IO Pages - Lale Larson full interview
Interview by Rene Yedema.
We had some trouble to convince my chief editor of the importance to publish an interview with you. This would have been completely different if you would have accepted the invitation to play with Dream Theater. What can you tell us about this invitation and the reason(s) you decided to go your own way?
I knew that question would come, this keeps following me around. (laughs)
I was never invited, but I guess you are referring to their interest in auditioning me ten years ago…
Well, let me tell you the whole story: In 1994 (or thereabouts) I received a call from austrian guitarist Milan Polak who, as I remember it, was in contact with the manager of Dream Theater. He told me that DT were auditioning keyboard players since Kevin Moore was about to leave the band.
They were auditioning a lot of keyboard players all over the world at that time, and Milan put in a good word for me. Anyway, they were interested in hearing some more of my music since they had only heard a track I did with Todd Duane for Mark Varney’s “Guitar On The Edge” compilation.
They gave me Kevin Moore’s home address to send him a tape, and that was it. But I never did. I was only 20 years old and I felt at the time that joining a rock band at such an early age would limit me in other areas of my playing. I wanted to learn more and I was really more into learning about improvised music at the time. So I declined. Then not long after I recieved a call from America from Mark Varney saying: “man, I heard you just turned down Dream Theater!” (laughs) To me it wasn’t such a big deal, it was just not what I wanted to do at the time.
It’s not true that they offered me to join the band or anything - they were just interested in an audition as I understood it.
They auditioned a lot of people around that time including Jordan and Jens Johansson. Anyway they obviously wouldn’t want someone to just join the band to get some spotlight and then leave for a solo-career. That wouldn’t be fair. They deserved someone who had the same passion and love for their music as they have. I think they found the perfect guy in Jordan. I have all the respect for what they are doing and they seem to be great guys as well as musicians. It’s just not really my kind of music. Great band though! I wish them all the best.
The reviews from recordings on which you were involved we’ve published until now (Richard Hallebeek, Ominox, The Alchemists, Electrocution 250, TimeLine and J.A.M.) were all in the jazz-rock/fusion-style, but besides that invitation from DT you’ve had a lot more connections with progressive rock than most people know. What’s that incredible triple-album from Sir Millar Mulch How To Sell The Whole F#@!ing Universe To Everybody… Once And For All! with musicians like Virgil Donati, Dave Meros and Nick D Virgilio for instance?
Yeah, that is a really cool album. Sir Millard Mulch is a true original in the music business to say the least, ha,ha,ha! and he has really managed to get some cool musicians together for this CD. Mulch is a singer/guitarist who has the brains, wit and the political satire of Frank Zappa and his music ranges from pop to progressive metal to experimental avant garde.
He is really an open mind and a kindred spirit, and his music requires open minded musicians who can play any style, not unlike Zappa’s musicians, but this time with a new generation. It’s not often you hear groundbreaking music like this, very inspiring work. You can check out some of his music at www.sirmillardmulch.com.
At first I actually received a fan mail from Mulch were he told me how much he enjoyed my piece “The Electric Lobster Marimba Sandwich”. It’s a notated piece of only one and a half minutes but with a 40 page score, so you can imagine it’s pretty intense (laughs). I replied to him that I could send him the score if he wanted to check it out.
He mailed me back and asked me if I by any chance would be interested in playing on his album. I checked out his site and I said yes and I ended up playing on one track with Virgil Donati where we go off in a 13/16 note groove. I also have some crazy trade offs with Morgan ŧren (Mats/Morgan, Zappa).
This 4-Hour, Triple-CD album is released on Trey Spruance’s (Mr Bungle) Mimicry Records, and it is distributed by Revolver USA and will be available in most record stores I think. A 222-page Companion Guide written by Millard is available separately through MutantMall.com
Another project you’re in is even connected with the favourite band of our chief editor, The Flower Kings; you were the keyboard-player in Karmakanic during their live-tour last year! How did you get involved with them and what were your experiences with this highly acclaimed band? And are there plans to record with them sometimes?
