Auto-translated by 44100Hz. Read the Russian original →

MIGZ 2009: Tesla Boy

Интервью · 24.06.2009

By Маргарита Аминева

More participants in the evening programme of the MIGZ festival — the new-wave collective Tesla Boy, made up of Anton Sevidov, Dima Midborn and Borya Lifshits. The project was formed in 2008. Each of the guys, however, has a varied musical background. For instance, Tesla Boy's bass guitarist Dmitry Midborn, who answered 44100Hz's questions, is known as one of the musicians of the outrageous Moscow band Banana Princess...

44100Hz: How's the mood?

Dmitry Midborn: The mood is excellent — a working one, we're sitting in the studio finishing off the album...

44100Hz: Tell us more about it. What are you going to call it?

D.M.: Has anyone ever told you an album's title before its release? You can consider it a kind of musician's superstition. By the feel of it, the material on the album will be no less juicy than on the EP. By the way, in our live set we already play the "album" tracks.

44100Hz: Do you often have to give interviews? You must be tired of it by now...

D.M.: Interviews are necessary so that the public knows what we do, what we're made of, how cool our gigs are. On the whole, we're not tired of giving interviews. It's just a shame that there are so few interesting questions.

44100Hz: How did your recent concert in Moscow go? Were you pleased with it?

D.M.: The gig went splendidly! We didn't even expect we'd be able to vampire up that much energy! SHHHhhhhh!

44100Hz: How do you feel about being compared to the popular Empire of the Sun? There are actually loads of comparisons. Which of them is the most flattering for you?

D.M.: Yeah, we have mixed feelings about it. EotS is a great band, but the only thing we have in common with them is the audience. So I suspect that your "music lovers" are simply people who listen to Tesla Boy and Empire of the Sun in equal measure. And I'm one myself. Only I'd listen to Tesla Boy while tearing through the night-time city in my Chevrolet Camaro, whereas to Empire of the Sun I'd sip a colourful cocktail with a load of little umbrellas at a poolside villa. In principle, I find it curious to read comparisons, I'm always glad when we're compared to some interesting band. Comparisons show the cultural context in which one object or another exists, be it a band, or an artist, or a designer — whatever. And, it seems to me, in this way comparisons help the audience form an idea of the subject. It's another matter when, after a while, you yourself want to break out of that context, but by then it's too late.

44100Hz: Which Russian and foreign DJs would you choose to make remixes of your music?

D.M.: Only someone who's inspired by the music, or by a particular track, will make a good remix. Bestraka, for example, himself expressed a desire to remix "Spirit of the Night", nobody offered him the job, he just did it, and I listen to it almost every day, several times — that's how cool it is. Poko and Yaponets wrote their own versions of "Electric Lady" — there was no talk about that with them either. And now young hipsters are throwing down to these mixes on the dancefloors (there, I've finally said the word).

44100Hz: You tour abroad a lot. How well do you speak foreign languages?

D.M.: We don't feel any barriers at all. In our current state we're ready to turn the Andes into a plain — what's some language barrier to us? I studied English professionally, I was supposed to become a translator. But I became a bassist; I was writing lyrics in English long before I enrolled, so it's clearly fate. And at university I wasn't doing quite what I'd expected. Damn, who at 18 is interested in translating the component parts of a rocket booster? So I spent most of my time on music and amateur translations "for the drawer", I even nearly translated one book by Bret Ellis, but I didn't have the staying power. Anton may not know English at a high level, but he has an excellent feel for the language and for his interlocutor, which always amazed me. He won't reel off 20 synonyms for the word "simpleton", but he'll always find a way to express his thought — and that's cool!

44100Hz: Which of the artists performing at MIGZ this year would you be interested in hearing?

D.M.: We'll be listening to Moderat, Moonunit and Vasily Shumov!