INGRID (ENGLISH VERSION)

AUSTRALIA

What might take you aback with my story is the fact that I won't get into much detail about life in the studio and band tours. That is probably a work done by the authors who write band biographies. What I am doing here is writing about my own life and for the first time ever I speak openly about everything I was concerned about, my fears and my insecurities and about other hidden secrets, which 99 % I wouldn't tell anybody straight to their face. So, if you see that I keep talking only about myself and not that much about the other members of the band, I wish you understand that this is the point of my story. Besides, everyone has to tell their own story.

Before summer, I bought my first peculiar synthesizer. I mean that until then, I had the original Yamaha keyboard, which my brother had given me. However, one of my hobbies was searching for strange musical instruments on the net and at some point I stumbled upon a website which was selling second-hand instruments in outrageously low prices, exactly because the owners just wanted to get rid of those. However that was good for me. I found a Moog synthesizer, which in fact is a small thing with tiny keys (not too comfortable when you have been used to playing on a grand piano until you are 16), but at the back it had an amplifier with thousands of cables and buttons. And this costed only 600 crones, that is 60 euro. Well, I would be a total fool if I hadn't bought it!

Eventually, Moog arrived at home, a few days later. And I realised that this instrument wasn't anything like my original keys, which had specific sounds. It was an analog synthesizer and you could create numberless sounds and it was indeed used in experimental rock music of the 70s, in disco music, just like Donna Summer, house, techno and of course electronic music. That means that it was mainly used for these genres of music, and not that much for rock. Besides, I've never kept it as a secret that I am a total sucker for techno and house music and I have even worked as a DJ in a bar, where I would play '90s and '00s Romanian house. And as weird as it might sound, I love house music (especially Balkan, as American sounds a bit corny to me), exactly because it mainly consists of synthesizers and electronic sounds. Today everything is done with computers, which replace our own jobs, and this is damaging to us. So, since Moog came at home, I did nothing else than being involved with that. I even remember a specific time, during which our parents were touring and some evening Monica was mopping in the balcony, while I was downstair in my room and I was making my own recipe with Moog. (Soon I was madly in love with it and I baptised it Moogling). That sounded too loud to the upper floor and it was a time when Lulu had come to visit, and walking in my room she shouted: "Are you playing trance music, again?"

Of course this wouldn't be what the album would sound like and I would never force anybody play '90s shit, even if I used to play trance music in my leisure time. Well, the album was recorded in Kirkenes, during summer 2012. As there was no real studio at the village and Tromsø was too far, school agreed to offer us a room. And the six of us booked the music classroom. When I walked in, I saw an istrument that I had never seen again. It was a three-scale piano that also contained a pedalboard and looked like a combination of a pipe organ and a synthesizer. When Vivian saw it, she said: 

"Oh! A Hammond Organ".

"Is this a Hammond Organ?", I asked. "I'm surely playing this on the album".

The rest of the guys laughed at this, however I had already started to experiment with this. I liked its sound so much and it would fill me up! It was a deep sound, spreading all across the room and could be heard everywhere. And I was there and I was feeling everything. Its sound was more majestic than a symphonic orchestra. Apart from the organ, we recorded synthesizer sounds, though not with my own instrument* (*Because mine one used to belong to my brother previously and he gave it away to me. Of course, it was of a good quality, but for the recordings we needed something much more developed. That's why I used a Korg model, that I found at school), accordion and the other's parts. We were working three hours in the morning and three hours in the afternoon. But even with my sister things weren't the same. Even though we were six persons now, I was feeling such a fatigue, because mixing and all this business was something I hardly knew about. Furthermore, the others in the band took liberties with me, because in that specific album, unfortunately, I had written everything myself, thus they believed that I had to be their own Meisterin and take initiative for everything. In other words everything had to be checked and approved by me and I don't even know why. But the only thing I did in the rest of the business was only watching. If things would progress well, the album would be released in autumn 2012. And there was a strong feeling of pride among us, as this was going to be our debut album. The most crucial thing, though, was that you learn to work inside a team and cooperate with others democratically. That seemed wonderful to me. I felt that I was living my life to the full.