To start a day two of our “Project week” we present you with an interview with Red Ochsenbein and his upcoming album called Did I mention Hell?. You can pre-order Did I mention Hell? at bandcamp. Save extra 20% with The Audio Spotlight special promo code.
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Tell us a little bit about your project (album)?
The album is called ‘Did I mention hell?’ and was originally written with licensing for media in mind. The idea was to write some tracks for a rock-/metal-band and orchestra. During the process the tracks ended to be more like ‘songs’ than just library music. That’s why I decided to make the 8 instrumental tracks and 5 remixes available to the public on Bandcamp.
How did you come up with the idea of making a full album?
It started when I had an email conversation with Apollo Live. They were looking for some tracks hovering around the idea of ‘The dark side of rock’. Since this was what I was doing for years with my former band I thought it would be a good idea to write some tracks. The original idea was to write about 10 tracks. I ended up with 8 tracks plus 4 remixes done by myself and one by my colleague Chris Polus and that’s what I’d call an album, right?
When did the production of the album begin?
I started writing tracks for this project at the end of November 2011.
How long did it take you to complete the album?
I finished the mastering in the middle of June this year. So the whole project took me about 7 month. Originally there was no plan to record a real drum. But I found it really won a lot by bringing in the drummer Flavio Mezzodi and the guitarist Stefan Schroff added some depth I could never achieve myself.
Where can people find out more about your project?
There are several places: Facebook, Twitter, Bandcamp or Google Plus. My website http://redochsenbein.ch/ might be a good start.
Why title did I mention Hell? Or tell us a story of how you choose that title?
I’m pretty bad when it comes to any form of text writing and it got even worse when I was writing those tracks I did not even have a special setting, pictures or scenes in mind. I was just writing music. You might call it absolute music. Well, but music has to have a title so I tried several ways to find those: Brainstorming, asking people, searching for clever quotes, etc. Nothing really worked so I tried just to come up with some random titles (don’t ask me how I did that!) and those titles seem to work for me. One of those titles was ‘Did I mention hell?’ and it pretty much describes some aspects of the writing process…
Is this album available for licensing? Can people who bought the album use the songs in their videos, trailers etc?
Yes, the album will be available for licensing through Apollo Live at http://www.apollolive.com/ and no, people buying the album at BandCamp don’t actually get a license to use it for their media works… It’s just the same as buying any other CD on the market.