1. Profil - We know very little about Pervy Perkin. you can give us a short summary of your young life?

 

(Alex) Yeah! Well, we started as Pervy Perkin in 2011. We began working really hard in our music, playing gigs and recording and composing our first record. It came out (“Ink”, 2014) and we started touring in support of it. The record and the live acts were critically acclaimed, and we felt really happy about it.. We released another record this year called “ToTeM”, which was also praised, and this spring we’ve made the first part of our  tour supporting it, which will continue this autumn in other places and venues. Our lineup has changed a bit since the beginning but we’re still good friends with the past members of the band. We’ve enjoyed and learned a lot through all these years and we’re so excited to continue sharing our music with you all!

2.  PR - You want to present the current members of the group?

 

(Tides) I guess I ought to do it in chronological order, so first off we’ve got Carly, the drummer, who also happens to have some pretty cool high pitched vocals in him. He’ll be the one always paying attention to what everyone else is doing live, and if we fail there is no way any of us is getting away with it. Then there is Dante, guitarist/vocalist, as well as manager. We definitely wouldn’t be able to pull off all the stuff we’ve done so far if it wasn’t for his hard work, and he is constanty thinking about the next possible step. Then comes Alex, singer/keyboardist, who’s the main vocalist and the craziest one in the band. Our live shows would be half as entertaining as they are if he wasn’t in charge of running the show and interacting with the audience, and he’s got an amazing range. The guy keeping the low end is Aks, who is also known for his carefully thought out but stupidly funny wardrobe. Lastly, I am Tides, the newest addition to this band. Both Dante and I play solos, but I am usually in charge of playing the leads while he is more of the rhythm guy. As of now there is little more I can say about myself.

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3. PR - You define your genre of music as progressive rock with metal trends or otherwise, but listening to your albums we perceive much more than that. You can help us learn more about your group and its influences?

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(Carly) Well, I think that definition is cool but I will add ‘’experimental’’ label to the table and maybe ‘’crossover’’. We love techno, we love country, pop, jazz, ambient, noise, that’s the thing, we love music and we filter all that influences with a taste of rock and metal.

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We listen to actual prog bands even djenty, extreme metal and classic prog rock as Genesis, Pink Floyd, the greatest from the 70’s. I don’t know, each individual mind in the band has his own influences, maybe funk, maybe black metal, and I think to embrace all that wide range of styles is the reason and the key of our sound.

4. PR - In 2014 you go first double album called "Ink" is an ambitious project. It seems that you have a taste for risk? Tell us more about that first album?

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(Aks) Risk is necessary when you want to do something you love and want to express it in the best way you feel that you can and a whopping double album on the first go for you mofos is a pretty big risk indeed. But enough of that, risks are fun! Heck, I take risks all the time when I’m composing or doing lyrics or making visuals for the band, but it’s not just me, we all love experimenting and trying out things, old and new, so much that it seems like our “career” is going to be one risk after another (hopefully no major labels are reading this), but it’s barely a risk when we’re having fun. We do stuff having ourselves as the target audience, so nothing can possibly go wrong!

 

5. PR – How did you feel with the release of "Ink"? Were you nervous?

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(Alex) Actually we felt really hyped, releasing an album was something new for us, and all the feelings we had at that moment were positive. We were like “Oh my god this is ours, we’ve made it, we have put our names in history with our music” and things like that. We asked ourselves “what will people think about it?” but always in a positive way, we weren’t afraid of bad reviews, we knew that good and bad reviews are always going to happen with every music release, so we hoped at least to have a bunch of people enjoying it. But it was very well received in the end! We felt so lucky.

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Besides, we felt an enormous relief when we finished recording the album, it became a neverending process, really hard and painful, so when it was done, we were only thinking “YES! Finally!” And there could be no room in our heads for any fearful feeling.

 

6. PR - What motivated you to make a new album?

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(Carly) When we were at the composition process from INK, we felt that we wanted to cover a bunch of other styles and open up our musical horizons even more. The need of growing, our constant and changing inspirations made that statement even clearer.

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There were new people involved at the composition process from ToTeM (Alex, Aks) and these reasons only made us feel like that was the right moment to make another album, and there it is!

7. PR - "Ink" is available for free download on your Bandcamp. (Http://pervyperkin.bandcamp.com/album/ink)

8. PR - Last spring you introduced "ToTeM", do you want to talk about it? What are the differences between this and "Ink"?

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(Alex) I love ToTeM. We put all our efforts and soul into it, in order to create something great, moving and memorable, and I think we achieved it. I feel the album is better constructed and composed, more mature than our previous effort. It is more experimental and crazy than Ink, but at the same time it’s more eclectic and hooking, the heavy parts are heavier, the soft parts are softer, and it’s waaaay better produced. This time we worked with Adrián Hidalgo in his studio, Lasting Noise, and with his help at recording, mixing and mastering and all his tips and advice, our album became better in every possible aspect.

 

9. PR - How is the composition process? Who composes? (text & music)

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(Aks) Short answer: everyone does everything. Longer answer: we’re just getting started, so everyone has a vault of endless ideas, at least at this point in our lives. This means that everyone has ideas for songs, riffs, basslines, drum patterns, lyrics, videos, saxophone solos, you name it. ToTeM is composed of basically song ideas that Dante had and worked at, (with the exception of Carly’s magnum opus: Mr Gutmann). But ideas are brought to band practice/rehearsal/meeting/drug reunion (jk on the last one) and we all start to add or subtract or modify and eventually shape it over the course of however much t.i.m.e. it takes to come out as we think the cosmos deems it so. Well maybe the cosmos bit is just from my perspective. The lyrics depend, again, mainly the song idea “originator” is responsible for the lyrics, because if you gave birth to a beautiful baby you would want to name it yourself, right? On the KKK song though, because it’s a weird country rap thing and rap is my thing I co-wrote it with Dante. Anything we do though has input from anyone and/or everyone, it really is not an exaggeration. Everyone in the band has made at least one contribution to all instruments and lyrics in some place or another.

