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Molek FMMetric: Organic Artifice
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Can the synthetic also be organic?
Absolutely. That’s the question we are asking. What is real and what is fake? Can we tell the difference? Is the reproduction a bad thing? Or a necessary evil? The world is getting increasingly harder to know the answers to these questions. We certainly don’t know but we’re not afraid to ask.
The album is much more conceptual than everything else in the band’s oeuvre. What triggered the ambition?
We didn’t start out that way. We started the way we always start. By walking into the studio and just making music because it’s what we love to do. When we were about half way through the process we started to see through lines of ideas in the music. Constant themes kept reoccurring and we embraced that once we noticed it instead of shying away from it. I think it’s something I personally always wanted to do but never wanted to force. Concept albums can seem very contrived when done wrong. Who knows how this record will age. It’s so possible that in 20 years the questions we are musing upon will seem so trite. Like listening to a song now from 1981 about the mystery of telecommunications. Ooooohhhh… telecommunications!
(laughs) We’re sure the topics covered on Synthetica are more evergreen. Emily said the album is about “forcing yourself to confront what you see in the mirror when you finally stand still long enough to catch a reflection.” What would you see if you were to stare long enough into the mirror?
Probably clogged pores and one grey hair in my beard (laughs). No, actually I’m not a huge fan of over self-examination. But that’s probably why my lyrics suck and Emily’s are great!
Fantasies was a touchstone for independent bands, a self-release that garnered the kind of attention studio albums are made for. Synthetica is distributed by Mom + Pop (MnP), how has the experience changed for you guys?
We are at the helm of the operation. We always will be. Releasing independent records doesn’t mean that the bass player calls HMV to make sure the records are in stock. It means that we employ the right people to do the necessary jobs to ensure the bands success not be employed by a label to ensure the success of that company. That is the old model. We have a great relationship with MnP and they help us do things we just don’t have the manpower to do on our own.
Do you still have a hands-on approach to everything that’s got to do with the making and release of an album?
Every single element… possibly to a fault. It gets exhausting.
How were you guys approached to work with Howard Shore for Cronenberg’s upcoming Cosmopolis and what was it like writing for a film as opposed to for yourselves?
He just called us. We knew him from working on the Twilight movie with him. We didn’t actually write very much of the Cronenberg score… Howard did. He was sending us manuscripts and we were just interpreting them and making sounds. He preferred that we hadn’t seen the film so we worked sort of in a vacuum. It was completely different to making a Metric record in every way. The only similarity was the studio and the instruments.
On a final note, what can we expect from Metric in the future?
To continue to push ourselves and expect the very same of our audience. Complacency has never been an attribute we’ve admired in ourselves or anybody else.
Synthetica is distributed by Love Da Records in South East Asia. Get more on Metric at www.ilovemetric.com.
