Future Figment Interview is up!!!!
All questions are answered by Skarpi.(bass/vocals)
1. Iceland is not the common place I look for Avant Prog Metal music? Tell Us a bit about the band how it came to be?
Future Figment was founded back in 2013 when Sigfús joined as a second guitar player to our previous project and I decided to give the lead vocals a shot.Before that, me, Kristjan and Agust had spent a lot of time recording demos and looking for a vocalist to complete our line-up. At first the plan was to be more aggressive then we turned out to be with "growling" vocals and more chaos. But after Sigfús joined and I took place behind the mic the vibe of the music changed a bit and "Qualm" is the outcome.
2. Just listening to the Qualm I hear A Perfect circle, Katatonia, Sunny Day Real estate and Sense Field there is such a post hardcore to what you do with that heavy prog metal element Your voice has that Maynard Tool/ APC vibe.. Would the band agree?
Yes, we're all huge Tool and APC fans and are definitely influenced by their music. When we were writing the album I didn't have a lot of singing experience as I had not originally intended to be the vocalist for the group. I tried out different techniques along the way and being largely influenced by Maynard, you might say I adopted a similar singing style as his.
3. From Iceland I really know very little Sigur Ros, Bjork , Solstarfir and Potentiam are about it. Whats the musical landscape like there and do you have many venues to play ?
The music scene here in Iceland is alive and well. A lot of great music to check out. Unfortunately, Iceland has been bombarded with increasing tourism for a few years now. A lot of the venues in downtown Reykjavik have been replaced with Hotels or tourist related businesses lately. So there are not as many options for new bands to start their careers as there was in previous years.
4. What is the story or theme for Qualm ? There seems to be something complex going on here ?
Many of these songs were written over a long period of time and many changes were made half way through. I didn't really have any theme or stories in mind when writing Qualm but I think in the end the vocals and lyrics bound the songs together quite well. We are really happy with the outcome.
5. If you could make a proper video for any track on the album what one and what would you want it to look like ?
Although we haven't really decided on the song at this point, my choice would have to be Crown The Sun. I'm very happy with how that song turned out. We don't really have any ideas at this point but it is a very diverse song and I think it has a lot of elements that would be fun to portrait in a music video.
6. You released Qualm fully DIY right was it a album you didnt look for labum support and wanted to do it on your own as with good Distro, PR and Internet support labels arent needed?
Yes we did but it was more out of necessity. We didn´t know how to approach the labels and didn´t have any contacts so we just released it on our own in hope something would happen later on.
7. If you were asked to in 4 words bring the feeling of the band to someone that has not hear Future Figment what 4 words would you use?
guess the best answer to that would be: "Listen to Future Figment"
8. If offered a tour to Europe or USA what bands would you feel a good fit to open for?
Of course all of us would love to open for bands we've been listening to for the past decade like Deftones, Mastodon or Gojira but at this stage we would be quite happy to open for other big Icelandic bands for example, such as Sólstafir, Skálmöld and The Vintage Caravan.
9. Whats your thoughts of underground music in this 21st century digital age . Is it a rebirth fro indie music or is it watered down by all the bedroom artists out there?
Well nowadays most musicians have a platform for their music online and can distribute their work anywhere in the world, which is definitely a good thing, but it´s hard to not get lost in the sea of music you can find online today. So if you want to get your music on the surface you need to have a label or some kind of guidance to get it there I think.
10. I do hear a bunch of eastern elements in your music or am I very mistaken .I would say it makes the band more unique and ear catching to the listener.
Well I don't know for a fact if any one of us have been listening to anything eastern, but there is perhaps somekind of influence that comes unconsciously to us. Who knows, you might be right on that one.
11. If a large label like Century Media, Matador , Inside out or Sargent House came and offered a deal would it interest you or is this not what the band is looking for?
I think we would be interested for sure, we're open to any kind of promotion for the band as long as it's in interest of both partiesand doesn't limit our freedom to create the music we like.
12. What are the members of Future Figment listening to currently?
I've been listening to new the Gojira album lately and also recently discovered a great band called Intronaut. For the rest of the band, we all listen to rather similar music and are all a big fans of Meshuggah, Mastodon, Deftones and Tool for example.
13. If there was one song you could cover and make youre own which would it be any way?
So far we have never covered a song. Up to this point the focus has been on writing our own material, but we've had this discussion and ideas have been thrown around. One of them that we all liked was "Dream Brother" by Jeff Buckely. That actually might happen one day.
14. Do the members of the band have other projects they record or play in if so tell us about them?
At the moment our main focus is Future Figment. But there are other project members are working on. But it's too early to mention at this point.
15. Thanks for the time any closing thoughts here.
We are very proud of this album. The writing/recording process was hard at times and we learned a lot from it. We've already started working on new songs and I can tell you things are sounding good at this point. There's more to come. Thanks for the talk 🙂 Cheers Skarpi
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