ANRIE στο Off The Record: Η καταιγίδα που περίμενε δέκα χρόνια για να βγει στον κόσμο

Radio, εκεί που το rock βρίσκει φωνή.

Το rock βρίσκει φωνή, εμείς χάνουμε τη δικιά μας έπρεπε να είχαμε ξεκινήσει τη συνέντευξη με την ANRIE ήδη εδώ και 5 λεπτά αλλά δεν μπορούσαμε να την ακούσουμε απομονωμένη ελπίζουμε ότι θα βγαίνει κανονικά έξω… αν είναι όλα καλά. Ετσι λοιπόν το φανταστήκαμε φέτος να κάνουμε αυτό το ένθετο με τις συνεντεύξεις είναι ωραία, βάζουμε τις δικές μας μουσικές διαφωνούμε εδώ μεταξύ μας, τα βρίσκουμε στην πορεία. Αλλά καλά είναι να φέρνουμε και παρέα καμιά φορά να βλέπετε και ποιοι είναι αυτοί πίσω από τη μουσική που ακούμε εδώ… περίπου. Φέτος είπαμε να ανοίξουμε αυτό το καινούριο συρτάρι το Off The Record να φέρνουμε έναν καλλιτέχνη έτσι για μια σύντομη συζήτηση γιατί τα 30 λεπτά δεν είναι ποτέ αρκετά όταν μιλάς με καλλιτέχνες μπορείς να ξεφύγεις πολύ εύκολα. Θα ξεκινήσουμε στην πρώτη εκπομπή που δεν έχουμε κάνει κανένα απολύτως τεχνικό λάθος εδώ.

Όλα είναι προγραμματισμένα και επίτηδες θα ξεκινήσουμε με μια καλλιτέχνη από την Κύπρο από τη Λεμεσό που πέρσι μας συστήθηκε με ένα σινγκλάκι το Here δεν το έχουμε ακούσει ακόμα αλλά έχουμε ακούσει με την καινούργια κυκλοφορία της στο Storming η ANRIE λοιπόν είναι η πρώτη καλεσμένη στο Off The Record για αυτή τη σεζόν. ANRIE καλησπέρα. Στον αέρα σε ακούμε εκτός αέρα δεν μπορούσαμε να ακούσουμε τη φωνή σου.

[uncertain: “Μιλάω ελληνικά”] αλλά λίγο. Γιατί μαθαίνω ελληνικά.

I thought that you were a Cypriot.

I know, no I'm not.

Yeah, no one let me know about it. So what I was saying is that you're the first one we're doing an interview with this year. And the first question to you is: How good of an idea was it to come to our interview tonight and say, “Yes, I'll do that interview with these guys at Rock Blender”?

Well, to be honest, it's a really nice opportunity. And thank you guys for having me here. I don't know, actually. I took a bit of a look at the description of the radio. And I was like, yeah, I know. I mean, this is a really cool opportunity.

Yeah, you can find us anywhere these days. Yeah, yeah.

Greek radio platforms and stuff, yeah.

We've got a good site. But it's about you today. How comfortable are you behind the microphone during interviews? Would you prefer to just say, “Give me the microphone and I'll do the singing. Just don't ask me stuff about myself or my songs”?

Well, I mean, I feel okay. I'm pretty comfortable to share whatever you guys want to know. I mean, I'm pretty open.

Oh, cool. So, I'll avoid asking you how you got started in music. It's something that we try to avoid here. But I'll ask you the opposite. When was the last time you said, “Okay, enough is enough. It was fun while it lasted, but I can't do it anymore”? I don't know—for whatever reason. Was there a time when you said, “I'm giving up”?

I think that yes, but it was so long ago. And it was mostly connected to the fact that, you know. It always, the journey of singing of songwriting. It always goes like, you have ups and downs. You have like zero inspiration. And you just wait, and I know this now. And you just wait and the inspiration will find you later on. Just give it a time. And maybe one of the episodes when I was ready to give up. Like, it was that kind of moment when I felt really down. And I could not really write anything. It was a period when I was. I felt like I was just stuck in things. So I gave the tries on and on. I was trying and nothing actually worked. And I was like, okay, I lost it. And, but yeah, it was a. I think it was the longest break back then. Of me not, you know, not touching the instrument.

And not doing any kind of a creating. And it, eventually it helped. And I'm really glad that I caught myself. Doing this again. And without like, you know, putting too much pressure on. Or judging. Of the thoughts that I could have. I could have given up.

