Silene

Time to discover a little more about Silene, this gothic rock band who didn't stop gaining more and more fans since their first EP "107 Raven Road". Let's enter into their world..

Kiitos for letting us interview you. Let's begin with discovering a bit more about the band. How did everything start ? What's the story of the band ?

Silene was formed in 2004 by five musicians who all had a long history in Finnish music scene but were not actively involved with any band at the time, so it was a good time 
to group togehter and start playing again. We started as a Siouxsie and the Banshees cover band, which was the music we loved, but soon we realized that we have much more to offer to the gothic scene than just covering others' music and started to make our own songs. This is how the Silene journey began and here we still are, alive and kicking after ten years and hope to be still for many, many years.

How would you describe Silene's music style?

Our music style could probably be best described as traditional gothic rock, but with influences also from other genres, like punk and pop. We are not too strict with the style as we also love other music genres but we still want to keep our music close to its origins, 80's gothic rock, and make music with real musicians, not with machines.

From where do you take your inspiration (for your music and also lyrics)?

The inspirations for the music and lyrics come from the mood you are in at the moment, from the past, from the future, from the heart and dreams. From hopes an dissappointments. The music is the source for the lyrics, that sets the mood, always. We'd like to keep our music uninfluenced by others but of course one of the biggest influences for our sound in general is be The Mission (UK), a band who shares the same passion and attitude towards music than we do, and who makes fantastic songs. But we also want to evolve, try something new, without forgetting who we are and where our roots are.

In terms of composing music and writing lyrics, who does what in the band? Are the songs composed by everyone?

The line-up is Katinka - vocals, Nauku - keyboards, Toby - guitar, Antti - bass and Otto - drums. 
Currently the most active songwriters are Katinka, Toby and Nauku, the lyrics are written by Katinka, but the whole band takes part in making the songs complete. Of course even a whole song with lyrics may come from one band member but mostly it is group work.

Your first full-length album "All Our Yesterdays" was released in 2012 and is followed by "Unseen Memories", which got released earlier this year. Please tell us more about those. (About your ideas, the recording sessions...)

"All Our Yesterdays" is a nice cross-section of our musical path so far as it contains quite a versatile mix of our songs, from the re-makes of some of our all time favourite songs to the new material ranging from acoustic ballads to rock. Just the way we like it and just the way the new single "Unseen Memories" is made of. We think that we have a distinct "Silene-sound" and a way of performing, so all of our releases follow the good, familiar pattern. You know what you get when you buy our music. The new songs have been recorded at our rehearsal studio and at our recording/mixing guy's home studio, which is the easiest way to record music and with equal results than in a traditional studio.

If you have to choose one song among all the songs you made, which one would it be and why ?

The song would probably be "107 Raven Road" because it's the first song we ever made for Silene. It carries a lot of love and good memories with it and it is also one of our everytime favourites amongst our fans. Of our new songs we could probably pick up "Fear", "You" or "For You", depending on the mood.

How would you describe today's gothic rock scene, and Silene's place in it?

Silene comes from Tampere, Finland, which is often referred to as "the capital of Finnish gothic scene". Tampere has always been very active in introducing new bands and events and the scene is still rather active today. The hardest thing for us in Finland is to find venues to play at, especially for bands playing marginal music like gothic. Hence, you don't see too many gig dates in our calendar, but luckily we can meet our friends and fans also in gothic clubs organized by other active scene members. Gothic scene in Finland is relatively small but the positive side is that people know each other (at least by face) and travel from cities to cities to see the gigs and visit the clubs; quite a fantastic thing, really. Silene is well appreciated in the scene and we have a lot of fans in Finland and also abroad, all the way from Russia to Mexico.

Silene was formed in 2004. After 10 years, how would you describe the evolution of the band?

The band and the music has of course evolved and got better over these ten years because during this time we have glued tightly together and know each other, our styles and abilites better. The "Silene sound" is and will be a big part of our music but we also like to try new things, find some new nice tunes, some perhaps even surprising to our fans.

What are your plans for the future?

We are already making new songs for the new EP/album that we can hopefully release next year. We play gigs whenever we can and of course plan to continue making good music for a long time, still.

Some of the people who will read this interview don’t know about your music. What can you say to make them want to discover you ?

We do our best to keep the gothic scene alive and even though gothic rock is a marginal genre we would not want it to be lost and forgotten. But Silene is not just a "band for goths" but hopefully a band for everyone who likes good music and knows how to have a good time. That is really the purpose of the band; have a good time with our fans and friends all over the world, so we hope that as many people as possible will like and listen to our music. Check Silene in You Tube and other socia media channels.

If you could recommend some Finnish artists to discover, who would they be ?

In Finland we have several gothic influenced bands, but to mention a few, we would recommend Two Witches, Wreckdance, The Flatfield, Murnau's Playhouse or Masquerade.

Thank you for giving us some of your time. Is there something you want to say to FI Musica's followers ?

Thank you for contacting us, it's much appreciated! 
For FI Musica's followers we want to wish all the nice things in the world and encourage you to listen to our music, get to know us! :)
More information of the band can be found in our homepage: www.silene.in.
We have some shots from the live gigs and the videos in YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/s1ln
For music tracks, visit: http://silene.bandcamp.com - or MySpace for older songs: https://myspace.com/sileneband
News can also be followed in the facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Sileneband

 (Interviewer : Elodie)