What aspects of Closure in Moscow do you consider to be DIY or independent? How has this changed over the course of your career, and what do you find to be especially important or rewarding about the way you all operate the band?
The only thing in our band that is completely independent and DIY is the music we make. We have a booking agent, 24 hour chef, manager and a small crew of street toughs to help us out with other aspects of the band, but the buck stops with us. It has been a great experience being in control and seeing a vision through whole heartedly.
How has recording, marketing, and releasing Pink Lemonade been different than the process for First Temple?
We essentially controlled every aspect of Pink Lemonade, rather than having to abide by contractual obligations with Equal Vision about artwork and how we were marketed. On one hand it's very liberating and puts the power back where it belongs, but on the other hand it opens up a doorway to a different kettle of fish in regards to backend administration tasks you didn't think about when you picked up an instrument. One of the greatest aspects of making an independent release is walking away with a completed album and being debt free, broke but debt free. We all like cat biscuits much more now.
What is your own local scene like? Did Closure in Moscow start in a small scene, or did you guys start in a big city - and how have your earliest experiences in bands affected the way that you handle the band nowadays?
We had assumptions about how things would work and some assumptions rang true while others were way off the mark. Once we had enough experiences of both, we learnt to roll into every new situation as its own independent set of decisions and make them accordingly but with extreme prejudice.
Do you consider Closure in Moscow to be a political band in any sense of the word? And if so, what are some of the political environments or political events that have shaped your lyrics and/or your music?
Politics Schmolitics.
What's the experience of being an international band like? Is it difficult to market your music to fans who live on different continents than where the band is based? What's the process like of finding a record label or a distributor for your music in a country that you don't live in?
It's like being a local band with aeroplanes and people speaking funny languages you don't know. Obviously the internet makes things infinitely easier to get your music out there, but nothing can replace playing in front of people and engaging with them on that level, for a deeper, lasting impression. In this regard, being so geographically isolated in Australia, it's monetarily quite difficult to get over to places like Europe and America regularly enough to really market the music the best way it can be marketed, melting people's faces off with it abroad.
How was the writing and recording process different with some new band members in the mix? What kind of stylistic influences did the new members contribute to the sound of the album?
Both Sal and Duncan brought in a fresh perspective and 4 new ears. Duncan also fingerpicks his bass and can do the hallowed 2 finger pushup. We didn't do any drum quantising on this one and recorded the drums and bass live. We were playing all together in a room and it brought out a fresh vibe, I think you can hear the love. Along with their Shaolin-like physical abilities and love for cat biscuits, Dunc and Sal also brought in a little bit of that oooold soul stew.
What kinds of issues or themes most influenced the lyrics of the new album? There seems to be a lot of religious imagery - what led to this, or what is it about religion that proved to be a productive subject to write about?
I actually steered pretty clear of religion as a theme this time around, other than drawing parallels between it and the regard certain people hold for the supposedly imminent technological singularity on The Church of the Technochrist. That shit is just the Christian rapture for "atheists", I used to be one of those people but thankfully I pulled my head out of my ass enough to know I need to add a grain of salt to any theories or ideas I scarf down, even if people talk a good game about them with a lot of impressive charts and numbers. Hey! It might happen, I just think there are a few too many people hedging their bets like it's a shoe-in…
Some themes that get pontificated about on Pink Lemonade are whether or not we can listen to a god's kind of music as well, an armada of surfing cyborgs on a dinosaur safari and how the luddite dinosociety is affected, refusing to use the cyborgs' own tech against them, Byzantine empresses time travelling to obtain radical wet suit augmentations and chasing those happy days while you're walking on heaven.
Closure is one of those bands that people constantly argue about what genre they fit into. What are your thoughts on being defined by genres and labels in today's music scene?
We don't fit into genres, genres fit into us… The word genre was invented in 1946 by esteemed music critic Clancy W Shrub, who was in cahoots with the CIA at the time, and in an effort to greatly reduce the popularity of 'swing' music, which was referred to as 'Uber Jazz', and being that the CIA harboured heavy anti-German sentiment, they decided more words beginning with a soft 'G' needed to be invented and simultaneously, crush the whirlwind that was 'Uber Jazz' (now referred to as swing). Their plan worked.
From: https://www.reddit.com/r/PostHardcore/comments/2cddb6/unpublished_interview_from_closure_in_moscows/