Cool, I'm happy that you haven't given up. I can really tell from the new single that you've grown. At least your music has grown within you. The music sounds a lot more sophisticated than the first song. Although we have different opinions: Dimitris loves the first song, “Here.” I prefer “Storming.”

eah, I actually got this kind of feedback. But they are pretty—I would not say opposite, but they are very different. Because I wrote “Here” and I was like, I just had an urge to go to the studio and record it. And I was like, “Oh my god, this is—the world needs to hear this.” And it was actually my first song that I finally decided to publish. And yeah, it's like, they are very different because “Storming” is a very old one. It's like 10-something years, and I always say that it's actually a song that saw so many versions of me, of my thinking, of me—like, you know, the vision of things that go through the prism inside me. And it has seen so many things, so many journeys that I took. But at the same time, it still reminds me.

And it still makes sense. So I was like, you know, the motivation of putting this or that to the public, it's also different. And for this, I felt like, yeah, this is something important and very out of time, to be honest, despite the fact that it's been passing so many versions and so many moods of mine. And yeah, it also has to see the world. That's what that was. And so many things are to come, to be honest. And working on something very different, so maybe you're gonna have the third opinion of something that's gonna come next.

Well, we’re going to play your latest single, “Storming,” again later on for the fans. But the next question that comes to mind is, I suppose, now that you’ve explained that “Storming” was from a different era and probably reflected your emotions at the time: are you afraid that you need to be in some kind of storm in order to write something?

No, to be honest, there's a saying that some artists, they need, you know, a certain state of mood, a certain state of, I don't know, like a character of theirs, to be able to write. But I mean, in my case, I haven't actually analyzed the state I'm in. So when I do the writing, it usually comes as a very random thing. And like, I'm driving the car, I'm going through the city, and suddenly, oppa, something comes into my mind. I'm like, “Oh, this is—wow, okay, we need to work on that.” And so “Storming” is mostly about—not actually the storm as a weather condition, but it's more like a metaphor that, yeah, we have so many storms, and sometimes they are so useless. We need to—when we can say and we can act, like, very simply, um, we can do very simple things.

We start, you know, this hurricane, storm, tsunami, whatever, uh, but in fact, we just need to deliver the message. The message can be really simple: “I don't like this,” or “I like this, but I prefer that.” So, you know, it was based on my observation and also my own feeling that we just put so many emotions into very simple things that can be solved very calmly and very differently. And yeah, this is something I just wanted to, you know, ask the world, like, “Why is this going on like this?”

So, the first time I heard the song, I thought you had a face behind “Storming.” But it reflected your state of mind, I suppose. It wasn't about someone else; it was about you.

Yes, it was actually a description of my own feelings, and it's so cool if someone feels the same or felt the same one day, and they can find it very relatable. Because I guess this is one of the goals of creating music, so you can find, um, something similar in other hearts.

So, now you’ve mentioned that you’re writing from personal experiences, um, how brave are you? Is there, um, a point where you say, “I need to put a stop to this. I’m not going to write about it”? Is there a personal moment that you wouldn’t write a song about?

I don't think so, because the perfectionism that comes to, I think, any artistic person, no matter what you do, is, uh—you have your own, like, you know, [uncertain: “milestone checks”]. Like, “Okay, is this something that can be a blocker, or is that one enough, or should I polish this one more?” So, in this case, I generally think that stopping yourself is something that we should not do when we are writing something that's not, like, you know, gonna be published tomorrow. Like, in terms of the process of creating, we should not stop ourselves, and we can evaluate this later. When we start to stop—when we start stopping ourselves in this stream and this process, we can just lock down some good things.

That can come out of it. So I tend not to stop myself, but I just—I evaluate when I finish. I evaluate later, like, “Does it deserve to see people, or maybe something cool can get out of this demo or that demo?” So this is how it goes. You almost answered my mind.

The next question I had in mind, um, yeah—don't you feel nervous writing about someone and then publishing the song, knowing that the person you've written about might listen to it and come back to you with a reaction?

No yeah no I think it's I think it's fine maybe maybe because it can it's very low possibility that they can actually guess that this is about them.

Yeah, I'm thinking about movies where you see breakups, and then someone writes a song about their ex, and then she hears it, and that's the plot of the movie. Okay, I won't ask about your music or what your influences are, because I think that's the most frequently asked question in the history of interviews. But if I were to say that you're forbidden to mention genres or artists' names, how would you like the listener to feel when they listen to your song for the first time?

