Araki
Araki was born a long time ago. Everything began about three minutes into Vincent Gallo's masterpiece Buffalo 66. In the intro, where Billy Brown is released from
prison, a lonely piano plays a few subtle notes along with some background noises. Very deserted, very ambient, very Brian Eno and very beautiful. Music that you can listen to for an eternity. Music that leaves it up to the listener to decide whether to be active or passive in a way that ordinary pop music doesn´t. Music with the purpose of remaining in the background, while you go on doing your everyday things.
"True happiness is getting lulled to sleep by a slightly out of tune piano" Rasmus Kellerman tells us when we meet him in the end of 2002. "I just felt like I had to do something completely different from everything else I was doing musically at the time. I was tired of playing in a band and as a way of not getting to much of an asshole toward the other members of Music By Em, I had to create something that was entirely my own. Hence Araki. At first I set out to make ambient, instrumental stuff, sort of like a soundtrack to a non-existing movie. But somewhere along the road I took a detour".
Music By Em was formed in 1996 and called it quits late 2000. In 1998 they played at three of the biggest festivals in Sweden and were dubbed "the most promising
unsigned band" in fanzines and magazines across the country. Sound Affect magazine voted them "most likely to succeed in 2000" in their winter issue. Early 2000, Music By Em signed a record deal with Sony Music Sweden and started the recording of what was meant to be their debut album. Sadly they broke up before it got released.
They did put out one single though, "All Night Always".
"When we broke up it took quite a long time for me to start writing music again. But when I finally woke up from my uncreative comatose, I wrote like a mad man. And
I realised that I didn´t want to narrow down the musical spectrum to just doing neo-classical-ambient-shite", Rasmus laughs and rambles on about the feeling of being in complete control in the recording studio. "It was pure bliss. In Music By Em I wrote all the music but we were a band. And as such, we had a little something called band democracy, for good and for worse. Quite often, while recording our album, we started arguing about the most trivial of things. And it just kept building up until one day when we finally snapped. Everyone went mental. We sorted it out though. But anyway, it was nice not having to ask anyone what he or she thought of the bass line or
whatever. I like that freedom".
"Ikara" was recorded by Rolf Klinth, who also produced the Music By Em album and prior demos. "I've worked with Rolf on every recording I've done the past four or
five years and I can't think of a reason why I shouldn't. Especially now with the Araki recording, I realised how good a team we are. He also plays a lot of instruments, which came handy seeing that I haven´t got a band to back me up anymore. I play most of the stuff on "Ikara" myself but the things I couldn't handle, Rolf took care of. Although Araki no longer practice a strict "neo-classical-ambient-shite" policy, his music still emphasize on melancholy and emotion no matter in what shape the songs may appear. This, as Rasmus tells us, is the most important thing in music, and we have to say that we agree.
"That and some wicked drumming. I'm not entirely a sad-bastard kinda guy. I like dancing. I like the rhythm of things".
That about wraps it up. Sleep tight and don´t let the bedbugs bite.
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