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Hey! I'm Sophie, I'm 22 and live in Leicester.

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Kalimur Interview: Redemption


This is Kalimur interview Take 2! In 2015 I gave you all an interview with Brett Steinberg (lead vocals), well, this year I am giving you an interview with Brett, Alex (bass) and Tyler (guitar)! Unfortunately, Jonah (drums) couldn't be there for the interview but we were nearly there - 3/4!

The boys are releasing their second album 'Redemption' which is out on 25th January. Physical copies will soon be available but will be limited as I have heard from the guys. I have already listened to the album and it's great so you should buy it when it's available to you lot!


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

How have you guys been since I last spoke to you?

Brett - Super busy, In fact Alex is in Alabama right now. We had a show the other night which went really well, it was an acoustic show with just myself, Tyler and our friend Sarah.  Doing a lot of promotion for the album, doing shows and enjoying the holidays.


It’s the first time I have met you Tyler and Alex so,’ Hi.’

Tyler - It’s really nice to meet you and we really appreciate you doing this.


So you all had a great Christmas, was your favourite gift you received?

Tyler - My favourite gift is right here, they are water speakers. So when music is playing these speakers light up and water shoots into the air. They are the coolest things. And they were like 15 dollars and I can’t even explain how excited I am, I can’t form words I am so happy. Every time I play music I sit back and watch the water jumping.  It totally stops me from being productive, I will be trying to type something and the water will start jumping….aaahh it’s so incredible. 

So that was my favourite gift, either that or I got a basketball hoop that hangs on my door.   My roommate last year slam dunked it and like broke my plastic one so I was really sad. This one has a metal rim so its super high tech…..I am like eight years old!!!!!

Brett -  I am Jewish so we have Hanukkah but I was at college when it was Hanukkah so my favourite present was the gift of family and friends coming together.

Tyler & Alex -  Aaaahhhhhh that’s soooooo cheesy.

Brett - And I just beat you completely! Destroyed you, you’re done, you’re finished!

Have you had time to think about yours now Alex?

Alex - I got a 50 dollar card to Musicians Friend so that was my favourite present. Invest in the band!

Tyler - This is literally going to paint me as the biggest douche! When he said family and friends and Alex said music is my life and I am just staring at water speakers and playing basketball!


So you are going to release your album 'Redemption', would you say it’s different from your last album?

Alex - Oh my gosh, much different.

Brett - Yeah I mean me and Tyler were talking about this over Hibachi last night, I would say ‘Ghosts we used to Know’ is kinda like you are not alone, we are here with you, let’s stay optimistic kind of album. 

This is definitely in the same vain but I think it’s a little darker and is more kind of saying it’s our right to feel these heavier emotions, that’s all part of being human. So if you are just even looking at sound, it’s a heavier album emotionally and instrumentally. 


I have had chance to listen to it and it’s quite a dramatic album, lots of deep lyrics.

You have released a few singles off the album what have been the reactions to it when you have played them to your audiences?

Tyler -  People have really liked it, the way we have structured the release, this album is a lot more rock and like Brett said heavier and darker. The first one was like, ‘Oh yay, everything is okay.’ and this one is like ‘Yeah, life sucks a little’, we are going to be straight up about it.  

 So when we released the first single which was ‘Empty Hands’ that was like the transitional piece because it sounded a lot like the old album but we were kind of getting into some new elements. 

The other ones like ‘Modern Love’ and ‘Fire Away’ are like so sassy and have a bite to them so you are like getting to that darker side.

So I think they were used as a transition to like get to the new album, you have to be in a kind of mind set to  really like it.  But people have liked it because it’s a different sound to what they are used to but not too different that it’s alienating.  It’s been a really good response.--

--As I said I like it I think it’s more dramatic and more people can relate to it.

Tyler - We are a dramatic species!


How did the album name Redemption come about?

Brett - Erm for this album it was pretty natural, I would say one of the songs was like a centre piece for the album called ’Redemption’ and I think every time you make a record there are one or two songs that, in the early process of writing it kind of gives you direction.  So the song ’Redemption’ on the record was written quite early on in the process of creating it, so it kind of set the theme.   

