What inspired you to first start making music? And how did you come to be in your current incarnation? Or if you prefer, a brief bio about you.
The Cosmic Dead is a devolving music experience which represents a möbius strip in the form of sound and energy. The sum of all parts and the answer to nothing at all except sheer exuberance in the face of creation.
Provide us with some info about your latest release…
‘Scottish Space Race’ is our last record, it represents the process of moving an entire country to another planet altogether.
Which ones would you consider your main influences both music-wise & non-music-wise?
Weird how many times as musicians we have had to describe our influences however we would like to include taking long baths, wearing sports socks, walking in summer rain, the last light before sundown, the smell of a forest at night, WEM amplifiers and the point in every conversation where there is nothing left to say.
In what way does your sound differ from the rest genre-related artists/bands and why should we listen to your music? In other words, how would you describe your sound?
That’s for us to try and you to experience – or not.
Please name your 3 desert islands albums, movies & books…
To be completely honest we’d much rather chill out with a half size mini guitar, a 1980s casio keyboard and the entirety of both ‘Limmy’s world of Glasgow’ and ‘Prog Corner’ than wear out our favourite albums and movies over the course of the two week holiday in the Pacific Ocean.
Do you prefer studio or performing live and why?
Most of our recordings are simply live shows where the audience is just one person – the sound engineer. We don’t do second takes and sometimes our music is just 30 minutes from a 6-hour jam – we always record in a non-studio environment. At our concerts the audience brings a whole energy to that method and can sometimes converge and be more in the band than we are, a few times we have left the stage completely and the gig has played on with friends or even strangers taking over on the instruments – this is great.
Is there any funny-unique story you would like to share with us, always in relation to your music ‘career’?
True story – we thought the dwarves in Wroclaw were hallucinations..
Which track of your own would you point out as the most unique and why?
We all have different favourite tracks for different reasons, some of our tracks it’s because we recorded them in an Italian kitchen, other tracks were created in a remote cottage in the highlands of Scotland. Everytime we play the tracks they change a bit anyway, we just use them as a rough framework to improvise and adapt – that’s why each concert is different and it encourages the other aspects of the night such as the environment, audience, lighting etc to shape the performance and make it a night everyone can remember.
Would you like to share with our readers your future plans?
Next year we are celebrating the tenth anniversary of The Cosmic Dead so at the moment we are involved in a few projects and ideas which may include the release of unreleased material on physical formats and perhaps a festival which brings everything Cosmic Dead related to boil over in a weekend of wild visceral musical performances.
Free question!!! (Ask yourself a question) you wish to answer and haven’t been given the opportunity…
None of these questions have anything to do with Space Fest (Editor’s Note: well the Q&A is for The Cosmic Dead, but since you are a bit worried check here for 2017’s edition!) so we would like to say what a great honour it is to be involved in the festival, it’s the first time we have been in Gdansk, previously our only concerts in Poland have been in Warsaw and Wroclaw. Both excellent experiences for us however we are hoping to make the most of Gdansk while we are there, usually our surroundings affect our live performance and the energy therein so hopefully we can find out what Gdansk is all about and transfer that into the cosmodelic context of Space Fest.
Curated by: Christos Doukakis
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