Matthias IA Eklundh Interview for La Chaîne Guitare – The Guitar Channel www.lachaineguitare.com Questions By Pierre Journel (pjournel@gmail.com) ‐ September 2009 Transcribed by Jenn at Random Chatter Music (metalichicka.wordpress.com) The full audio recording of this interview is available on www.lachaineguitare.com http://www.lachaineguitare.com/2009/12/lcg‐038‐mattias‐ia‐eklundh‐interview.html Matthias IA Eklundh Interview www.lachaineguitare.com PJ: Rock and roll. So, I am very happy to have with me, an amazing, new... maybe I shouldn't say new, but upcoming guitar players. And I'm going to try not to hurt your name too much. Your name is Matthias 'IA' Eklundh ­ how do you pronounce that? ME: Matthias 'ea' Eklundh. PJ: Is Matthias okay? ME: Matthias is fine. PJ: 'IA' ­ does that mean something; is that some kind of surname, or...? ME: When I was a kid, I couldn't say Matthias ‐ I'd say 'Matt‐ea‐us', so then everybody started calling me 'ea'. So, it doesn't mean anything ‐ it's not Internal Affairs or anything like that. It's just a nickname. PJ: Okay. Nothing nasty, or we should know about, or...? (loud laughter) ME: Oh... It's up to you. You can read anything into it if you'd like. But not really nasty, for me, no. (uproarious laughter) PJ: Okay. I usually start my interviews with the same question: What was your first guitar, Matthias? ME: My first guitar. It was a really shitty Duke, for about 5 Euros. Impossible to play, impossible to tune. Then I had a Vantage flying V, which was impossible to sit down with, and impossible to stand with, but still, I managed to play it. Then I got a Yamaha guitar, which was okay, but it got stolen, so I bought myself an Ibanez. And now I have about a million Caparison Applehorn guitars, which is my signature model, so... yeah. PJ: And the main milestones between those first guitars... and now you are the main guitar player for Freak Kitchen. Can you tell us the latest history of what happened... what you're doing now? 2/12 08/05/10 Matthias IA Eklundh Interview www.lachaineguitare.com ME: Well, my signature guitars, first of all... they are equipped with something called the True Temperament frets. And they are looking very funny. Each fret is a different shape. They call it... The guitar itself, is 'wrong'. It took 400 years for someone to figure out how to build a guitar that is actually in tune. Um, it's a Swedish invention, and it's wonderful. The guitar itself, is Japanese. It's got an Applehorn (??? logo?) on it, and something called a 'sandstone' finish. And it's got my logo 'IA' on the inlay. It's just a kickass guitar. 27 frets. Whereas, the Duke, was not a kickass guitar, when I was a kid, so... it's a big difference. PJ: And do you have to re­learn to play the guitar, with this kind of True Temperament stuff? ME: No, not at all. I tried it for the first time last year, when I was going to perform Beethoven's [triton?] concerto, the violin part of that one, together with a symphony orchestra. And it took me about 30 minutes to get used to it, but the thing is ‐ once I got used to it, I could never go back. So when I pick up a regular guitar, now it's like 'oh God, this sucks.' You know? The notes are just completely 'wrong', and the higher you go up on the fretboard, the more wrong you are. Now it's a hundred percent correct in every spot, you know. So, it's amazing. PJ: Music­wise, what is your history? ME: Yeah well, it started out with KISS when I was six years old. I wanted to be Gene Simmons and drool blood, and spit fire, and everything. So, I did that for a couple of years. I drooled blood and spit fire. (laughter) ME: And then I discovered Frank Zappa, and it changed my life forever. It was like... 'Good God! You can also do this onstage. You don't have to, again, spit fire and...' But then again, it would be great to spit fire and then play in The Black Page, and so on. But then, I discovered Miles Davis and Django Reinhardt, and Metallica and Slayer... all at the same time. And I liked everything. To me, it was about ‐ good music, bad music, or shit music, you know. It was just like ‐ 'I like this!' and so... I think you can mix, I think you can hear all of these different elements. Folk music ‐ traditional folk music from the Balkans. Ancient stuff, and metal, and whatever else is in Freak Kitchen's music. We're a big mess of many, many things. But I started out with drums when I was six years old, switched to guitar when I was early teenaged years, quit school when I was fifteen, and just sat home, and practiced, and wrote music. Moved to Copenhagen when I was nineteen, and since then, I've lived on it. For 21 years. And the last 10 ‐ 12 ‐ 15 years of it have been really, really good. The first couple of years were really, really hard. I was struggling to make money. I've always written my own music. No cover music, or nothin' like that. And I've traveled Earth so many times. I've been all around the planet a million times. I've been here, to South Korea, to Indonesia, 3/12 08/05/10 Matthias IA Eklundh Interview www.lachaineguitare.com Japan... India, Borneo, Malaysia, China, whatever... Mexico, France, many times ‐ Ile de France. (some laughter) ME: And when you travel enough times, you realize that it's a very small planet, you know. And you come back and it's like 'it's you again, oh, the Swedish guy.' Great! OK, so... (laughter) ME: Yeah... yeah, yeah, yeah. So we need to buy your damn album now. (laughter) ME: And they do! And I start making more money, and my first solo album ‐ Freak Guitar ‐ sold so well in Southeast Asia that I just bought myself a house for the family, you know. 'Cause I own the copyright, and everything returns to me. The money returns to me. So I make good money on it ‐ I live a very comfortable life in the Swedish woods with my son and my wife, my French dog and my 3 crazy cats. I have my own studio, a little forest, and big fireplaces, and it's just very nice. So that's my musical history in 2 minutes. PJ: Okay. Excellent. Can you tell us a little bit more about your latest album? ME: Yeah. I think it's the best album ever made. (laughter, pause) PJ: Good (???) answer. Okay, next question... (laughter) ME: That's it. I have nothing more to say. I'm actually very happy about it. I'm... I think we broke some new ground. I think we went where no band has gone before. And you may not realize it at first. You may be like ... ' yeah, this is okay...' and 'there's some Indian stuff from blah‐blah‐blah' but we blended a lot of ingredients together, and cooked our own very much Freak Kitchen soup. And I'm just very, very happy with it, and the end result. It took me 3 years to produce it, and record it. And to think 'what are we doing''. I really wanted to get this one right. I think we actually got it right, for the first time. I'm very happy with every album. When I hear it, I think 'I did my very utmost.' But I needed to be 39 years old, in order to get this one right. I couldn't have done this one when I was 25, you know. So, that's how it is. And you gain so much experience from things that you see, and people you play with... and diarrhea in Mumbai, and so on... 4/12 08/05/10 Matthias IA Eklundh Interview www.lachaineguitare.com (laughter) ME: You put all that in to your music. And you puke out what is hopefully your own soup, you know, your own stew. PJ: I have to confess that I only recently discovered Freak Kitchen. [unclear] I discovered your music through the latest album, and I was very impressed with the production of it. It is very well­produced, but in a good way. Not just over­produced... the sound is still very dry ­ you can hear everything. Of course, the main point is that I think the songs are great, and it's a very definitive idea from you, to have a... Did you have a specific sound in mind when you produced the album? ME: Thank you very much. I'm very grateful that you're saying these things. You made me a happy man. Because this is exactly what I wanted it to be. I wanted it to sound well. I wanted you to be able to compare it, sound‐wise, to a Steely Dan album, or something like that. Say 'yeah, this is a...' I mean, it's not the same kind of music, but this is a well‐produced album. And the thing is, I worked on the album for 3 years, over a period of 3 years. I didn't work for 3 years.
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