The Kompressor Experiment
"The Alternative Music Scene deserves much more Support"
The Kompressor Experiment is a progressive post-music project from Switzerland. I now sat down with them to talk about their current album, "Ebb & Flow", which I guess should appeal especially to fans of bands like The Ocean or Russian Circles.
The band's sophisticated, dark sound is beautifully heavy and versatile. On the record, I especially like the sudden mood changes. They perfectly fit with its title: Waves of sound pile up in phases, only to hold back again before finally reappearing and rolling over the melodic beach full force. So, let's talk about it and some other Kompressor Experiment-related stuff.
Anne: Hi! Thanks very much for taking the time for this interview! How are you getting along? Congrats on your fabulous album, "Ebb & Flow"! It's outstanding! It's still on heavy rotation here, though. I'm sure you're delighted with the outcome of your work. Are you?
TKE: Hi, and thank YOU very much. Yes, we are pretty proud of this new record, we couldn't hope for such a top-notch audio production when we first wrote the songs, and the feedback is really good so far.
Anne: What's the story behind "Ebb & Flow"? It's quite versatile and progressive. I always need to listen to all the songs in a row, and they're always projecting different motion pictures into my head—which is quite nice, by the way. So, what's your "Ebb & Flow" movie? I'm sure there is one?
"'2001: A Space Odyssey' and 'Twin Peaks' inspired us"
TKE: We based our last album on the writing of a new score for "2001: A Space Odyssey". This time, we wanted to deal with a more abstract theme and decided on the final concept after we wrote most of the songs. Broadly speaking, the theme of "Ebb & Flow" would be the History of humankind, from its humble beginning to today. The songs speak of many things, such as the early struggles of our civilization, expansion, war, creation, destruction, resilience and so on.
I think the perfect movie would be a time-lapse of the earth from prehistory to today, a distanced and unjudging view of our evolutions, for the better and worse. That, or some surrealist shit: an excellent concrete example would be the fantastic 8th episode of "Twin Peaks: The Return", which perfectly fits "Castle Bravo II'"s ambiance.
Anne: I'm beyond curious about the second song on the record, which you called "Riss-Würm". This term sounds wonderfully abstract, like a thing from a science-fiction flick from the 80ies. Is there a translation for it? What is the song about?
TKE: It's the name of an interglacial period (130'000 years ago). What we have in mind with this song is small tribes of humans painfully roaming the earth, striving with extremely challenging conditions, which gives the song such a dark and gloomy mood. But we won't lie to you. We also chose this name because it sounds incredible.
Anne: You are releasing a live version of "Ebb & Flow" today. I'm sharing them with my readers in addition to this interview. When did you record the songs, and where, besides YouTube, can we listen to them?
TKE: We recorded the live session at the end of 2021 in a local venue called "Le Port Franc". The session is only listenable on YouTube at this time, but in a couple of weeks, it will be available on all major streaming platforms. Meanwhile, the studio version of the album can be streamed everywhere.
Anne: I'm very much looking forward to listening to "Ebb & Flow" live in its entirety. How was it to record these songs all in one piece?
TKE: We had to record each song up to four to five times to get enough video shots, and we chose the best take for the audio. We did it all in one day—which was a bit of a mistake because it was really exhausting. You can see our vital force abandoning us in the last ten minutes of the session. For similar projects in the future, we will definitely split the session into two or three days. In the end, we're really proud of the final result. The light show is stunning, the session sounds excellent, and the editing is quite dynamic. It looks quite professional for 100 per cent self-funded production. We hope people will love it and rediscover our album from a new angle. A little game for the most careful viewers: there is a subliminal image somewhere in this 45 minutes live session. Let us know if you catch it
Anne: You released your first record in 2016. Was this also the year of your band foundation?
TKE: I guess the foundation year would be 2014, as we began to play structured songs in concerts then. At first, we were more of a jam band. Our founding members first met in 2011. But we sounded nothing like today (laughs).
Anne: Have you always been into momentous and progressive dark post-music? Who are your influences?
"We aimed to sound like jazz influenced Pink Floyd"
TKE: At the project's origin, we wanted to sound like Pink Floyd with jazz influences, but we quickly noticed that we couldn't play jazz, and that's still the case. At the same time, we discovered Long Distance Calling's eponymous album (2011), which was a real game changer for us. We wanted to be an instrumental band, to mix stoner, post and prog elements. Our first songs were goofier, and we slowly moved to post-rock territories and, more recently, to post-metal and prog-metal. The most obvious influences are bands like Russian Circles, Cult of Luna, and The Ocean, but we're always indirectly inspired by stoner music. We've been impressed by DVNE's last record recently, even though we didn't directly draw inspiration from it.
Anne: After the live session release—any next steps you are working on you want to share?
TKE: We're already working on the next release. We can't say much about it yet, but we're going to step back on the complexity of the composition (in comparison to "Ebb & Flow"). We are also planning to record the album live and film the recording session. We'll use video mapping during this session in order to give it an exciting look.
Anne: Where can we see you live on stage?
TKE: We are booking a small Europe Tour for Spring 2023. At the moment, we can't say much about it. Follow us on our socials to know when and where we'll be playing live.
Anne: If there was one thing in the world you could change. What would it be and why?
TKE: We are convinced the alternative music scene deserves much more support. I'm not aware of the situation abroad, but it is an international matter, with huge bands like TesseracT or Anathema struggling to live sustainably from music.
Anne: Thanks for answering my questions!