THE ANCIENT GALLERY
The gallery of the ancient masters in Dresden´s Zwinger is
world famous. Now we get to know the more recent portraits, which influence
the cultural life of the Saxon metropolis at the river Elbe.
In the late 90's Singer Robin Weinhold,
guitar player Andy Weinhold, bass player Mario
Friedrich and keyboarder Dirk
Mehnert decided to open up a gallery of their own in order to get
known as
The Ancient Gallery offering a broad range of poetic dark
rock with German lyrics, intense live shows and an artwork
concept including performances, costumes and lightshow. Early success emerged
quickly. Not only big promoters became aware of the unique ensemble – eventually
they let The
Ancient Gallery play in front of approx. 500 000 people
at Budapest´s Sziget Open Air. In 2001 literary woman Barbara
Köhler approached the musicians with the request for
an interpretation of one of her poems for a dance performance. To this day
the connection of all forms of art builds the back bone of the Saxon culture
rockers. After the remarkable debut “Deinstallation” (2001) the successor “Kopfdelay” was
released only a year later. With this release the striking musical style
of The Ancient Gallery was manifested. Apart from the profound lyrics, which
can be understood as a statement against superficial consumer society, the
songs on “Kopfdelay” excel
with danceable rhythms and heaviness without losing the melodic elements.
Already on this album musicians from acts like Blind Passengers and Inchtabokatables
helped out as guests. A favour that was returned by The
Ancient Gallery the
very next year as they did a remix for Das Ich (Der
Schrei” (Relikt) and gave
Terminal Choice's „She’s The Devil” new drive (Reloaded).
Some songs of the first two albums can now be found within the framework of fresh
song writing, which will open new doors for The Ancient
Gallery. Mixed by
Atrocity mastermind Alex Krull „Alles
ist nichts” will bring long lost virtues
back to the underground: heaviness, experimental bravery and thoughtful lyrics.
1. Tell
us shortly about the background of The Ancient Gallery.........What was
the biggest influence to start the TAG? Where do your musical roots lie?
“TAG” exists for many years already, professionally working since year 2000,
when our first CD “deinstallation” was released. The musicians know each other
since their childhood, the main reason why the project TAG still
successfully exists. Each of us has a different taste in music, so its not
really possible to find only one root. Its a melting pot of four different
individuals into a final project and this is called “The
Ancient Gallery”
2. What
about the members of your band....Does your band have a collective
spirit or every person has it`s own point of view? And how do you create
your music........Does the whole group take part in your creation?
There
are clear responsibilities, so that we can work very efficiently. The
base of a new song is mainly delevoped on my PC or Friedrich_M.’s at home.
Then we present it to the other members, then its up to Enni_W (Gitarre) and Friedrich_M (Bass) to add their ideas for bass and guitar.
Then Robin_W. suggests poems and vocals. After that the main work starts,
music and vocals have to be perfectly arranged and melted to a unity.
3. It`s
quite popular to sing in German nowadays.......why did you choose to
sing in your mother language? Is the main focus of your music put on Germany?
In the early beginning we started to write our poems in English, but step
by step - we recognized, that it`s better if we expressed ourselves in
German. It’s
a lot harder to play with words and express the point
in English than in our mother tongue.
4. Where did you get the idea to visit
the baltic states? Why? What do you expect from your forthcoming shows
in these three countries?
It ‘s thanx to our manager Mirko, he has a lot of
contacts in Eastern Europe by his musicagency transmusic. But we are
really happy to be on tour in the Baltic States again. Last year we played
Tallinn and we were fascinated by the people and the country, so we decided
to go there again for a bigger event.
5. Do you know any bands from Baltics?
Not really, but Vanilla Ninja from Estonia is very successful these days. But this is really not our taste of music!
? But we hope that we get to know interesting projects on our tour and
we can make friendly contacts.
6. How did you get in touch with Haujobb, In
Strict Confidence, Das Ich and Terminal
Choice? Are you satisfied with
the past collaborations with them? Which band from them do you prefer
the most?
We think remixes are a useful instrument to give a song a very new
and different smell. Its possible to accent
the strong points and eventually improve the weak points. For that reason
we like to give out our own songs to get them remixed. The contacts with Haujobb and In Strict Confidence were made through our label Dark
Wings,
and both bands remexid a song for our single-CD “was
wir wollen”,
very good!!!Our first remix
for “Das Ich” was developed for a remix-contest
announced by the band on
their webpage. We won with our version of “Der
Schrei” and
our remix was released on
the CD “Relikt”.
Terminal Choice we met on
a concert where we both played and due
to this we made a remix of “She`s the Devil”,
released on their single “Reloaded”.
Just a few days ago we finished
a remix of the song ”Seelenfänger” of
Nik Page (ex-Blind Passengers)
and it will be released on
Nik’s single to his
album “Mysteryland”.Because
of high interest we’ve now opened the rubric “Vs.” on our webpage.
There, all the interested
artists find a our contacts and can download
files of our song “mit
mir”, so they can do their own remix and send it to us. With good
luck and depending on our
label it might be released on one of our forthcoming
CDs.
7. Your favourite artist
on “Dark Wings”? How did you get in touch
with this popular label?
Are you satisfied with their
work?
The Ancient Gallery??!
We offered our materials
of our self-released album „kopfdelay“ to
a lot of labels and invited
them to see our concerts.
After a lot of refusals we
received a message, that
a representive of Dark Wings will really come to our concert.
So we worked hard on the show and finally we convinced
him
8. Feindflug or Rammstein?
Why?
Who is that ?
9. Guitar or keyboard? Why?
We are not able to use them, but we saw it somewhere
before ?
10. Ok, Thanx a lot guys!! I wish you
all the best for the future and for your forthcoming Baltic trip!!! Feel
free to say what you want
to the visitors of “Beats From
The Vault” website and Estonian dark scene at all.....
We hope
that we can convince
you with our
music! See you!
Ciao Convex!THE ANCIENT GALLERY
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