Your Hand in Mine: Dream Every Night Dreams
TobiasManos is currently in the army. How are things going for him?
Obligatory army in Greece, besides all the meaninglessness and the general mess it causes either ways to a young man’s life, can be a major problem to bands…it is considered to be a Greek band’s common curse! Manos is apparently doing surprisingly well, he tries to find some time out every now and then… we try not to loose contact as much as possible. We recently finished a new song, with Manos mixing it in an “Internet point” near his army camp! Anyway, this silly joke should be over asap… battles are not won with pianists!
How did you get involved with the music for “Yogoto No Yume”?
Our band was chosen! The idea came from the “Independence Days” section of Thessaloniki’s International Film Festival. They proposed us to write a music score and to present it live, as a part of the tribute to the Japanese director.
How did you approach the soundtrack?
At first, after overcoming every fear the big responsibility caused to us, we tried to make our objectives clear: The goal was to follow and enlarge all the emotions of the film and especially their sequence. It was an early Japanese drama with a clear, pretty much predictable script, full of strong emotions. There was no need to imitate sounds or make any sound effects. Working 75 years later on an already self-contained masterpiece, our approach needed to be as discreet as possible. We preferred to respect mostly the script’s emotional chapters rather than the director’s details…
Then, we divided the film into 23 chapters on which we worked separately, afterwards in groups, and lastly as a whole. The movie was projected on our studio’s wall, above us, running and stopping all the time…
If I understood correctly, you a lot of fun assembling the first copies of the album?
After having recorded the full music score, we decided to prepare our Every Night Dreams OST in 100 handmade cd copies, as an “after-show goodie” for the people who would come to our live presentation at the Thessaloniki’s Festival. The picture on the left shows us, sleepless, cutting papers and fabrics for the cd cases! :-)
You already performed the soundtrack live in conjunction with an airing of the movie. How did things go?
It was the riskiest thing we’ve ever done! Due to the complicated orchestration, and us being 2 on stage, we had to deal with numerous instruments (mostly in total darkness), building live-loops which had to be synchronised not only by themselves, but also with the movie… and yes, we had better times! Luckily, our metronome responded well (even if it hadn’t shown it would)...and the sound absorbing materials of the cinema hall provided a strange but satisfying sound result.
We don’t know if people from the first rows managed to get into watching the film, due to our obviously stressed faces, but the final applause was surely one of the best moments of our lives!
The comparison to Yann Thiersen, in my opinion, has more to do with the prominent use of the accordion on one or two occasions than actual fact. Do you still consider this a friendly reference?
The use of the accordion in the soundtrack resulted from the actual presence of the instrument in Naruse’s frames. “At the bar”, couples are seen dancing to the tunes of some drunk, Einstein-looking accordionist… so, we thought it would be silly to accompany with a guitar theme, for example! The truth is that Manos was just a one-month accordionist that time, so the playing sounds still raw and crappy, almost drunk! We agree that the comparisons to Tiersen has more to do with the accordion themes. We believe that the instrument itself forces you to play in a specific manner. For instance, you cannot play death metal with a ukulele. When you look and hear an accordion and its timbre, you’re automatically influenced by all the nomad musicians of the world! We are very happy and proud about the reference, anyway!
The silent movie era offered incredible opportunities to composers, especially when compared to today when the visuals seem to have clearly taken over in terms of importance. How do you see the relevance and aesthetic value of soundtracks today?
Soundtracks today are a completely different issue. Soundtracks in silent movies were an important part of the act, someone had to speak for the actors, and the director as well... Nowadays soundtracks are more like compilations, sometimes they work, but sometimes music for a film today is used to advertise the specific film! Generally, art expression is changing, mediums are getting busier, for example a compiler (and sometimes the director himself) can make a “soundtrack” ... we don’t misjudge that! We just highlight the fact that the relationship between these two forms of art has changed! Composers don’t have the opportunity to state their view to a film, but 5 years after they composed a music piece, they might hear it in a film!
Homepage: Your Hand in Mine
Homepage: Inner Ear Records
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