Have any of you played in other bands?
Stepan: I have played just very briefly with a punk band called Poetické Odpoledne (Poetic Afternoon) and Bohemian Guitar Orchestra (if that is considered a band) back in the Czech Republic
Pavlina: I've played oboe in several orchestras and early music ensembles...
David: I've played in a melodic death metal band called "Shades of Syn" for 5 years in France.
Will:Yes! Many. At least 25 other full time bands and many smaller projects, as well as collaborating on various performances and recordings. Mostly I played with one3four, a math punk band, BAAMPHF!!!, an instrumental math metal band, Vultures Quartet, improvised music and modern composition ensemble, and a few other goth bands and Asian traditional projects, primarily.
How is it that you started playing music?
Stepan: Music education is a big tradition in the Czech Republic. Primary schools of music are in every town, attended by many children, and, if you are lucky, have a good teacher, and show a hint of talent and interest, there is no way to escape playing music.
David: Since I was a boy I have always been attracted towards percussion and drums. At the age of 16 I decided to start playing drums and became self-taught; finally this year at 28, I've enrolled in Music School.
Will:I started beating on things when I was about 15. I wanted to join my high school band, but I was told I was too old. Then I went to university where there was a small music program and I took a few percussion performance classes and lots of classical music history classes, but mostly I started playing with other musicians outside of university then. That would have been about 1983 or before. Quickly, I ended up in a few bands, and in some cases made my own percussion. The start of a trend that continues through to today! Now I have completed a few music degrees and play music full time.
What are your names? / Who plays what? / How old are you?
Stepan Honc (30) on guitar
Pavlina Bastlova (29) on recorders, harp and vocals
David Maurette (28) on percussion
and Will Connor (51) on percussion.
Have you had other previous members? Stepan: many... Michal Benda on viola, Filip Tomanek on percussion, Karel Novotny on viola, Matej Stepanek on Cello, and after we moved to UK we have briefly played with George Seaton on drums and Maya McCourt on cello as well. PerKelt takes a lot of dedication and only the fittest survive :)
Did you make music even when you were young?
Stepan: Yep, if I don't count a regrettable experience with a super noisy metal drum when I was 4 years old (my mum loved it!), I started playing guitar when I was 7, wrote my first song when I was around 15.
Pavlina: What is it? I'm 29, I'm still young!
David: Since I can remember, I've always made up wood sticks to play on anything
Will: Constantly. I was always tapping on something or making noise generating devices (and often getting told off for it by my parents, who hated that I was leaning towards being a musician even when I was a child). And I’m still young, too...
Where are you from?
Stepan: Originally from the Czech Republic, PerKelt first formed around students of Conservatory in Pardubice. Now we live in London, UK
David: I'm originally French but I grew up in New Caledonia.
Will: Technically, I'm a resident of Honolulu, Hawaii. I grew up in the Appalachian Mountains of South and North Carolina, and I've lived in Juneau Alaska, Chengdu, Sichuan and Lhasa, Tibet, China, and I am currently in the Czech Republic until I return to the band in the UK, where we all live in London.
What year did the band form?
Stepan: 2007
What's your style of genre?
Stepan: we call it Celtic Medieval Speed Folk, or occasionally Progressive Celtic Music as we are writing more and more of original material these days. We like to describe it as a music that sounds like folk songs from their own country (we have exactly this feedback from people from Ireland, England, Spain, Brazil, Peru, Eastern Europe...) with some ancient tweaks, and generally played way too fast...
What inspires you?
Stepan: Everything around what sounds good. We have a massive background of classical music, the first idea to form a band came to us once we heard the River Dance and a Czech medieval band called Gothart. Since then it is whatever from Jethro Tull, Loreena McKennit, random rock and folk bands, Irish folk music, alternative scene, jazz, math punk, jamming with friends...
Pavlina: I think that my greatest source of inspiration lays mainly in traditional Irish music. Particularly Irish dance music. I simply love its vibe... And I am also very fond of classical and film music because it can express a huge range of moods and feelings and it's got a lot of dynamics and tension... Those are the elements which we try to put in our music when we compose.
Will: H. P. Lovecraft has always been and probably always will be my main influence for everything. Godzilla mythos is also high on the list, as well as kung fu / samurai movies, noise music, Medieval music, ethnomusicology, and all things Gothic and Halloween related. It all feeds in to my music somehow. Energy is the other big thing. Perhaps that’s vague or cliché, but if music doesn’t have the energy (not necessarily speed or volume, although, that’s fine, of course), it’s just not inspiring to me, so a intangble influence for me is aiming for a high level of (good) energy.
How often and where do you reherse?
Stepan: Approximately twice per week at my house in Balham, London
How have you developed since you started with the music?
Stepan: We are still evolving but since I was 7 I definitely learnt how to play guitar better and since we started with the band I've learnt better how to arrange music, how to work with timing and orchestration, how to change time signature within one song seventeen times...