The theme is saying ,go along with, have your emotions, your experiences, It’s basically saying in a more general sense that with all of these feelings you can still redeem yourself, your life can still be redeemed. These heavier emotions and experiences are not the end all be all, more  reason for you to look at them and say, we can still overcome this we can redeem ourselves.


Tyler - The other thing I think that is really good is we are staying true to our roots. The first record we didn’t really write about experiences of how we felt during whatever was happening at the time we wrote about after we turned things around, how to make the best of each situation.

With this record we are writing like you say, really dramatic of how we are feeling, how sad, how down we were. All these thoughts that were going on in our heads at our worse, but at the same time at the core of it, as a band we still have that positive, silver lining outlook on life. 

'Redemption' was just a way of saying, Hey, yeah we feel all these kind of things, life's gonna knock you down some times but at the end of the day that’s what we are writing about right now it’s not changing our outlook on life, we are still looking for redemption. When you get knocked back down get back up!

Alex - You can look at ’Ghosts We Used to Know’ as hind sight to experiences we deal with in life and then Redemption is more the body of these experiences.


Brett, you write a lot of songs, who wrote the most on this album and did you like them at first?

Brett - We all had a tonne of input on the record, I wrote a lot of the songs but at the same time as with any songs I write, the band put in a lot of feedback which kind of changes the outlook on the song. So in a general sense if you are looking at the creation of the album we all put in a lot of our own creativity. Whether it’s in the melody or the guitar, bass line, harmonies or the idea of where we see the direction of the song. 

In terms of people reactions to the songs what’s really good about us is we are all kind of optimistic skeptics. It’s like we believe in songs but we will be honest with each other if we feel this part doesn’t really work for me. We will have conversations about it.

We finished the promotion of the first record and we all felt like we are all feeling suddenly really creative so start just pouring in these voice memos in our phones of rough ideas for songs. We put it into a huge folder on our computer we had about 100-150 ideas. From there we have songs that are already completely written, we have ideas that vary from full on melodies for the verse and chorus to just one little thing that caught our attention. We pick and choose which ones we want to follow, we figure those out and kind of demo 2 to 25 songs we feel could be on the record.

We all met up, listened through all the demos we all had our own notebooks it was like something from a reality show. We wrote down in order our favourite songs and then just talked about them for a couple of hours. Some of the best songs we all kind of agreed, they kind of all appeared in our top five. The later songs, maybe 9, 10, 11 we all had to have those conversations, well I believe in this one, I believe in that one. Even after that initial cutting down we had to do it again. There were some disagreements with some people favourites but ultimately we found the sounds we could all stand behind and be proud of for the record.



They are all good! Alex and Tyler, would you say there were any arguments?

Laughter *

Tyler - Oh my Gosh, This is Brett…..Let me paint a picture here.

So Brett is very open to criticism 98 % of the time, however with things that he really likes, he cares about, they are like his babies know what I mean? So they are songs he writes that he thinks are life itself, we listen to them and we are like ‘ Bro’!  

* Laughter *

He gets really like upset, there were like two songs, one was called ‘Seeking’ the other ‘New Eyes’ that didn’t make the cut.
'New Eyes' was like right on the cusp of making the record it was like number 13 when we averaged out our scores and Brett was pissed! He was like ‘This song is so symbolic, it’s this and this!!!
He was really mad, there are some arguments but like he said the top 6 or 7 are ones we all agree on.

I wrote a song too and was so pissed, there was so much potential and Alex looked at me and said, ‘Dude this is garbage!’. It was so sad!

Alex - I did kind of like it, as hard as making an album is choosing the final songs is just a hard a process.

Tyler - Yeah that was difficult because everyone was saying Oh my song can be song 13, you know what I mean?

Alex - We cut it down from 13 to 11!


Would you consider doing a deluxe CD with the extra tracks?

Tyler - Deluxe, we did consider it, having a bonus track or two. Maybe a full separate album. I don’t think we came to a conclusion about that.