Yes, I received this call from Jonas Reingold asking me if I was interested in playing the keys for Karmakanic on this short european tour last year. I already had a connection to Zoltan and Krister. I kinda knew Zoltan from before from the swedish jazz.scene. For a long time we had talked about playing together, but it just never happened.
Then the opportunity came with Jonas band. The guitarist Krister Jonsson played a couple of solos on my first solo album Ominox about ten years ago so I was familiar with him too.
I had never heard Karmakanic before so Jonas sent me two CD’s and I liked what I heard on “Wheel Of Life” so I accepted the gig.
I like Jonas music because it has all the commercial melodic aspects but it also has a lot of room for improvisation and playing, especially live. It was also really nice to meet Göran Edman, who I was familiar with through his work with Malmsteen, and the super nice dutchman Rob Palmen who was in charge of the tour as well as singing and playing guitar & keyboards.
Unfortunately Jonas didn’t have any charts for the music on those two albums so I had to pick out everything by ear and transcribe it onto paper, as well as finding all the right keyboard sounds. A lot of work (laughs). We only did two rehearsals together before the tour, but it all worked out really nicely. We all hit it off and we had a lot of fun together, they are all such nice and fun guys to work with, never any conflicts.
Jonas is in the middle of writing new material for a third Karmakanic CD, and he is writing it especially with this band in mind. We will probably go into the studio this fall, so you can expect a new Karmakanic album beginning of next year.
We will also come to The States and play one of the big festivals, and a european tour is being planned for next year.
Is there a possibility that you’ll be composing and recording a progressive rock album in the near future yourself and if so, which musicians would you like to play your songs?
Progressive rock is a wide term. I’m not thinking so much in terms of genres, but more in terms of sounds and timbres.
If I’m using heavily distorted guitars in my music for instance, is that prog rock or metal then? I don’t know.
If I’m using an orchestra, is that classical music? You know what I mean, sometimes music is just music.
Today just because you play the saxophone people assume you play jazz. You might actually be a punk rock sax player or a death metal trumpet player. Unfortunately some sounds are so associated with a certain style of music and we live in a world were things must be labeled in order to become a product that you can sell.
We are still not use to heavy metal tuba players because we haven’t heard them before, but I’m sure they will appear in the future (laughs).
To answer your question, it’s definitely possible that I’d sometime do a CD that could fall into the Prog rock cathegory, but probably not in the traditional sense.
I think that the progressive genre is pretty open to all kinds of influences anyway. Great music is always evolving, never standing still. I like music that sounds organic, unfortunately a lot of the progressive music I hear these days sounds like it is cut and pasted in ProTools and too processed. I like it when it sounds more natural. There are a lot of creative and open musicians that I would like to work with, guitar genius John McLaughlin, sax legend Pharoah Sanders, Squarepusher etc.
Your contributions on records vary from super fast fusion (Electrocution), almost pure jazz (TimeLine) and inventive jazz-rock (RHP, J.A.M.), while the projects you’ve released under your own name (the solo piano-CD State Of Mind and the soon to be published DVD The Seven Deadly Pieces, a ambitious work for chamber orchestra and the heavy rock-band Darkane) show your classical training and influences like Chopin, Bach, Gorecki, Schönberg and Nancarrow. Where lies your musical heart, what’s your original voice, what are your main influences and do you think that your capability to play almost any kind of music perfectly makes you hard to identify for the music-fan?
Good question. I don’t think my style is hard to identify for the music-fan. I think a musical voice consists of several factors, most of all the personality, the soul if you like, but also the choice of notes and the rhythmic vocabulary.
I’m working a lot as a session musician, with different musicians, so obviously the sounds and instrumentations around me change, just as the world around us change, but I think you can divide my music into two different cathegories really, electric and acoustic music.
If you listen to some of my electric recordings like Ominox, TimeLine, RHP and Electrocution, I think that it’s all in the same style. My playing and my note choices are pretty much the same, it’s my vocabulary.