Pavlina: It's been a constant evolution since I was 4 and started playing recorders. A couple of awards from competitions settled my confidence; the Summer School of Early Music, which I regularly attended, introduced me to some music we later arranged with PerKelt; and performing technically demanding baroque pieces gave me the technique and sparkled the love for playing insanely fast. And, of course, 9 years of studies of oboe and playing in orchestra at conservatory and academy of music count too, with the background of music theory and harmony it's much easier to compose something interesting...
Will: I think this a question for the others, really, when referring to PerKelt’s development, but I would add that since I have joined the band, we have grown to be more “speed folk” oriented and taken a turn towards more rhythmically varied composition, and moved slightly away from straight forward Medieval sounds and even away from more traditional Celtic melodies, whilst still retaining a feel for it all. It's been a very fun development and I love the direction we are headed currently!
Do you have other interests of work outside the band?
Stepan: strictly speaking of work PerKelt is our full-time project, but of course we have another interests. For me it's nature, Pagan culture and Wiccan magic, poetry, Buddhism, philosophy, psychic explorations etc...
Pavlina: I am actually working on my first solo EP as well, and do abstract painting quite intensively.
David: I was working as barista/bartender but I just quit my job as school and PerKelt became the priority and took over most of my time, so good!...
Will: As Stepan says, PerKelt is our 9-5 job, but for me, in terms of non-PerKelt stuff, it's mostly Gothic and Asian cultural things, with many things relating back to percussion. (As I mentioned above) Lovecraft, old horror movies, Godzilla, kung fu and samurai movies and tv shows, XBox games, comics, Ethnomusicology studies, building instruments, Halloween, and I like to grow cacti. In addition, I still play a lot of other music, but PerKelt is my main focus. I play solo percussion dark ambient Lovecraft-influenced compositions and work on sound design for the Gothic immersive theatre company Dread Falls Theatre as my other main music outlets.
Are you looking for a booking agency, and what are your thoughts around that?
Stepan: We are just about to sign a big contract with one, so we are really keen to these things. Many agencies in London are quite incompetent but some really do their job great and it's a win-win situation, then. When you are an artist it's a great benefit for you to be able to focus on what you are good at and not be bothered by what you are not.
Are you looking for a label, and what are your thoughts around that?
Stepan: We absolutely want to keep total artistic freedom so major label would probably be avoided (not that we have any offer on the table :)). But to be honest this was never our main interest so I just hear rumors about labels pushing artists towards main-stream music, dictating what they can and cannot say on stage etc... Not really something we would like to do to our PerKelt baby.
Pavlina: Totally agree on this.
What made you decide to make this music?
Stepan: Coincidence... I happened to meet Paja and have exactly the same taste of folk music, preferably fast with strong melodies. Then we joined up with few schoolmates at conservatory and very quickly were offered a job as a band at one massive Medieval tavern to play regularly, which led us quite strongly to discover some great ancient melodies from 13th-16th century, but later we found that we need more artistic freedom. We moved to London and now we are rather curious what will inspire us next and where the band style will evolve.
Pavlina: I just always really wanted to create something new and interesting...
What are your songs about?
Stepan: Lyrics are mostly stolen from people who wrote them several centuries ago, so they are about random folklore things (trolls, drinking, animals, love, warfare...) or Christian topics. But we never really cared, most of them are in foreign languages so we use the vocals as another instrument rather than to bring some message to our audience... However, after few years in UK we are daring enough to write some lyrics, too. The last song Dancer in the Wind is about freedom, another one Going Home is about going home... so pretty much random things again :) We shall see in the future.
Who does the composing and writes the lyrics?
Stepan: I was always writing a poetry in Czech, so now when I actually speak English, I'm logically the source of things that rhyme again. With composing it's more interesting, because we all are involved in the process. Paja usually brings some short melody on harp or flutes, I get an idea to write something contrasting, then we all work on the harmony, accompaniment and argue about structure, and eventually our percussionists finish the full sound or bring some more ideas... It's pretty vivid, exciting and long process.
Do you start with the music or the lyrics?
Stepan: Almost always with the music. Even if the lyrics are already written, we are quite good at bending them to fit the melody we like. Usually it sounds better than before.
Do you compose in a certain environment?
Stepan: Not really, sometime in the park, in the pub, or romantically at home with my laptop.
Pavlina: My ideas come so spontaneously, that I have a pen and paper with me on the bus, on the lift, in the coffee shop...
Will: The bus and the tube work well for me, too, and I have been known to wake up in the middle of the night, having dreamt of a new song bit and I have to go write it down immediately (or even call/email Stepan at some ridiculous hour), a la the late great Sun Ra writing for his Archestra.
Have you done any covers live?
Stepan: If you consider 13th century songs from which we've grabbed lyrics and 8 bars of melody, and covered it with a 5 minutes song of completely different nature, then we are mostly a cover band :) But otherwise, apart from few jam sessions where we've played live Fee Ra Huri by Omnia, we don't do covers...
What language do you sing in?
Stepan: I was looking forward to this question :) Old Galician, Old Occitan, French, Swedish, Scottish Gaelic, Czech, English and few more are coming.
From: https://ghgumman.blogg.se/2015/october/interview-with-perkelt.html
