Most
musicians would have trouble writing a fourteen minute instrumental
track but not the band known as Effa Lente. On the 2015 CD
release of The Effa Lente Configuration: Parts 1-4,
group founder / guitarist and multi-instrumentalist David Alfred
Reilly has crafted a 45 minute instrumental opus that is clearly
influenced by early 1970s and mid 1990s King Crimson. The one track
CD is comprised of four distinct parts yet it works magic as a one-piece
magnum opus. With Reilly handling all the guitars, keyboards and more,
the 44 + minute CD also contains orchestral samples from the Vienna
Symphonic Libraryyet it remains incontrovertible that Effa Lente
makes original, hard-hitting instrumental sounds that creates a swift
cascade of industrial strength prog-rock. Speaking about the reasons
for making this first Effa Lente CD as one complete 45-minute piece
of music David explains, I kept it as one 45 minute piece
for a couple of reasons. Whenever I work on music I generally try
and write something that I would want to hear, and I wasn't hearing
something like this anywhere else so I decided to just do it for myself.
Very selfish! It is also challenging for the audience to listen to
one 45-minute track. It was a way to turn off casual listeners, as
it is a piece that demands your attention from beginning to end.
Also of note here is the excellent CD packaging, which enhances the
effective music on hand. Other influences on this first Effa Lente
album include Muse, Opeth, Black Sabbath, Mike Oldfield's Tubular
Bells and even Frank Zappa. With so much all-original music on
hand you will soon forget the influences and just marvel at how unique
a music project Effa Lente is. Effa Lente is the future of instro
prog and it's a trip worth taking. www.EffaLente.com
mwe3.com presents an interview with
David Alfred Reilly
of EFFA LENTE
mwe3: Tell us where youre from originally and where you
live now and what you like best about it? Being from Ireland, do you
travel to other countries and cities in Europe and have you been to
the US?
David Alfred Reilly: I am originally from Donegal in the North
West of Ireland, but have been living in Dublin for the past 20 years.
I moved here in the mid 1990s and just stayed.
Yeah, I have visited Europe quite a bit. I have been in the US a few
times also actually. The most recent being 2013. I visited San Francisco,
and Las Vegas for a few days.
mwe3: I read that you were originally in a band called Graveyard
Dirt, which is a pretty wild name for a band I must say! Whats
your background as a recording artist and performing musician?
David
Alfred Reilly: I played lead guitar in Graveyard Dirt in the early
90s before leaving to study music in college. After that I spent
a few years working in a recording studio in Dublin, working mainly
on music for TV/Film, that kind of thing. This is where I got a lot
of my recording/engineering skills, such as they are. It was good
training as there was a quick turnaround in delivering music to people,
so you had to be pretty fast. After this I went back to Graveyard
Dirt around '05 to try my hand at recording a band. The result was
the Shadows Of Old Ghosts EP which came out in 2007. We released
an album in 2010 but I left the band soon after that. I also do some
mixing for people from time to time.
mwe3: Music fans in the know have compared your new album The
Effa Lente Configuration Pts. 1-4 with all kinds of music including
Red era King Crimson as well as Tubular Bells. Although
its clearly more Red than Tubular! Is that a fair assessment?
I was going to add the CD sounds like a perfect mix between Crimson
and Black Sabbath, albeit instrumentally done.
David Alfred Reilly: It probably does sound more Red
than Tubular but I would say that Tubular Bells was
definitely a bigger influence on the album. I kinda wanted to do something
like it but more with a band feel, even though it is all me. The fact
that Tubular Bells is one long piece, as well as being instrumental,
was certainly an inspiration. That first batch of King Crimson albums
were a big influence also, from In The Court Of The Crimson King
all the way through to Red. All amazing albums.
The Crimson meets Sabbath comparison is a good, and flattering one,
thanks. I did want the start of the album to have a similar kind of
impact to that of the opening of In The Court Of The Crimson King
actually. Just a 'What the hell is this?!' kind of feeling. As for
Sabbath, I really like how they progressed from Black Sabbath
to Sabotage. It sounds like they just wrote the kind of music
they wanted to write, and didn't feel obliged to do what others thought
they should.
mwe3: Why did you set out to make The Effa Lente Configuration
a massive 45 minute single composition? I guess you didnt want
to edit and cut the piece down to bite-size tracks? Did keeping it
as one piece make it all the more challenging to complete and can
you also tell us how you came up with the name Effa Lente? Sounds
Italian to me!
David
Alfred Reilly: I kept it as one 45 minute piece for a couple of
reasons. Whenever I work on music I generally try and write something
that I would want to hear, and I wasn't hearing something like this
anywhere else so I decided to just do it for myself. Very selfish!
Plus, whenever I told anyone about my idea they would always look
at me like I was crazy, and ask why would I not break it up into 'bite-size
chunks'. Crazy first of all because of the amount of work, and secondly
because Who the hell is gonna want to listen to it?! When
I heard that resistance, that's when I knew I was doing the right
thing.
