Interview

With Gilbert Vierich of Crystal Fighters

The inception of Crystal Fighters is quite a unique story, can you tell us more about that?

Sure. Well it all started with Laure, one of the original members of the band. She had just come back from the Basque country, where her grandfather had sadly passed away and she had become fascinated with some belongings that he’d left for her, including an old leather bound book. 

It contained an unfinished opera he had secretly been writing. The writing was partly in Basque and partly Spanish, recounting his tales of travel, love and loss. There were also drawings of Basque traditional instruments and mythological figures. 

When she showed it to us, we became immediately interested and upon checking it out further, realized the beauty and depth of the Basque culture, tradition, instruments and people. We tried the instruments and really fell in love with the way they worked with all types of modern music. So we started  to combine Basque traditional music and folk music at large with all the things we love in music including electronic music (to which we had partied together) in an attempt to re-live this mans story in a modern way, with a musical style we have become obsessed with.

Do you continue to draw inspiration from those writings as a theme for the new record?

Well I am currently writing to you from Berango, just outside of Bilbao in the Basque Country. We have been down here for a few weeks now writing new songs, getting inspiration, playing more with local musicians and learning more about the culture. Its definitely something that will always remain in our music, but its the mix between the old and the new that we love so much.

Your sound combines traditional basque instruments and modern electronics, how did that come about?

We all are fans of electronic music in all its forms (not sure if Graham likes DnB) and definitely spent a fair amount of time listening and partying together to electronic stuff. But we all also love the more organic sounds and the beauty of the folk tradition. Combining it just sounds good to us and the Basque culture is very inspiring on all fronts.

For a band that formed only 3 or 4 years ago, are you surprised at how quickly you’ve become such an in-demand act internationally?

Yeah, it is surprising. I don’t think any of us thought we’d be playing to the number of people that we have, but we always hoped to. This year we’ve been able to play in some amazing places from Australia to Mexico to Russia, and have had some incredible experiences. We can’t thank all the people that have come and danced and sung with us enough. It really has been an incredible journey, but not one that we want to stop.

It’s interesting as we very much started out as a live act first, desperate to play shows at shit holes in London, making tracks week to week with the intention of playing them to people, not recording them and making CD’s. It was just about our love for playing and performing, and then going back home and realising what worked and what didn’t and playing another 20 gigs to 20 people and slowly buliding it from there. I think we did 96 shows only in London in 2008. It definitely feels so good nowadays to play big stages alongside musical heroes and people whose music we were listening to when we first started. We couldn’t be more thankful and just hope we can get stronger and better.

Crystal Fighters are one of the most remixed artists on wearehunted.com, from a band’s point of view what are the positives / negatives of this?

We like remixes for a few reasons. Its like a snapshot in time, of music going on at the time of the release. The original song I guess would ideally be timeless and so the remixes add some sort of context. We love to hear what other people do with our songs, usually in ways we can never imagine or execute ourselves. It’s a great way to introduce and essentially collaborate with artists we really like that might not be so well known. Also if someone isn’t into the style of a particular original track or want a change the mood, they can enjoy a remix. Unfortunately, sometimes the remix is better than the original…. The downside I guess might be that you lose the point of the original track with too many, but I reckon that view point gives the listener very little credit. I hope people can find something they enjoy in there and sort through it.

What are three emerging bands that you’re currently listening to?

Clubfeet, Get People, Vision of Trees.

Do you have any advice for emerging artists?

Yeah, make music, have fun, play gigs and repeat until you’re happy.

What do the next six months have in store for Crystal Fighters?

Mainly writing into the first few months of the new year. We’re going to be doing a bunch of DJ sets around the place and probably hitting up the USA at some point, but that’s all I can tell you as the rest is secret …

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Download Champion Sound (Acoustic)

CRYSTAL FIGHTERS ‘STAR OF LOVE’ AVAILABLE HERE