Radio Metal: Hi and welcome. God is an Astronaut is quite an original sounding band. So it is to now wonder that people have started throwing labels and debating on what is the style you actually play. Opinions are quite diverse, ranging from ambient to space music and post-rock. So how would you actually describe the music you make? Torsten Kinsella (guitar): It’s very hard to say, I think we just look at it as an instrumental, electronic, ambient rock. We don’t really work with labels, musically we’re always very interested in the spacey atmosphere and feel so that also comes into play. Our music is an exploration of emotion and sound, it’s a journey for us and style is not as important as content – with which we explore not just the sound but more like the feelings that we go through in life.

Your music is also instrumental-based, weren’t you a bit concerned at the beginning that you might diminish your audience?[/b}

I don't think we ever cared whether we have an audience or not. I think the whole point of God is an Astronaut was that from the beginning we would wave goodbye to the music industry, because for years and years we tried to understand what this record companies want: should we do pop music, should we do this, should we do that? But we realised that we shouldn't be asking them anything. We should be doing what we want to do. This is God is an Astronaut.

As for being instrumental I didn't like the sound of my vocals and by experimenting we found out what we preferred and what we didn't. Our first record, The End of the Beginning was the first step into making something that we would actually buy ourselves. At the time people called us dance music because we had some trip-hop beats and hip-hop beats and also they were throwing people like Moby at us which didn't make any sense because I think he is far more commercial than us.

The second record was really just a natural progression coming from playing The End of the Beginning live and realising that electronic sounds have their place but they don't give the same feel as a guitar, a bass and a drumkit do so we added a drummer in and all started to open up because there's a certain vibe that a drummer gives and machines simply don't. We felt that this needed to be incorporated on the second record, the live drums, the live guitars - there weren't really any of them on the first album, it was pretty much all electronic with a few guitar loops in the background. This was all supposed to liven everything up and All is Violent, All is Bright was a product of that stylistically while content-wise it went deeper than The End of the Beginning, we were able to express ourselves better and we invested for the first time into Pro Tools which at the time gave us like 36 tracks and we were able to incorporate a lot more.

The firs album was made just with a sampler and a keyboard workstation. We were now able to broaden our sound and from that point onwards A Moment of Stillness was for example the close brother of All is Violent, All is Bright while we continued to try and experiment stylistically whilst musically remainig true to ourselves. We were listening to early Pink Floyd during that album, we watched the show of Live at Pompeii and we liked that kind of spacey, organic vibe so that was the influence for that record. Then the self-titled next record was a kind of heavy rock release, with again a hybrid of the electronics and the live instruments, but perfected production-wise in many ways. We somehow needed tracks that would work and do the business live for us. Far from Refuge had a few tracks but they were all very chilled out so bringing out elements from the self-titled albums helps a live set tremendously, I think it works better than any of the stuff we've done.

The next record is called Age of the Fifth Sun, it's going to be out in May and it's very easy for us because we have a lot of songs we can play live and now we are just experimenting and I feel more free to write what I want to write so it's very diverse. We always went for a theme like 'this album should be more electronic, this other should be more rock etc.' but on this record every song is different. Some are extremely heavy, heavier than what we've done on the last album, but also some that are even more chilled out than the first record. It's completely diverse and we definitely can extract some very good songs out of it to play live.

Was this wanting of complete freedom the main reason behind not going for contracts with big labels and such? You’ve released all your work independently…

Yeah, we didn’t have a feel that a record company would be the thing for us because you have to play by their rules and you have to follow their release dates so you are under their aim and control and we didn’t want that. Licensing was always an option for us but up until this point I don’t feel that we’ve received a decent offer that would make it enticing for us to do anything. Like Warner Brothers do in the States, they would just take ownership of the name, the trademark, everything and that wouldn’t do God is an Astronaut any favour, even though on the outside it would look like receiving a big push, as there is always the risk that one of the guys would come and say ‘look, I can’t really do this any more, we can’t keep up financially’ – and this will hurt God is an Astronaut a lot.

I figured that the longer we stay and we keep making good records, the test of time will prove if we were right in doing so. It’s the same with this new album that we contemplated licensing it because we’re so busy between the touring, but it would have to be the right deal, it can’t be something that we would feel that financially at the end of the year we would be ruined. We do understand the importance of the promotion, but there has to be a fine balance, we still need to make a living out of it. With big labels you barely get 50%, and 40cents in the reprinting of each CD but at the end of the day we still have to contemplate on this decision.