10. PR - There have been some changes to the line-up after the publication of "Ink", what are they?

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(Carly) Well, Ugo (keyboard) left the band mainly, he was a huge part of the sound that INK brought to the band, his ideas were very fresh and he had a very structural wise thinking. In October 2013, Aks , our current bass player, entered the band with very low knowledge of the instrument, and now, dude…he’s just better on his instrument than all of us.

(Dante) Agree on that!

11. PR - So far the reactions are good by the public; you are satisfied with the results?

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(Tides) The reviews about “ToTeM” that have been coming in are pretty great, and we’ve certainly seen a lot of people digging it who, eager to know more about Pervy Perkin, have gone back to listen to “Ink” and enjoyed it just as much. However, there is always room for improvement, so even if we are indeed proud of our efforts so far, there is no doubt we must and will continue to try to best ourselves.

12. PR - You are relatively young, what attracted you to the progressive rock?

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(Aks) I’ve always liked Pink Floyd without knowing what progressive rock was. I’ve listened to a bunch of weird music in my life that now it turns out is called progressive. Myself, I hadn’t been a scholar of the genre until these guys made me enter the band at gunpoint (jk, I joined happily, weird story of how I joined in the future maybe?). I discovered classics like King Crimson or Genesis thanks to Alex and Dante, I discovered weird shit like Devin Townsend thanks to Carly. It’s an enormous list of things that just originates from finding something unique and beautiful and pulling on the thread until you find yourself swimming amongst a myriad of beautiful music. Wow I hope I’m not sounding too pedantic, I’m not stuck up, I just like describing things in metaphors because I suck at expressing myself. Anyways, as for the rest of the band members there’s a common situation of growing up in a household where the parents listen to progressive rock or just exchanging bands between friends, the usual, you know. We all have diverse tastes but the progressive rock is common to all.

13. PR - What are your plans for the future?

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(Dante) We are producing our very first videoclip right now, on our own. We are also going to keep touring and promoting ToTeM, and if everything goes as planned, play outside Spain a couple of times. After that, around spring 2017, we will begin the composition and elaboration of our third album which will be a huge, huge one. Can’t wait for each and everyone of those things!

14. PR - How do you see the future of progressive and music in general?

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(Dante) I fell both optimistic and pessimistic. Optimistic concerning Progressive music, as I see a very active scene, lots of high quality bands emerging every month, daring, tasteful, innovative, different. I see new festivals, new promoters that show interest in the genre, more dedicated media and more “mainstream” media that dares to speak about progressive music. We have a long road to walk still, but I see clearly an evolving scene, and bigger audiences. I feel pessimistic concerning mainstream music in general. Groups or artists with no talent at all, “pretty faces” or tv stars, that get into the world of music with autotune, 6 producers for each song, a big label and tons and tons of promotion. And it works! It seems that it really doesn’t matter if the song is good or not, if it has some artistic or emotional value. It seems that you just need to have someone famous and invest tons of money on promotion and it will pay off. I love pop music, I love techno. But pop music back in the 90s or 80s was so much better: The Police, Phil Collins, Alan Parsons Project, Supertramp,…those bands made great songs, wonderful songs, that were meaningful, yet catchy. Nowadays we have Pitbull, Nicki Minaj, etc and all the “hit” sound exactly the same. Shame. There are still some great popular musicians out there with incredible talent and wonderful songs, like Mumford and Sons, Eminem, or Daft Punk, but seems funny to me how they survive in the noise of all this mainstream – same song all the time- scene.

15. PR - Is it possible to live of music today?

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(Dante) Short answer, no. Long answer, yes with a but. In our genre, progressive rock/metal, it is quite difficult to make a living, as it is not a “commercial” genre and the scene is still almost an underground one. So that means no support from government, very few big labels, very few dedicated festivals, almost no mainstream media attention, and lots and lots of money invested in your music, in your equipment, in publicity and promotion to be heard and seen, in tours…Is it possible to make it in this panorama? It is, with a constant source of money, and lots of sacrifices and investment.

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Seems a pretty dark situation, but we are actually pretty optimistic and we are going for it 100% making all these sacrifices, because we love what we do. We may not live of music as of today but we live for music and we always will. Personally, the only reason why I want to live of music is that I don’t have to work in another place and can dedicate myself to music entirely.

16. PR - What is your best memory? Do you have a dream you want to achieve?

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(Dante) My best memory is from a gig we did in Teruel, here in Spain, in June of this year, with our great friends Cheeto’s Magazine and Dry River (Check them out, they are AWESOME). We were closing the festival (Sonicarte Fest) and the last song in the set was “I Believe”, the opening track in ToTeM. This song speaks about unity, and for us has also a special meaning about the prog scene here in Spain, where we are all brothers, we help eachother  and we are all in love with music. So at the end of the concert, in the backstage, I found one of the promoters of the festival crying, very touched be the song and our music, and he hugged me in tears. That is by far the best this music has given me. To be able to move people like that…that is what I love of music, and achieving it is the best reward I could ever dream of.

We have a dream. This band. We are living it. We do what we like most and share our art with people who appreciate it and feel touched and moved. We’d only be happier if we could live of it and so had nothing to worry about apart from our music. 

17. PR - You have the last word ...

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(Band) Thanks a lot for having us here! Be sure to check our social media and check out our album in bandcamp. If you like it, get one! The physical edition is amazing.

(Tides) Prog is love, prog is life.