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| HOW DID YOUR DEAL WITH EPIDEMIE RECORDS COME ABOUT? HOW HAS IT BEEN WORKING WITH THEM? The deal came about absolutely by chance! We didn't think about the Czech labels when searching for someone who will release our stuff, but one day our drummer went to some gig & met the label manager of EPIDEMIE. This manager told him that he would like to listen to DEMIMONDE. He didn't know the "MUTANT STAR" material, but liked "THE WARRIOR'S POETS" & a lot of people told him, that "MUTANT STAR" is much better, a "need to release". The boss of EPIDEMIE is very open minded & still searching for something strange to release. This was the reason why "MUTANT STAR" did fit perfectly in his plans. We brought the recording a few days later to him, listened to it together & he was so fascinated that he offered us immediately a deal. As for the co-operation - it is more difficult to comment it, it isn't as easy to say if we are completely satisfied or not. First of all, we were very disappointed that we didn't get any interest or almost reactions from the side of some west European Metal labels, because in our opinion the material of "MUTANT STAR" has much more quality & orginality inside than the majority of the standard Metal CD's production from the majority of the labels. I was mainly disappointed by the indifference of some concrete labels, which are known by their support to the avantgarde & experimental Metal bands... But that's the life & we are happy, that almost thanx to the EPIDEMIE RECORDS, this album had a chance to be released & to appear in the Cd recorders of the listeners all over the world. On the other hand, EPIDEMIE is a small underground label with limited possibilities. I think they are doing well according to their possibilities, but regarding the distribution & sales it could be better, although our sales are OK if we compare it to the majority of the bands from the Czech Republic... As far as I know, EPIDEMIE have some interesting contacts & distribution through the labels in the USA, France, Italy, Poland, Mexico... to mention some of the countries, but of course we penetrated also in some more exotic countries all over the world, in Asia or South America. As for the sales-EPIDEMIE released 500 limited digipaks (almost sold out) & 2000 CDs in normal jewelcase edition. The label manager told me, that cca. 60-70 percents of DEMIMONDE are sold out now. Maybe it seems as a low result, but note that the small labels have really limited possibilities & acess, the second thing is that our music is for the minority listener, very open minded & forward thinking. If I compare it with the sales of the majority Czech bands, we are little bit above average, even not worse regarding our sales than the bands who play some more accessible music here. I must admit, that the majority of our CDs is sold in foreign lands always, the Czech listeners are more conservative & Metal music is not so popular here generally. As for the promotion, it was good, the label printed some 500 promo CDs plus info flyers about us, we got excellent reviews world wide & I answered lots of interviews. The most of them for Polish mags & zines, even more than for the Czech press...hahaha. And what I appreciate the most is the co-operation with EPIDEMIE RECORDS? The digipak edition of "MUTANT STAR" - it is the best thing that they could do! Thanx them a lot! We are proud to present the first digipak Metal album in the Czech Republic. In the very expensive extravagant & attractive form regarding the level of graphic design. Of course, the CD-Rom track is also very cool idea (proposed by EPIDEMIE REC.) some bonus for every DEMIMONDE fan! It was done mainly because we wanted to prepare the complete CD-Rom in the really luxurious way, with every possible information about the band. This all helps really a lot to the fans & mainly to the journalists. When thay want a photo for the article, interview, they can browse our CD-Rom track & choose from a big range of photos... Also there is a full bio in both languages, English & Czech, useful for every journalist. As for MP3, it is a great idea to put there a full version of our first album "THE WARRIOR'S POETS" so the fans & reviews can listen to our old material & compare, how big step forward we did with the "MUTANT STAR" regarding the style change, the developing of composition, the sound quality, etc... As for the graphic design of CD-Rom, this is the same concept & style as the layout of front cover image, booklet & digipak... |
| COULD YOU TELL A LITTLE BIT ABOUT THE CD ARTWORK FOR "MUTANT STAR"? You can see there the mutant or cyborg (or cyborg-devil, if you want...haha), darkness & the technical & industrial atmosphere of some factory (I guess these are the iron works in Ostrava, the most metallurgic & industrial town in Czech Rep.) It is all chaotic & penatrating togethere, confused. When you listen to our music & watch the album cover, I think you must see, that it is a great picture to illustrate the DEMIMONDE's music, an exact visual expression of the feelings from our tracks... Note that you the lyrics, music, graphic design & all our presentation must be taken as one monolith. It is all connected with the DEMIMONDE concept. As I said yet, DEMIMONDE is our world ("Half-World"), our reality. "MUTANT STAR" lies inside this Demimondial parallel reality. It is something strange, full of unreal creatures, mutants, like we are, & like our mutated music is. You can call it "an artistic deformation of reality", which is a good characteristic for DEMIMONDE too... It is also a metaphor for our real life & the real world, because here we have also lots of mutants & everything becomes to be more & more crazy in our planet... Madness, world being faster & more chaotic, this is the confusion that I mentioned yet-the confusion of the postmodern world, where we live & which we reflect, by the lyrics, music, design...of DEMIMONDE. Do you feel these emotions & reflections in our artwork? Our music is a soundtrack for today's world...but also for any other... And the design concept is an illustration for this soundtrack... WHAT IS SOME OF THE LYRICAL CONTENT OF YOUR SONGS? Lyrics are done by our bassist Afagddu & it's a little problem with the whole thing. We don't understand them at all & we suppose that even their author doesn't understand to his own writings... It is something emotional, intuitive & irrational, same as the music of DEMIMONDE, where we also don't understand the result, so the only thing that I can say is that both lyrics & music fit perfectly together. it has the same atmosphere-call it as you want: magic, postmodern, dark, humoristic, fascinating, surreal, erotic, satanic (in some little bit different meaning than the majority of the bands do, but we don't know, how to discribe this difference)... He refuses all the questions concerning the interpretation of the lyrics, he would like to give the chance to the reader, & maybe someone will finally understand it... As for me, I don't need their exact interpretation. It is ok, if you read them only when listening to the music, & it must cause some mood or feeling inside you. That's all. The words which perfectly fits into the music, but no one knows why... And thta's the whole concept of the lyrics, who are linked by the same atmosphere, way of thinking etc., same as the others froms (music, design, communications...) of our artistic presentation... |
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