choice?
We did have a try out with the very talented singer of Dutch band Yama, but we decided we could go on without vocals.
Stoner rock and metal are usually related to deserts and sandy landscapes. How did you have the idea to move forward and explore cosmic deserts? How did you put together sands and sci-fi?
When crossing the vastness of space one gets a feeling of desolation and emptiness. The closest thing we found on earth was a desert, and so we chose this as a metaphore.
Connected to the previous question: what are your most important influences? Not only from a musical point of view, but in a more general sense. I might be wrong, but as I stated in the review, I can almost feel the two suns of Tatooine listening along this Cruise.
Ah, the famous saga of the War of the Stars is indeed an influence, so is your lovely earth series Star Trek. We also like the look of your eighties technology and above all love the power of the RIFF!!
Another typical and hard question: what is your opinion about digital delivery? You know, people not buying albums anymore, listening to mp3s, building their musical libraries on Spotify and so on. Does this affect you in any way? Any thoughts you have.
We will always prefer a physical medium, something to hold, feel, smell and look at. But some people seem content with treating music like food or something. Something you consume and then throw away...
Imagine you meet a roaming Klingonian across the universe, during one of your trips: what music albums would he find on your spaceship? "The Cosmic Desert Cruise" is an invalid answer.
A lot of different things! Going from classical to black metal and doom to stoner and psych. Basically anything that creates a feeling inside!
Let's be serious now: why the hell do you add a miniature spaceship with the tape and a robot with the cd? I wanted the spaceship!
The spaceship was an idea of Tartarus, they normaly add a patch or sticker or something like that, but he saw these paceships and they suited us perfectly! People responded to it so enthousiasticaly that we wanted to do something similar with the first hundred copies of our cd. We looked around and found these cool robots!
Ok, I think it's enough, I leave you with the hope to see Gigatron2000 live in our country sooner or later, and the last word is up to you. End this as you prefer and thank you for your time!
Thank your for the interview man! Playing in Italy would be pretty sweet. For the rest, buy our stuff and come to our shows if you can. Support your local stonerscene, as it is one of pure love of the riff and deserves your support!