I play with a certain phrasing on the electric keys. Electrocution is probably the album that stands out the most from the rest because of its experimental nature, and also because of the distorted guitars which gives it a more metal edge, but still there is even a spot in Fletcher The Mouse were I solo over John Coltrane’s “Countdown” chords, I use those same chords on the Ominox CD on the track “Yes!”. So I can definitely see a red thread through all those electric projects.
The acoustic music is a totally different thing though. I have played the piano for as long as I can remember and it’s just such a deep instrument. The timbre you can get out of one note and the touch and technique is just so much deeper and spiritual to me. You can use dynamics within a musical line that is just impossible on electric keyboards (unless you use a breath control or something), then again the synths have other aspects such as different sounds, pitch bend etc. But I never practise on a synth, the only time I even touch an electric instrument is when I’m recording or touring.
All my solo albums (Except for the early Ominox recordings) are acoustic, State Of Mind and Seven Deadly Pieces.
I’m also working on a new solo album under my own name that will have piano, acoustic bass, percussion & drums.
In my own music, under my own name, I draw my biggest influences from improvised spiritual music like John Coltrane, Eric Dolphy, Keith Jarrett and the sounds of the european avant garde. That is the music closest to me.
But my heart is in everything I do, I would never do a session if I didn’t feel like I would learn something or add something new to the music.
I am saying no to a lot of sessions too. I’m not doing something just for the money. Maybe that’s why I don’t have any money (laughs)!!
I will continue to do studio sessions that I like but I will try to market my own music a bit more. Then people might find it easier to identify me as a solo artist.
Maybe my own music appeals more to a jazz audience, but I will continue to do projects that I find creative and musically rewarding. I find that there is a lot more groundbreaking and creative things happening in the progressive or ambient scene than it is in the jazz scene at the moment. People like Miles Davis and John Mclaughlin both experimented with new sounds and beats and still kept their identity, and that’s what jazz is all about I think.
The jazz I hear today I have heard before, I’m still waiting for that new strong voice.
But for you prog fans out there I can really recommend Sir Millard Mulch’s CD, and you can also look forward to the next Karmakanic CD. I’m also playing the keys for Benny Jansson’s (Xsavior, Tears Of Anger) next CD, feat Göran Edman and Daniel Flores (Mind’s Eye) among others. I have noticed that I have fans both in the areas of prog rock, Jazz and classical. I take that as a big compliment. It just shows that music is about expression and not genre.
What can you tell us about The Seven Deadly Pieces? Was if influences by the movie Se7en for instance, which had more or less the same theme?
The Seven Deadly Pieces is a 50 minute piece for piano, chamber orchestra and electric guitars, a 200 page score that I began writing in 1994/95.
The concert is in seven movements, and every movement is based on one of the seven deadly sins.
This list of sins go back a long time in history. It is told that Greek monastic theologian Evagrius of Pontus first drew up a list of eight offences and human passions, and in the late 6th century, Pope Gregory the Great reduced the list to seven items.
These “sins” have since appeared in several books. For instance, Dante Alighieri described them as different steps on the road to hell. This concept have influenced people like William Hjortsberg and movies like Angel Heart. Many artists have been influenced by this theme and there are ballets, paintings, and films such as, like you mentioned, Se7en that have used this concept.
In 2003 we premiered this piece at The Henry Dunker Culture Centre in Helsingborg, Sweden. I had members of thrash metal band Darkane, Christofer Malmström and Peter Wildoer, playing all the metal parts and we had jazz musicians teaming up with musicians from the different symphony orchestras. A great experience! It was all recorded and filmed with four cameras and the concert will be released on DVD together with audio commentaries and a documentary with several interviews, hopefully later this year.
The booklet will contain some history of the sins, references and my thoughts on every piece and how and why I composed them the way I did.
According to The Picture Book of Devils, Demons and Witchcraft, by Ernst and Johanna Lehner every sin is associated with a punishment in hell, a colour, an animal and a demon. These will all be illustrated and over these illustrations there have been poems especially written to my music by French poet Nicolas Moulard. It will be a fat booklet. It’s just really hard to find the finances for this kind of groundbreaking project. You can watch the trailer to the DVD at www.lallelarsson.com. I hope you enjoy it.