Brett - There are so many ways you can go with songs that didn’t make it, we still really believe in them, we just have to rework them more. We just felt they didn’t hit their potential. So those could be reworked. It’s never a bad thing to put a song on the back burner, it just gives you more opportunities to use them in different ways.
The record is long enough to be a journey for the listener but not a drag.


Who was the first person other than yourselves that you played the album to?

Tyler - For myself it was family, I showed my sister. She only listens to heavy metal music it’s always really funny to hear her opinion on our songs. I help write the songs so they are very personal to me, so for me when I listen to them I will always be biased. I can be critical but I will always be biased .I am like, Yeah Dude the bass in this song is awesome.

I always like getting an opinion of someone who not only doesn’t normally like the genre but someone who is a complete outsider and she tell me things like, That’s weird!  We are trying to appeal to everybody, it’s always nice to hear someone else’s take on it.

Alex - I also showed it to my sister first, she into alternative rock so she is always like all family is biased about these things. But family tend to be super supportive for everything, they always want to have your back and love everything you do.
Later on we had a group of friends who we thought had good taste in music, friends who were experience listeners to all kinds of genres. We sent them the album and had feedback from them.



So do you have physical copies of your album?

Brett - We will, we have an album release show at a venue very dear to our hearts called ‘The Space’ at Hamden in Connecticut on the 29th which is the first time that people can actually buy a physical copy of the CD and from there on we will be selling them at shows and on the website for people throughout the country and the world to get it shipped to them.        


Can each of you describe the album in three words?

Brett - That’s a tricky question, Heavy, introspective - 

Tyler - Oh you used up two of my words, Don’t steal my last word man!

Brett - Heavy, introspective, honest.--

--What about you Alex?

Tyler - Can I go, so he doesn’t take my word!?  Erm, relatable, dynamic and I would probably say dark.

Alex -  I want to use the word fleeting, because the emotions as heavy as they are they kind of dissipate at the end of the album…….. 

Stop putting me on the spot like this!

Tyler - I thought you were gonna name songs from the album, like redemption, modern love!--

--That’s one way out!

Alex - Fleeing, insightful …

Brett - Come on buddy you are almost there, across the finish line!

Tyler - Say something that makes us sound really edgy like… Dangerous! 

Alex - I don’t know, you may have to come back to me, anyone else want to do my word?--

--How about deep?

Alex - Oh yeah, emotional.


What’s your favourite song on the album, mine is ‘Broken man’?

Tyler - That one is my favourite too.

Alex - I think it would probably be ’Boston’.

Brett - Mine would be ‘Fire Away’.

Alex - Let me look at my album to check.--

--Don’t you know the name of your own songs?

*Laughter*

Alex - Yeah, I do!

Tyler - He can’t handle the truth!

Alex - I want to look at all the names and compare them!  I like ’When You Fall.’ Tyler doesn’t like that one.

Tyler - That was one of the contestant songs between us.


Okay, the last question, With the New Year, What are your New Year’s Resolutions and do you think you will stick to them?

Brett - All these questions are what Tyler and I were talking about last night! One of my biggest ones is ‘Be present and worry less about what you can’t control!’ --

-- Do you think you will stick to that?

Brett - I damn well hope so. That’s really important. I have got better at it already so I think so.

Tyler - I gave a rant in the car about how much I love New Year and resolutions, probably for an hour and a half so I am gonna spare us all that. 

I have a bunch of New Year’s resolutions but I would say one of them is just to keep myself on a tight schedule because I get distracted a lot. I put too much on my plate and I can’t handle it.

Alex - I want to get better at the instrument that I play, that to go along with all the other personal priorities.


When does the album come out?

Brett - It comes out on 25th January, you can pre-order it now. We are really excited for people to hear it, it real, a raw emotion that we are giving to people and really hope we can give the impression that everyone goes through stuff and comes out the other end stronger than you could ever be if you didn’t go through moments that make us human.


Good luck with your album, I wish you all the luck for the future.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

For more information about shows, the album, etc, here is the bands website:
 www.kalimurband.com

Go and follow them on Twitter - @KalimurBand



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