Armor For Sleep Interview - 03.03.2005
| Interview with Ben Jorgensen (vocals) Interview by Rob Todd | 03.03.2005 | Detroit, MI | The Shelter  I don’t need to tell you what the album’s about but can you give our readers your take on what the whole album is about beside the obvious fact that it’s mainly about death. Go deeper into the meaning. In a real way it’s about wishing you could get through to people who aren’t very receptive. Obviously, since I’m still alive, it’s a metaphor and it’s just about trying to get through to people in your life that aren’t very easy to get through to. How important was it for you to create an actual album and avoid what most of your contemporaries are doing, which is releasing just another collection of songs? That was huge for us. We went in with our producer and we wanted to make an album. People made albums in the 70s. They were forced to only put on a certain amount of songs because they had to fit onto an actual vinyl record and we wanted—even though it was on a CD—we wanted to make the album pretending like it was going to be pressed in vinyl. We wanted to have two definite sides to it and an intro to the album and an outro. We thought of it as if we were making an album from the 70's basically. Do you know if Equal Vision will ever release a vinyl version of the album? I’d like them to. Yeah, that’d be awesome. How did you guys get set up with Machine to produce the album? Your style isn’t what he normally produces. Our friends’ band, Emanuel, had some demos and we were looking for a producer and this management company wanted to manage them and they were like, ‘Hey, we’ll hook you guys up with [Machine]. I think he’ll do good for you.’ They went with him and we heard their record, since we’re really good friends with them, and it came out amazing and we were like, “Woah, we have to meet your producer.” We didn’t know anything else about him but their record and it was amazing so we ended up researching him and talking to him and he really wanted to produce our record. This album is different than most other albums. This is an album that people should listen to at least a couple times in private and really concentrate on the lyrics. Did you ever consider the risk you were taking in creating a concept album without wholly leaving the genre? Or did you rely on the principle that you can listen to any one song and it doesn’t feel out of place? I don’t think we ever viewed that as a risk. I think this is something that we wanted to do. I mean, I don’t think people have reacted poorly to it. I’ve never met someone who was like, ‘I don’t understand what you did with this CD, where have you gone?’ It’s not like this far-fetched, weird, artsy project that we did. We just decided to make an album with a theme to it. I never viewed it as a risk, I just thought everyone would think it was cool. You mentioned having an intro and an outro. Do you consider “Car Underwater” the intro or the hidden track the intro? I think “Car Underwater” is the intro. It kind of sets the story off. What was the intention or the meaning behind the hidden track? I guess it’s kind of a prologue to the whole album. It was gonna be a song that we wanted to put on the CD but “Car Underwater” was the best opening. I think that song was recorded in three minutes and we just put it in the beginning of the album for anyone that could find it but it’s not essential to the whole album. As far as I can tell you guys haven’t done a video for the new album yet. Are there plans for one? We shot a video for “Car Underwater.” I don’t think it started playing yet. Maybe it’ll start soon, I don’t know. It’s not on the internet yet. Can you tell us some more about it? Is it going to follow the theme of the song? No, not really, half of it is performance obviously and the other half is…I think it kind of goes along with the song but it’s kind of…the video doesn’t make sense, you can come up with a bunch of different conclusions. In some ways that’s better for the audience. Yeah, the first concept for the video was basically the lyrics to the song in video form and I just wasn’t down with that. [Pulling out the small booklet, entitled “What to do when you are dead; a comprehensive guide to your afterlife,” from the album:] Where did the idea for this little guy come from? That, to me, just completes the package of why the album is called “What To Do When You Are Dead.” It’s not just a story, in a way people should think of it as instructions for themselves. I thought it would give people a whole different spin to the songs than just listening to these songs from someone else’s situation. It would give them a different spin if they actually thought of it as instructions for themselves so the booklet really emphasized that. [While flipping through] You can look through here and think about trying—well, not trying (laughter) ‘cause you’d have to be dead. It just gives people one more thing to question, whether or not these would be true. What’s your favorite rule? I like the one about animals and small children [“If detected by small children or animals, tell them you do not exist.”] It’s kind of like, I used to watch this show called “Quantum Leap.” There’s a hologram and he’d go to where Sam Beckett was in the past. Children and animals were aware of him but no one else was so if he was in a room and a dog was barking at him he had to calm them down ‘cause he was just a projection from the future. At the end of your bio on the EVR site it says, “The ancient Greeks never wrote obituaries. Instead they asked only one question: Did they have passion? After their major success in such a short time, it is obvious that Armor For Sleep has a positive answer for that question. What To Do When You Are Dead is that answer.” What do you think about that comment? It’s kind of confusing. I don’t know, I didn’t write that. I guess it’s just saying that whoever wrote it thought that it showed that we are passionate about what we do. It’s kinda weird. Yeah, it’s weird ‘cause at first glance it says that Armor For Sleep is passionate about death which really isn’t what it’s about. Exactly. Just for fun, what’s something you would include in scene etiquette? Everyone has different tastes of music, there’s so many different kinds of bands in this scene. I haven’t really seen any problems with this but I think it’s really good etiquette is if you’re watching a band and you don’t like them just hang out in the back; you don’t have to be up front watching them but definitely don’t boo them. Some of these kids don’t know, but it’s really hard going on tour. You’re very far away from your family and friends and you’re playing for kids and the last thing you want to hear is someone saying that you suck. That’s just a matter of respect. I haven’t really seen that in a long time. |