Keeping it as one piece did make it more challenging because if you
alter something at 7 minutes, you also have to alter other parts at,
for instance, 22 minutes or 35 minutes, to keep everything flowing,
or consistent. Kinda like a Butterfly Effect. It is also
challenging for the audience to listen to one 45-minute track. It
was a way to turn off casual listeners, as it is a piece that demands
your attention from beginning to end.
Effa Lente is just a name I made up, a bit of a private
joke. But definitely not Italian!
mwe3: You mention Quentin Tarantino movies as being a big influence
on your music. So you see The Effa Lente Configuration as a kind of
movie soundtrack? I heard that you were also influenced by George
Martin and also Bernard Hermanns film scores, so I guess that
reaffirms your wide screen inclinations on The Effa Lente Configuration
CD. You mentioned earlier you worked on TV music. Which movie soundtracks
do you like among your favorites?
David Alfred Reilly: I think people misunderstand what I mean
by that Quentin Tarantino influence. I just meant the structure of
the music was similar to the structure of a Tarantino movie, or a
David Lynch movie, in that it wasnt linear. It goes off in tangents
before coming back somewhere later in the piece to resolve, or maybe
even the resolution is before! Anyway, each new listen will hopefully
reveal something you missed on the previous one. It isn't meant to
be that I was using music to literally tell a story, even though a
lot of it does bring to mind different scenarios.
I
do listen to a lot of film music and classical music, probably more
so, or at least as much as, music with vocals. I think lyrics can
sometimes be an excuse for people to write boring music, not always
of course, but some of the time.
Some of my favorite soundtracks would be Sleepy Hollow by Danny
Elfman, Goodbye Lenin! by Yann Tiersen, all of Bernard Hermanns's
particularly Psycho and Vertigo. Another couple worth
mentioning is Alexandre Desplat's score for The Ghost (also
called 'Ghost Writer') and Jonny Greenwood's music for There Will
Be Blood.
mwe3: How challenging was it to record all the parts on the
CD versus working with other musicians in the studio? You were also
talking about the lack of funding to be able to offer a live show
or even a tour where you could play The Effa Lente Configuration in
concert. Seems like thats the biggest problem in music these
days with so many artists. I guess one or two trillion dollars channeled
by the various governments and put into the musical arts would be
a great way to remedy that!
David Alfred Reilly: It was certainly challenging doing it
all myself but I think it would have been more challenging to try
and get other musicians to play the music. By the time I would have
found the right people, shown them what I wanted them to play, I figured
it would be quicker to just do it myself.
It is not so much a lack of funding, rather a lack of popularity!
If I was really popular there would be people to come see the show,
buy the album, therefore I could pay the musicians required to bring
it to the stage, etc. I am not saying that in a moaning sense, however.
The reality is, I recorded a single 45-minute piece of instrumental
music that is pretty uncommercial. I am not gonna sit here now and
complain that not enough people are into it. It is what it is.
mwe3: Tell us something about your guitars and other gear you
use on The Effa Lente Configuration CD. I imagine you have an enormous
amount of gear. Do you have a favorite guitar or guitars and favorite
keyboards that you plugged in for much of the CD recording process?
Did you use vintage keyboards on the CD too? I hear mellotrons and
synths galore!
David
Alfred Reilly: You would be amazed at how little gear I used on
the album. I used one guitar, a Gibson Flying V, one keyboard that
I use for various things, and a bass. I use a lot of 'plugins' for
different sounds which helps vary things up a bit.
As far as favorite sounds on the album, I like the harpsichord and
glockenspiel. I like the contrast they give when mixed with a Morbid
Angel/Black Sabbath style riff. Also the mellotrons. They give it
that classic 'Progressive' sound. However, it is more the way each
sound blends with everything else, rather than any individual sound,
that makes it what it is.
mwe3: Richard Dowling did the CD mastering for the Effa Lente
album. What was involved in the CD mastering in order to capture all
the sonics without having the levels go into the red zone, to coin
an expression?
David Alfred Reilly: The mastering process involved a little
back and forth between us. Sometimes what I heard in his mastering
studio and what I heard when I got home were slightly different. I
just wasn't used to his speakers. It was mainly just a little bit
of 'clipping', digital distortion, here and there which I only heard
as I listened at home through headphones.
I wanted to get someone to master it just to have someone else's opinion
on the final CD. It gets to a stage where you don't know which way
is up when you are doing it all yourself, so it was good to be able
to hand over the reins to Richard a little bit at the end.
mwe3: Theres been a lot of favorable reviews for 'The
Effa Lente Configuration' so I think you feel artistically vindicated.
Whats up next for you to further spread the word about the CD
as well as writing, recording, live performances and more regarding
even more music for 2016 and beyond?
David
Alfred Reilly: There are no definite plans regarding anything
at the moment, but I am writing and recording new music. It is in
a few different styles at the moment but I am sure it will all come
together as one soon enough. Some live performances would be great
also, but I might wait until the next release is out so that I would
have enough material for a longer set.