You mean in terms of genre or in terms of something else?

No, I mean as a feeling. I wouldn't put it within the boundaries of a genre. When you write a song, how would you like the person who hears it to feel?

Well, I'm no exception to the common feeling of being happy if a listener finds something familiar in the lyrics, maybe in the music itself, if it touches them or moves something inside, or maybe brings some kind of nostalgia or anything like this, um. I can—but okay, let me address this very interesting question about the genre. The thing is, it's really hard to define the genre because it's a mixture, you know. It's about the influences; they come from all genres. You know, I can listen to metal, I can listen to rock, I can listen to jazz, blues, and it all comes together. But what actually, uh, what actually gets me is the harmony.

Different harmonies. So if you listen to the music, not as, you know, something with a genre stamp, but as music itself, you see, like, interesting patterns in the drums, you see interesting harmonies, and you see interesting transitions or weird transitions from one to another. And this is what actually gets me. And if I find something interesting, I would not say I remember it, but I have a certain, you know, feeling, and maybe something like muscle memory. And then I can build something of my own that maybe can be, um, stamped as something else, and this is totally fine. The most important thing for me is, um, to catch different things from different resources, let's say, from these different sources as well. So I am able to build something else.

Like, I've never been a person who wanted to, like, listen to some artists and say, “Okay, I want to do something like this.” I don't want—I cannot say so, but I know that a lot of artists do, and it's not a bad thing or a good thing. It's just the, you know, the navigator that you have in the creative process. But what happens to me is actually something else. I mean, I can easily listen to very heavy music, and it's also very nice. There was a period in my life when I was drawn into metal. But at the same time, what comes out of my hands, my lyrics, is something else. It's not metal.

Yeah, you can tell. But yeah, it's in a different genre, and you actually write about feelings. It's not as heavy as metal, but the lyrics match the sound. But now that you've said that, wasn't there ever a time when you listened to something by an artist, whether they were well known or not, and said, “Damn, I would really love to have written that,” or, “I'll write something that's not a copy, but it's close to it because I really love that sound or those lyrics”? Has that ever happened to you?

I don't think so, but I definitely have many favorite artists. Again, I like some pieces of their music, or I like them because of something—because the music is simple, because when it comes to recording, we know that nothing is simple. And so, for some reason, I can see that there are definitely a lot of things that I really like and a lot of things that can influence me for my next thing. This is what I can say. And also, I have so many things related to the “Storming” kind of music, but the next one is going to be something not similar to “Storming.” It's going to be different.

Right. It won't be similar to “Storming.” Will it be similar to “Here,” sound-wise?

No, I don't think so. I think I will keep exploring the other part of me—another part of my life, my experience, my vision, how I see different things, like life itself, and maybe relationships from one angle, maybe just being a human in the world from another angle. And it's going to be something combined. Maybe it will be a bit, you know, progressive, like The Pineapple Thief, maybe. Also, as an influence, I can say that lately I've been drawn into Feist. It's the first time I've discovered her, but she's been making her music for a while, since the '90s. It's very important for me, and it's kind of…

…touched me when it comes to, like, very slow progressive music, or maybe the indie genre, and less dynamic—how do I say this? Fewer blues vibes, let's say. Less dynamic, but more in terms of, like, thinking from the inside or thinking towards the inside of yourself. This kind of thing. I'm not sure I explained it enough.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's cool. But what comes first when you write a song? Is it the tune, and then you say, “I need to write lyrics that would stand out with that tune”? Or is it vice versa—you write the lyrics first, and then you try to write the matching music?

Um, it's, uh—it goes both ways, but mostly it's music with a melody. It can be part of a future chorus, or it can be part of a future bridge, or something catchy, so I develop the rest out of it. It has happened to me as well, writing just poems without any music, but the, like, you know, rate of turning them into songs is pretty low. But yeah, most of all, if they come together, I develop them. They rarely come together, like, you know, the whole song comes to my mind while I'm driving the car. No, it doesn't happen like this. It's something catchy.

Obviously, it's not that you've got the full song, the full melody, and then you develop it. You build upon it, I suppose.

Yeah, something catchy comes to mind, and I will build from it. I will check the harmonies, I'll check some interesting transitions—something that makes the song a song, basically.

So if we meet again on “Off The Record” on the radio in a couple of years' time, what would you like to have changed about ANRIE? Two years from now, what would you like to have achieved by then?

