Influences

Interview with Luna:

• Hi Luna.
• Hi Luna.
• Thanks for meeting with us for this interview today.
• Urk.
• People are asking who your biggest influences are. Many draw a comparison between your band and Hatebeak. How do you stand out from other avian-fronted bands?
• RAWK! RAWK!
• Alright, that's fair, I suppose. I've noticed your vocal styles vary from softer clucking to curious squaks and harsher cawing. But you also make some other noises that are difficult to describe to listeners. How do you determine which vocal approach best fits the song?
• Luna.
• So you just play it off the cuff?
• Luna bird.
• Interesting. That should lead to a higher degree of spontaneity in the music, giving a feeling of urgency that feels more authentic. Do you every have trouble recalling this urgency in live situations?
• ...
• Sorry, I asked if you ever have trouble reproducing the urgency heard on the records in live situations.
• ...
• Ok, well, people are also asking if there might be a solo album in the future.
• Luna bird.
• So that might be promising. We'll look forward to it.

Interview with Bostjan

• Am I saying your name properly?
• Yeah, it's BOAST-yin
• You play guitar and bass in the band. Do you find it difficult switching back and forth?
• Not really. I've played guitar in quite a few bands before and I've played bass in about as many. If I knew a bass player with a nineteen tone bass nearby, though, I'd be happy to give him a shot.
• What made you decide to use nineteen notes per octave? Are you influenced by a lot of eastern music?
• Well, yes, but I don't think that's really why. I studied the sitar in my late teens, and I got really involved in studying tunings, and it just sort of fell into place once I broke through the barrier of understanding that the twelve notes per octave tuning we normally use in western music was just a construct of convenience, and that it wasn't universally accepted, at first, and that there were alternatives. Twelve tone music is great, and the twelve note palette does offer a lot of texture with which to work, but I really feel strongly that nineteen is a perfectly viable alternative.
• But how do you get into it, since instruments like guitars, basses, keyboards, and everything else comes with twelve notes on them?
• Well, wind instruments like flutes and trumpets actually don't just have the same old twelve notes. Teachers instruct students how to play them based on the notion of twelve notes, but there is more to it than that. As for guitars and basses, you can always refret them to represent different tunings. Keyboards, likewise can be reprogrammed. I just think that this nineteen note system could be looked into a lot more.
• Do you have any influences who got you into nineteen notes, specifically?
• Yeah, John Starrett and Neil Haverstick were the first ones I knew to really play real nineteen tone instruments in a rock context, and I loved the result. Things sounded so normal, not really like quarter tone stuff from middle-eastern music, which sounded strikingly weird to me. The quarter tone music is really cool, and I had used that tuning in the past, but it's approached really like regular tuning but with some extra notes in between the regular notes. Going for nineteen tones instead forces you to take a slightly different approach at the basic level, even though modern music theory parses into the tuning system very well.
• Do you think people need to know music theory to get into microtonal music?
• Absolutely not. It's all just sounds, when you boil it down. Why this sounds like this and that sounds like that - it's very interesting, but it's not essential to enjoying the end product - not even really that important for making music, either. You can just move your fingers up and down the frets like playing any other guitar and make sounds.
• There's a certain kind of vibe that comes from this type of music that makes it sort of stand out on its own. Why have a parrot for a lead singer if the music is already unique?
• Is it that unique, though? To be honest, I grew up around parrots, and I grew up playing guitar. Naturally, I played guitar for my parrots. Sometimes they'd respond rather musically. I think that Luna sometimes does her best to mimic what she hears coming from the guitar, and I really think that's nifty. I wanted to share that with people. Maybe other people will think "Huh, that's kind of neat," and then really actually listen to the music and get some enjoyment out of it. Maybe people will dismiss it as a stupid gimmick. Maybe people won't even notice that this exists. In 2017, there are so many good bands out there, and every one of them has a specific voice, but so often, these bands go unnoticed, just because there are so many new things bombarding everyone daily. I'm just in on that wave, really. If people want to check this out, I'd be thrilled. If no one cares, then, well, at least I still got it out there and now I know.
• I'd imagine it's challenging working with animals in a band. How do you make sure the parrots perform a certain way? How much time do you have to spend training the birds?
• I don't train them, really. I just set up a microphone and let them do their thing. Like I said, the birds riff off of what they hear me doing on the guitar, and I thought that was cool, so I thought I would also record it. Whatever you hear the birds doing in the recordings are not coached. It's just their natural reaction to hearing music.
• Bostjan plays guitar for the avian-fronted microtonal band, Naegleria Fowleri, and also has his own solo recordings available as well. Thank you.
• Thanks!

List of influences:

• Death
• Buckethead
• Estradasphere
• Neil Haverstick
• Arch Enemy
• Dream Theater
• Symphony X
• Racer X
• Korn
• Soundgarden
• Control Denied