Interview with Maribel

Delusions of Adequacy:  Hiya Pål E and Lewi!  I just adore your sound that melds the dreamy with the dissonant, the melodic with the abrasive, and the languorous with the propulsive, which recalls the best bits of bands like My Bloody Valentine and Serena-Maneesh.  Can you introduce yourselves and go over who plays what and/or sings in the band?

Pål E: Thanks a lot. On Aesthetics Maribel was: Guitars: Pål Espen and Lewi, Bass: Liv-Inger, Drums: Kjetil, Vocals: Pål Espen and Liv-Inger. We also had a few guest musicians on the album. They were: Organ: Audun Storset (who plays with us live now and then), Milton Von Krogh: Additional guitar, and Percussion: Bjarne Stensli (who also joins us live when he’s got the time). On the record we all played other instruments as well, such as piano, bass, synths, wind chimes, Farfisa organ, etc,…

DOA:  How did you all meet up to form this band?  Were you in other bands, or in the musical environment in other capacities, before Maribel?

Pål E: I think we all had been involved in other projects before Maribel. But Maribel started when I met Lewi. He lived with a friend of mine at that time and we hit it off right away. We had quite similar tastes in music and we both played the guitar. We started to talk about forming a band, but it was merely a joke. I had been writing some songs and at some point we just started to play together. But still it was more like we did it for ourselves, not like we actually had formed a band. But after a while we started to look for other people to play with. Soon we met Kjetil and Liv-Inger. Both of them were involved with music and we just started to rehearse together. We played our first gig about 6 months later I think.

DOA:  Does the band name mean something specific in Norwegian?  I looked up the origin of the word in English and it translates as “beautiful star of the sea”.  Is that what you were going for?

Pål E: Maribel is a Spanish female name. It actually means “Maria Isabelle”. Maria is a Christian name and Isabelle a heathen name. I thought it was a good description of the idea behind the music I wanted to create: primitive and sacral at the same time. In French it means “bitter beauty” which I think fits perfectly to the idea. “Beautiful star of the sea” sounds good too. Didn’t know that.

DOA:  You finished up a tour with Le Corbeau a few months ago.  Where did you travel to and what were the experience like?

Lewi: All across Norway. But Norway is a small country. It was great. Le Corbeau is a great band, beautiful people. We had a lot of fun.

DOA:  You achieve a tense balance between pressing distorted guitar lines and drum beat and lucent, but distanced vocals.  What are your gigs like?  Do they ever reach sonic overload like My Bloody Valentine where some listeners must flee the venue because it’s all too much?

Pål E: Ha ha. Well, I think that’s impossible unless you have a wall of 12 Marshall amps behind your back. We don’t have that kind of money to spend on equipment unfortunately. But I know there have been people walking out from our gigs because of the volume and all the feedback.

Lewi: Especially in the beginning when we did our first gigs. It is still loud I guess, but I believe the sound is more sophisticated now than before. It’s not like we want people to leave.

DOA:  From what I understand, Emil Nikolaisen of Serena-Maneesh worked with you on your demo recordings and also mixed your debut album, Aesthetics, which came out last spring.  How did you hook up with Emil?  Did you know him before starting Maribel in the mid-2000s?

Pål E: We have known Emil for years. Kjetil has even shared an apartment with him. It just felt right asking him to mix the album. He was the right person at that time.

DOA:  What were your first few formative years like as a band?  Were you playing gigs and developing your sound?

Pål E: How you are developing your sound comes naturally after hours and hours of rehearsing and playing gig after gig over a long period of time. You find out what works and what doesn’t. It’s as simple as that.

Lewi: I took almost 3 or 4 years before we recorded the debut album. Most of the tracks on the album were songs we had been playing during those years. So you might say we were well prepared when we went in the studio. The songs were already finished. We knew what we wanted it to sound like on the record.

DOA:  You put out the 7-inch Taste The Trash in 2008, Aesthetics in 2009, and also released a split 12-inch with the band The Lionheart Brothers called Alternatives.  What is the allure of putting out recordings on vinyl as opposed to CDs or a downloaded file on the computer?

Pål E: Well, Aesthetics is now released on CD, vinyl, and digitally. Those other releases are more like curiosities or rarities and it just felt right to release them on vinyl. Maybe it has something to do with the feeling of something being more exclusive…

Lewi: And it sounds better on vinyl I think.

DOA:  What do you think of the music press tagging your band as “dark shoegaze” or “nu-gaze”?  Were you fans of the original shoegazer movement in the U.K. in the 1990s?  What bands in particular rocked your world at that time and/or now?

Pål E: I’m not very into that scene really. MBV has been an inspiration, but more because I think they were continuing something that had been going on since The Velvet Underground. There are a lot of similarities both in the music and the overall aesthetics which these bands represent. Suicide and Spacemen 3 should also be mentioned. The German krautrock scene as well. Repetition, drones, feedback, primitive drum patterns, and pop harmonies. Aesthetics is very much an attempt to continue that “line”.

Lewi: We also tried to get that Phil Spectorish Wall of Sound pop incorporated with all the feedback and noise. You know, that 60s Girl Group sound.

DOA:  Lars Petter Petterson directed you in a video for “Taste The Trash” in 2008.  Are you planning on shooting any videos for songs off of Aesthetics?

Pål E: No. We consider the Aesthetics-era to be over. Now it’s all about the next album.

DOA:  You posted at your MySpace profile http://www.myspace.com/maribelband that the band is finished with touring for a while and that you’ve begun work on the next album.  How is that all taking shape?  What stage are you at in the creation of your second album?

Pål E: It’s back to basics really. It’s what I love the most about making music. Just me and my guitar trying to put together ideas and make songs out of them. The next step will be me and Lewi finishing those songs, like arrangements and so on. The recording sessions are more about making those tunes sound as best as possible. Of course there are a lot of things happening in the studio, but the songs should be more or less finished, at least in my head. Studio time is more of a playful process. Like dressing up.

Lewi: But we are planning to write at least one song in the studio. Like we did on Aesthetics. The song “Anaesthetic” was just something we did there and then in the studio. That was interesting.

DOA:  Cool!  Thanks so much for doing this interview with me.

Pål E and Lewi: Thanks.