So, I'm bored here and thought I could waste some of time doing something productive. I got these monthly issue of Loud! Magazine and stumbled across a Corvus Corax interview inside it and thought I'd give it a go at my translation skills and post it here for you guys
Even though nobody dares to include Corvus Corax among the metal or extreme music genre, the medieval style followed by these musicians happens to be very popular between the fans of this genre. The success of names like In Extremo or Blackmore's Night prove that...with the purpose of the edition of "Seikilos", Loud! had a chat with Patrick, one of the minds behind this germanic project.
The history of Corvus Corax has always been envolved by mistery..how many albums have you recorded so far?We already released six CD's so far. Fifteen years ago some of us started to play in castles and medieval markets. After sometime we had already been invited to play outside of Germany and, from that moment, we started to grow a lot. The band has been growing on members ever since until we got to the actual Corvus Corax formation. We have evoluted through the years and we reached what we are nowadays.
Beside being a new album, "Seikilos" was also released through a new label. How's your relation with Staupa Musica? As far as I know you're their main priority...In the past all of the albums have been edited by us, through our own label. For this work we decided to search for another form of edition...
Essencially, we pretended that the band became recognized by all Europe, so we decided to associate with a slightly bigger structure. The owner of Staupa Musica is a big fan of what we do and we've known each other in a medieval music festival. We established contact with him, spoke several times with each oher and eventually decided to work together.
Which were the steps you decided to take to choose the songs for this album?We tried to include compositons that haven't been played by other groups so far, I think that was the very first step we took. We found material from Greece, Asia...and then we adapted those songs to our very own style.
You've named this album "Seikilos", which is also the title of one of your tracks on this album...what's the story behind this?It's about a composition signed by a greek musician, that wrote it during Medieval Age and that travelled around all the world that was known by then collecting other songs. We can say that he was doing back then what are you doing now.
One of your actual projects is the (re)interpretation of the opera "Carmina Burana", from Carl Orff. Can you tell us a bit about that?This is a project that - beside us - will also include an orchestra and a choir. We've been working intensivly to materialize this idea and we're going to edit a DVD soon. We've finished a few time ago the mixtures on a Dolby Surround 5.1 system and I believe that the sound of this release will be something very special.
I believe that this idea will also be taken foward to the stages, right?Yes, no doubt. We have a total of 108 persons on stage and the first presentation happened on this year edition of Wacken Open Air. Although, as the stages usually are small to have a complete orchestra on it, in this particular case we'll have to use less musicians than the 108 that were originally planed.
You were speaking about the sound in 5.1 format, the release will be a DVD?Yes. We've been recording in Berlin and we've been sure to also edited this work on DVD. The date of edition is not yet totally known, but it will probably happen on January of the next year.
With this album you already include a DVD...won't it be too many DVD's together already?I don't think so...on this one you can see how Corvus Corax are normally on stage. Beside that, it also works as a support for many information and for that kind of public that just got into us recently can also follow visuallt the evolution of our group. The next one will be recorded with the orchestra, a project that is as much as different as also special.
Beside all the creative process, I believe it's also very expensive to put that plan into work...Yes, pretty expensive. But we've already been in contact with some agencies to promote the work and get more concert dates. During this year we don't pretend to focus so much on concerts, but in the next year we will...and of course, we expect to give a lot of concerts.
Beside "Carmina Burara" do you still have your normal concerts?Yes, we have a lot of concerts with the normal formation of Corvus Corax.
You define yourselves as a group that recovers medieval songs, but the "Carmina Burara" opera isn't necessairly from that age...The background of the song is definitly medieval, even because the original text is on a very old book. We took that text and converted it into our style and sound.
But will you mantain the connection to Carl's Orff work?I think it will be more of a medieval approach than opera alike...actually, we'll only have the lyrics in common and I think that - with the instruments that we use - we will approach more the original spirit of this song. When we speak of "Carmina Burara" people start thinking imediatly about Carl Orff and we let that happen, but he has only composed the opera - he's not the autor of the original text.
Right...initially I thought it would be an adaption to the original work from Carl Orff and not the original text.No, we're going to make eleven songs for our adaption of this text.
A couple of years ago I only knew about In Extremo - now I see Staupa Musica forming, the international edition of your album and the debut of Potentia Animi. Can we say that, actually, there is this upgrowing movement surronding these medieval sonority?There's a lot of bands playing medieval music, yes...even though, I think that - in most of the cases - those musician limit their work by just copying Corvus Corax. I'd prefer that they'd do like us and searched for songs that haven't been used yet, so that they could creat their own sound.
Speaking of sound...I notice that you give a special attention to percussion and the bagpipes, do you do this itentionaly?Yes, excepting for some choirs...actually we try that most tracks are entirely instrumental.
How much of your time is envolved in researching for the songs you use?It's hard to tell. We work all year on that and, in this very moment, we can already access to some libraries - to do researches - that normally most people can't access. As we do a lot of tours we try to use the breaks to do researching, only after we start working on the songs.
And have you ever thought about doing something more electronic?For that we have Tanzwut, a project whose formation is the same as Corvus Corax. It has quite heavy guitars and a rock drumkit.
Translator: L?we
Source: Loud! Magazine (Portuguese Edition) - October 2005 issue
And that's it...sorry if this sounds a bit old, I'm not sure if these Carmina Burara release is in stores already as I'm not a Corvus Corax fan, but these interview seems to be at least 2 or 3 months old...so I'm guessing it's not that recent probably.