You originate from Ireland, a country that has produced a very good amount of famous artists like U2, Enya, Riverdance etc. People now associate them with the Irish sound. Do you think that hurts in a way the smaller bands?

It’s really hard to say…Yes, that is true, but the Irish press brings it on itself because they don’t try to celebrate bands that have e certain Irish thing and try to get on on their own. It’s not too late, but not too genuine either. I think that My Bloody Valentine is another band people should refer to, also Rollerskate Skinny, Whipping Boy – a lot of serious bands that were covered less in Ireland than rather the whole UK. Therapy? did receive a little push, but there are a lot of others who didn’t because the Irish press isn’t really interested.

U2 deserve to be where they are you can say that as much. Enya is huge, maybe not very cool but at the same time no one can say anything against her vocal talents. Yet the Irish press doesn’t want to hear from the smaller bands. It’s a kind of negativity that is in Ireland and sometimes there are some ‘pushed’ bands that don’t seem to have much of a success abroad yet have a very big domestic appeal. I won’t mention any names, but they get a lot of airplay and then end up nowhere. So you then start asking yourself why don’t they celebrate bands that actually do something at an international level.

The band that is touring with us, Butterfly Explosion I’m sure that will do very good internationally, but not so well in Ireland, because even though their first video has received rating of 5 out of 5 none of the local press wanted to talk with them. It is just going to be another example of Ireland not getting along with its own groups.

“I don’t think we ever cared whether we have an audience or not“ You are well known for the visual projections you use during live shows. Have you thought on releasing future albums on DVDs which might incorporate both the audio and the video?

No I don’t think so, in fact the visuals are all gone now. To me they were nothing more than just a part of the show. In Ireland people don’t appreciate that much instrumental music so the visuals went a long way to improve the entertainment value. Playing without them for the last couple of shows made us to realize that they took away from the sounds because you tended to look more than to listen. I don’t think we miss them, although there were a lot of people writing that we are still entertaining but we need the visuals but we want to prove a point that it was about the songs from the start. On last.fm we were in the top 100 last year and there are no visuals there. They never represented the exact emotions of the tracks, they were only an outline to try and enhance a certain fragile feeling and melancholy. But now I don’t think we’re looking to that now, it would actually hold back things.

There is a saying that ‘art is meant to create doubt, while entertainment only to keep things the way they are.’ To what extent would you agree with this in the context of your music?

Music is art and entertainment, you can’t go to a show and not entertain people, that would be just playing out silly. If it’s so artistic that no one enjoys it, you really can’t do that. Otherwise people’s minds would just go away. So yeah, it has to be both.

What about the name of the band? Do you actually believe in the theory of ancient astronauts or was it just something you thought was sounding nice?

It appealed to us and yes, we are also interested in Sci-Fi and we watched that Clive Barker’s movie Nightbreed with has a certain line ‘God is an astronaut, Oz lies over the rainbow’ which was so cool that initially we wanted to use the whole of it to call our band. Obviously we couldn’t do that so we just named it God is an Astronaut, a name through which we could experiment sonically. But we also read that book from Erich von Daniken which is fascinating and also very plausible compared to angels in the sky.

So all in all would you prefer to be known as experimenting with sound, rather than bringing a powerful lyrical message?

Well, the most important thing is to emotionally express yourself with the music and if you lose that there is nothing left. I see a lot of critics judging stylistically and that really drives me nuts because I think that a good sound is a good sound and can be played on anything from an acoustic guitar, a piano or a complex electronic track. People hide behind style too much and it fools a lot of critics. It’s like when people come to us and say ‘oh, you are polishing your records too much’. These ones are judging stylistically again, they might like a certain lo-fi recording but to me the method of producing shouldn’t get in the way. Compared to Nine Inch Nails for example our stuff is extremely lo-fi so all these things about post-rock…we don’t play post-rock, we have elements of post-rock but I’m not going to follow rules, I’m not going to put Mogwai on my wall and try to copy them – I actually think they don’t do post-rock either. I’m not interested in emulating something else’s emotions or style, there is only one God is an Astronaut and that is what we want to do.

What are then the influences behind the band?

We’re into Metallica, Slayer, AC/DC, I don’t think I listened to lots of similar stuff with our style when we started. Death in Vegas may be the only ones I can remember. Now after listening and meeting some of the bands I do like a bit of Mogwai, Sigur Ros and Caspian which are really good. And that’s about it, really…

Yes, that’s it (laughing). Thank you very much for the interview.

Interview conducted by Dragos on february, 2010 in London
God Is An Astronaut Myspace : www.myspace.com/godisanastronaut

This post is also available in: French