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Manana Interview

We really liked Interruptions, debut album from Manana, and honestly, isn't that good enough reason to have a little chat with Jen from the band?

For start, tell us something about Manana? Where did the name come from? I
personally wouldn't mind if this was the sound of tomorrow.


We liked the sound and the meaning of the word, and it has that exotic touch with the weird thing over the 'n' that people always forget to write or don't know where it is on the keyboard ;)
Plus, we feel very much at home under the letter 'm' in the cd-shelf, right between 'M83' and 'Maps'...

As you probably realised from the first question, we really love your debut album Interruptions. What can you tell us about it? How did it came to be?

We started working on the songs ages ago, tried to record an album for the first time in 2005, yet we had to stop the sessions after 4 months, because the result wasn't really satisfying. Then we managed to sign a record deal with Rodeostar Records from Germany last year, which enabled us to have another go at recording the album, which we then did over the course of 2 months in the autumn of 2007. We had the great luck to have Ken Thomas as a producer and we could record all the instrument parts at Home Studios in Hamburg. It was amazing to be working with such a great, professional producer like Ken, who has already worked with a number of great & inspiring artists from around the world (Sigur Ros, Björk & Dave Gahan, for example).

In your music we hear lot of shoegaze influences. What makes Manana sound
the way it sounds? What are your influences?


Funnily enough, we haven't heard of the genre shoegaze up until a couple of weeks ago, so this is really new for us, yet it very much fits our music, i guess. The influences are too numerous to list here, be it bands or other things in life, i think we all just kind of soak it all up and the music is what comes out in the end...
[ Manana ]

Manana

We noticed that you had really exciting career so far (having a song in Fifa
2005 soundtrack, being nominated for prestigious "Independent Music Award
2007", made a great album). How did it all happen? Is it hard making it as a
band in Switzerland?


In Switzerland, bands generally get treated really well - the venues are nice, the payment is pretty good compared to other countries, and you usually get a great meal and free drinks all night...What makes it harder to be in a band from Switzerland is going abroad, because Switzerland really isn't known for having a great & lively music scene across the border, although there really are loads of amazing bands all over the place.

What are your plans for the future?

To write more & better songs, playing more & better shows, start work on the second album soon,,,

Can you tell us about some other Swiss bands that you like?

As I mentioned before, there are so many great bands in Switzerland, for example The Bianca Story, they are on the same label as we are and their music is reallyreally good, sometimes strange, sometimes funny, just really well crafted, and it's very entertaining to see them live, so go see them!
Other bands would be the Singer/Songwriter Sophie Hunger, or other bands such as Cloudride.

So do you think the world of music is online? What do you reckon of all
those new models for releasing music online? Clever marketing plots or
something more?


I think at the moment it's really chaotic, there are so many online portals, new business models and everything, so it's really hard to judge what will survive in the end...we'll just jave to wait and see, i guess.

Our final questions for today : what are Manana listening to / reading these
days?

Listening to: The new Kings of Leon, Foals, Sigur Ros, etcetc
Reading: Moby Dick & a book about American Indie bands of the 80s & 90s...

kris // 08/11/2008

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