Achieve in you mean in terms of music.

In terms of anything—development, it could be anything. It could be, “I would want to perform at a big festival,” or, “I would want to have released my first EP or my first full LP by then,” or, “I want to write poems.” What would you want to have changed about you and what you do?

I definitely, um, crave live performances. I love it, and I've had experience in the past because I've been in many bands before I started my own thing. And of course, I'm planning to do the EP, and I hope it's not gonna happen in two years. I hope it's gonna take less time. And yeah, so live performances, I would say, and more music, more music. I'm really curious about developing and opening up some new angles on, like, my perception. This is very—and I want to share it.

Okay, that's good. So what are your immediate plans? Have you arranged a performance or anything?

Not yet, but we had a couple of sessions for the EP and yes, I hope I can share soon what came out of it.

Okay, so you gave us a hint about what you want to write in the near future. You told us that you're preparing your next EP, so we're eager to hear the next song. And from your description, it's going to be completely different.

Yes yes yes yeah we are crafting it with the team so let's look forward.

Do you feel better in the studio or during a live performance? Um, which do you prefer?

You know, I actually think both, because live performances give you different emotions and, like, a connection with the audience, while the studio gives you the concentration for, like, literally endless creating. Because when we are in the studio, during the recording, we usually add some things that were not actually planned. We can add some backing vocals that we haven't planned, and they are something that comes out of the recording. So we all know, whoever was preparing the song, that this is something that we created in the studio. And I love this, to be honest. This is a very, very cool process and very, um, inspiring, especially when you're around people who can do that, and they have ideas, and I have ideas as well. So we can craft something, and we can just create on the spot, yeah.

Okay, so from what I hear, you like the creativity of the musicians who join you in creating songs in the studio. But I suppose that when you're performing live, you have session musicians. Do you like allowing them to show their creativity in your music, or do you want them to follow what you've written and released on a record?

Yes, of course, we follow. I haven't actually had the live performances, but I'm sure that the musicians I have around are pretty—I'm pretty confident that they can deliver whatever was written before. And at the same time, like, of course, you can add some creativity to the performance.

That's nice. It's nice that you're really open to ideas that will alter things in a live performance. Of course, not many artists like that. Most of the ones I've met are quite strict: “We've got this set, this is it, we need to follow it. This is the idea I've got, this is how we play it, and that's it.” So you're open to it.

Well, yeah, I mean, the thing is, we don't say about changing the whole playlist to some other playlists, right?

No, no, no, we're not talking about that. You've got a bass line, for instance, and then you've got a bass player who will add to it and give his interpretation, but it will be the same song. It will change, but it will be the same line. Okay, ANRIE, we've been together for the last 30 minutes. We gave you a stressful 10 minutes before the interview because we had technical issues with the sound. We couldn't hear you off-air, so our first hello and greeting were live on air.

Okay, okay, that's fine.

Before we leave you, is there anything you'd like to say to the listeners? Is there anything you'd like to ask us?

Um, I'd like to leave a message, but if—let me phrase it. If the music that I do catches and, uh, stays in someone's soul, in someone's mind, then I'm so grateful. And I'm grateful that people are listening, and some people are listening many times. So it makes me so happy. You cannot even imagine. And I really appreciate it if you guys are enjoying it, and I want you to enjoy more. So lots of things are about to come.

Okay, we'll follow up. And we've got two people here saying that you've got a very nice voice during the interview.

Thank you. Thank you very much.

Yeah, I'll translate later for the people listening to the interview and just explain what we've talked about. I'm going to take a risk here and ask you to give us a song that we can play on our show. It shouldn't be one of your two songs; it should be something else, and we'll present it to the fans here. And I hope you won't tell us to play Madonna or Dua Lipa or something. I'm gonna risk it here.

Okay, if you don't mind, you can play—the song is called “Caught a Long Wind” [Feist].

Yeah, it's gonna happen. Okay, ANRIE, thank you very much for the interview.

hank you very much, guys. We'll stay in touch and hear…

…your next EP, which is going to be released soon, from what I understand. And I hope we see you around at a live gig or something. I know you'll probably be playing somewhere in Cyprus, and I've visited Cyprus.

Not yet unfortunately but yeah. Oh you're welcome you're welcome here anytime yeah yeah

I've been in Cyprus three times already and I'll visit soon. I hope I catch you on a gig.

Nice nice.

Okay thank you.

Me too me too thank you for having me guys.

Have a good night bye bye.

Bye-bye.