SOURCE – Before we go into anything, let’s talk about Duhkha. It was the album that put you on the map, but at the time, could you have predicted the impact it would have on your career?
Zbigniew Szatkowski (Keyboards) – In retrospect I think, our 4th album :ktonik: had a much larger impact for us. This was the album that introduced Barth Sobieraj’s voice to our music and opened us to touring internationally. With Barth we had started to regularly travel across Europe with our music both together with bands such as Riverside, Kingcrow, Chaos Divine or Anneke van Giersbergen’s Vuur. Duhkha was an album which was a logical consequence and continuity of :ktonik:, and its stubs were composed on tour.
SOURCE – Nowadays in every album the person responsible for the sound production is strongly mentioned especially when he is a known one. How important do you think is the producer to the sound of a band?
Zbigniew Szatkowski (Keyboards) – We worked with different people on different albums: our idea was to figure out our desired sound and find a person who could help us achieve it. For :ktonik: and part of Duhkha it was David Castillo from Ghost Ward Studio in Sweden, a brilliant mind who helped us come to the sound we want to get – he is extremely gifted and almost a magician when it comes to making music sound heavy. For Duhkha we were also aided by our talented tour sound engineer Tomasz Korczak from Red Yeti Studio and our guitarist Piotr Lniany. Tomasz is responsible for our sound live and he helped us to record and make use of our experience as a team together. For both of those albums we used many studios to record different instruments, each instrumentalist finding their own creative space.
SOURCE – What are you most proud of accomplishing with Duhkha?
Zbigniew Szatkowski (Keyboards) – I personally am happy that we recorded Duhkha in a way that it gives the same vibe as when it’s played live. It is a different sounding album than :ktonik: and has this flavor which ties it to the way we play it on stage.
SOURCE – The metal press has suitably been impressed by giving the album great reviews. How does that feel or does the press’s reaction even matter to you?
Zbigniew Szatkowski (Keyboards) – From my perspective the reception of our albums was important at the beginning of our journey. Like a kid in a candy store I used to look up magazines and newspapers and browse them for reviews and reactions to our music. We release our first LP in 2007 (Time must have a stop) and from that time (with the subsequential Metafiction and Harvest Moon and later :ktonik: and Duhkha) I gradually started to feel like it’s our personal outlet of creativity and with each of the following albums I started to observe reviews rather with curiosity than anything else. We can see via numbers on streaming services that people like, enjoy, and follow what we do regardless of press coverage. It’s all business, many newspapers publish reviews for money or by PR agreements with labels and it’s better to see the internet as a slightly more democratic outlet – it’s all pay-to-win at some point.
SOURCE – What are your memories surrounding the video shoot for Satellite?
Zbigniew Szatkowski (Keyboards) – That was one of my favorite video clips of all time! One of the coolest things in it was that we filmed some of the clip in an old abandoned quarry as well as at Radochowska cave system in Poland all dressed up in speleology gear. Amazing experience with lots of bats above our heads and complete darkness when for a moment the lights gave way to a power surge leaving us rather confused yet strangely excited. Definitely the best video shoot we had.
SOURCE – How important do you think are singles and EPs in this era in comparison to full length releases?
Zbigniew Szatkowski (Keyboards) – Our first 3 albums were strictly concept albums, complete with stories and track to track narration, characters, and a plotline. :ktonik: focused less on a narrative story and more on abstract concepts. Duhkha had been released as singles before it was put together in the form of an album. Our fans reacted well to the idea of releasing music as it is composed and later adding one or two unreleased songs to ‘tie a bow’ on an album. That kept their interest and we got messages saying they appreciated that. If we can share what we recorded faster than waiting to finish an entire album we want to do it.
SOURCE – How has your band adjusted to the monetization of streaming versus the traditional way of selling albums?
Zbigniew Szatkowski (Keyboards) – These are tough times for musicians. Streaming is good for A-listers, for everyone else it’s peanuts. You have to consider streaming rather a marketing tool than an actual source of income. I recently calculated that if you have 6 people in the band, your song has to be on repeat 36 000 times for any of us to earn 1h of minimum wage in our country. And yes, it’s difficult to survive on 1h of minimum wage’s money. As well, festivals and touring became increasingly difficult: Covid made us cancel or postpone 3 large tours and due to restrictions and regulations as well as health issues were unable to play live for the past 18 months. Playing live drives sales of albums and was always a good option of co-financing touring. Of course, you will find sites like bandcamp.com which help, but without touring to drive the sales it’s rather hard to make a living from it: and it’s important to remember that traditional album sales require investment into pressing the CDs/vinyls etc. So, you must balance your efforts and make sure you have a plan B – in our case a whole separate carrier dedicated to sustaining us when the difficult times arise. Some of us sell our music to movies, ads, some have other bands, business, or work for corporations all in order to manage the financials and be able to survive. Balancing act at its finest.
SOURCE – Is there anything else you’ve noticed or a message you want to add?
Zbigniew Szatkowski (Keyboards) – Stay safe and take care of yourselves! And above all stay healthy!
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