Kyshera

Q : What does the band name mean?

A : The meaning of the bands name hasn’t been born yet. You’ll know when it is.

Q : How would you describe your sound?

A : I use the term Konic to describe our sound because the word doesn’t mean anything, I just made it up. I like to think that what we do is at least a little bit unique to ourselves, so why not have our own word for our sound. The good thing about the word Konic not actually meaning anything as well is that we’re at liberty to put out whatever the hell kind of music we feel like, without having to always be ‘alternative’ or ‘progressive’ or ‘hardcore’ or whatever. It’s like a blanket term to describe anything & everything we do, whether that style is consistent or not. I cant guarantee that any song or album we do is ever going to sound like the last one & surely thats a good thing?

Q : Whats with the orange boiler suits?

A : Ah man, unfortunately most people totally missed the point. Some people think that we we’re trying to be pointlessly provocative & some people just thought we we’re trying to say ‘oooh look how scary we are, we’re escaped convicts’ ha ha, like some kind of cheesy Cradle of Filth type thing. The real point to it was that I was trying to say that firstly, our image isn’t important – you cant even see our faces cos we’ve got bags over them ha ha & by using imagery that many people associate with injustice & inhumanity (Guantanamo Bay incase you still haven’t got it!) in a band promo shot, I was hoping to make the juxtaposition that there’s more important things going on in the world than the superficial image concerns of a band. The other point I was trying to make was that everything this band stands for (like substance, depth, longevity etc) is almost SO out of touch with modern culture as to be culturally blasphemous, so I was using that imagery metaphorically to say that we are cultural terrorists.

Q : Why have you got the word ‘Guilty’ on your Guitar?

A : I’m just being honest. I AM guilty, we’re all guilty – of whatever it might be but at the very least, everyone in the western world is guilty of massive hypocrisy in terms of our values, beliefs & lifestyle. There’s nothing wrong with admitting that though, being inadequate is pretty much build into our design as a species – I think being aware of our inadequacy & limitations as humans is healthy.

Q : Whats your views of filesharing?

A : I wrote a blog about this here > http://kyshera.com/site/2010/10/11/p2p-power-2the-people/

Q : Who are you’re musical influences?

A : Collectively? Ooooh, this could get long…Frank Zappa, Melt Banana, Radiohead, Soundgarden, Jaco Pastorius, RATM, Eric Dolphy, Allan Holdsworth, Pink Floyd, Squarepusher, Metallica, Megadeth, Immortal Technique, Manic Street Preachers, Dave Brubeck, Stravinsky, Satie, Bjork, Ravel, Kiss, Debussy, The Beatles, Victor Wooten, Roger Waters, Nirvana, Queen, White Noise, Jeff Buckley, Alice in Chains, Kate Bush, Massive Attack, Smashing Pumpkins, Stevie Wonder, Beach Boys, Shellac, Dead Prez, Prince, Ivo Papasov, Steve Vai, Billy Sheehan, Bulgarian Womens Choir, The Doors, Wildhearts, Penderecki, Tod Dockstader, 5uu’s…I dont know! Lots more probably!

Q : You have the chance to make the ultimate band, who would you have? They can be past or present…

A : Ha ha, imagine a rotating line-up of all of the above in different combinations every time. Man, there’s a lifetime’s worth of inspiration just imagining that!

Q : Who did you vote for in the last general election?

A : I didn’t vote for anyone. I have absolutely no faith in our political structure as a whole (and faith is literally what you need!) so I don’t see the point in voting for anyone within that structure until the structure itself is changed. The corruption of our Parliament is in the design of the system so it is totally irrelevant which puppet gets manouvered into power – and anyone working on any production team for any reality TV show can tell you how to swing a public vote the way you want it to go. It’s not cynicism, it’s the truth – holding on to the idea that voting makes any significant difference to anything at all might make people ‘feel’ good & it might give them a belief system to feel a part of, but it’s wrong. That’s also why I don’t protest – in order to protest you have to still have, deep down, a belief in your ‘leaders’ – a belief that if we all just shout loud enough, they’ll listen & do as we ask. It’s like a collective ‘inferiority complex’, where we don’t feel that we’re ‘allowed’ to just do something for ourselves, we have to ask permission from our ‘betters’. I don’t have any faith at all in the way that our whole political system is constructed & therefore I don’t have any faith in the people that advance to the top of that corrupt system, so voting for them or protesting to them to listen, just seems naive to me. All real social advance has come from large scale public ACTION & until we drop the ‘inferiority complex’ & this blind faith in our ‘leaders’, nothing will ever change for societies’ better. THAT is the truth.

Q : Your lyrics are very political, where do you stand politically?

A : My basic view is that you get the world you accept. Thats why we don’t use the band to overtly support specific causes even though our lyrics are mostly political – because its not about ‘us’ promoting a certain idealogy or whatever, for me whats important is what the majority of people are willing to accept, as that is what creates all of our reality, whether we like that reality or not. So from that perspective, the most important thing in any society is access to proper information & thats why the mainstream media is the biggest enemy to a real democracy. Therefore, I try & use whatever platform we may have as a band, not to tell people ‘what’ I think they should think but to atleast try & get viewpoints out that don’t ever get heard in the mainstream media so that people can hear both sides & make their own mind up. As for where I stand personally, I’m a believer in democracy, real democracy where the decisions in society are made by those that those decisions affect. I believe in freedom of speech (for EVERYONE – even hippies & the BNP) & I believe in public action. I’ve got no idea what label that puts me under.

Q : What are you reading right now?

A : I’m reading ‘The Demon Haunted World’ by Carl Sagan for the 2nd time. An absolutely life changing book, read it!

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 25th, 2011 at 11:08 pm and is filed under Kyshera Q&A. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.