Pat O'May talk about their upcoming record!
Hello Pat O'May, thanks for your time. Would it be please possible to introduce your music to our readers? Hi people! My music is hard to define in a word, I have to say it's a mix of Classic Rock, Neo Rock Prog, Metal and I also use traditional music inspirations like Celtic, Amerindian or Arabic, I'm just trying to build something as personal as possible. My obsession is to tell stories and to make people travel throughout the songs, on this album I decided that the trip should be throughout the record, that's why I created this concept album around Mr. No Face character! You have recently revealed a video for “In This Town”. What's the story behind this song? Yes, indeed, by the way this track is the last of the album. I should tell you a little bit about the concept of the album. Mr. No Face is a character who lives his life peacefully, but suddenly he realizes that all his senses have disappeared, was he born like that? the whole question, is there. Throughout the album he will seek to regain his real life and will realize that his own fears and cowardice have pushed him to put himself in sleep. His quest will be to fight his fears and recover all his senses to discover A New World. In This Town is his last step where he will finally become the man, he's always been! This song is taken from your upcoming album, “Welcome to a New World”, out on September 17th. What kind of songs can we expect on this record? To illustrate all of the Mr. No Face quests, I used Rock, Hard Rock, Prog Rock and many other moods. It was very exciting to explore different mixes, the songs can be really long, some are over 8 minutes, some are shorter luckily ahaha, there are also a lot of musical parts to complement the songs. I really want to be free in writing this album. I also linked all the tracks with sound design and some of my friends gave speeches in different languages such as English, French, Japanese, German and Serbian, I wanted to have a world resonance to this story, because I really think that it can happen anywhere and to anybody, Welcome to Humanity! How long have you worked on it and how would you describe your usual writing process? It took me about 4 months to finish the album. Most of the time I isolate myself in my studio to concentrate on writing, I did the same for this album, I like these moments, being alone in front of myself! After this first step, I’ve started to write the lyrics during 3 months, writing the lyrics is always more difficult for me. Then I’ve called my band (Christophe Babin on bass and John Helfy on drums) to improve the result. I wanted it as spontaneous as possible.! We rehearsed for a few days and recorded the album. I wanted it as spontaneous as possible. We've recorded it the old fashioned way, everyone in the same room, and did a few overdubs, I mixed the album in France with Bryan Rondot and did the mastering with my friend Alex "Magic" Wharton at Abbey Road Studio. Can we talk about the process of creating the artwork and the overall idea behind this visual? I’ve always controlled the artwork of my albums. I’ve tried to transcribe the universe of Mr. No Face story, it’s somewhere in between Tommy (The Who) and Matrix, the world where we live somewhere.
I’m sure you are, like a lot of people, missing live shows. Do you have some dates planned for the rest of the year or 2022? After all this period of musical scarcity, our last gig was February 2020! We will have the pleasure of meeting the fans for next September, we miss human contact terribly! We are going to play all over France to start. Then, as soon as possible, we will go to Europe to present the new show where we will play the new album in its entirety and some standards from our repertoire. We are preparing a show where the video will be presented with our new mascot Mr. No Face! The last words are for you. If you have a message to convey, here’s your chance! Thanks mate for this interview. Just enjoy life, be confident in yourself and fight your fears to build a New World, you're welcome! Thanks for your time!
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