Featuring Phil Fine /from Fine Time Interview by Ruud Dreessen aka ebm-industrial.nl 09-03-2010
1) How and why started Fine Time?
It all started when a dear friend of Tom was searching for a musical act for an art exhibition. Tom and I were playing in the crossover-rock band "Last Equinox" at that time. But for that exhibition something more easeful, preferably something electronic was wanted. For this was something that Tom and I couldn't live out with Last Equinox we accepted the job. Within two months we arranged a program and the band Fine Time was born. That was in the year 2005.
2) What inspires you to your music?
Well, Tom and me were born 1970 so that we are children of the eighties. When we discovered music for us bands like Front 242 or Depeche Mode started to gain fame. There were dozens of good bands who all tried out something new and something own and they were very successful with that. There was great stuff from pop music to sub cultural music and an almost endless diversity. Exactly this diversity is what we miss a little bit today. So we thought that we would like to play specifically the music we can't listen to nowadays and this without any consideration of styles or musical corners where we could be put into. In case of DJ Stomag things are a little different. His passion is Hip-Hop… something completely different. Anyhow he is very open to other styles and he is no stereotyped thinking guy… he does what he likes. Yes, to be able to do what we want to, that is our inspiration and actually the spirit and soul of independent music.
3) Would you please introduce Fine Time!
The band was founded by Tom Time (percussions, drums, synths, keys, samplez and backing vocals) and me, Phil Fine (guitars, bass, vocals, synths, etc.). We always understood us more as a project than a conventional band. We always liked to have guest musicians with us, what we still do today, at this point kindest regards to the fantastic Mernaz. Admittedly the band has grown this year. DJ Stomag is a full member of Fine Time for a year now. He handles the turntables and effects. In addition he brings in some live synthies. He is a full-blooded musician whose skills rise above simple DJing. We are glad to have him with us, he enriched our music considerably.
4) Your album BIOSfear has come on the market. Can you tell me more about it?
Well, it's quite a few days ago, but of course. We produced our debut-album BIOSfear together with the indie-label Sushiko-Music. We had every freedom concerning creativity and time. We took our favorite songs of the first three years reworked them in-depth and recorded them. In the process the very gifted young songstress Charlene lent us her voice for some songs. The whole thing was taken at the Tronic-Arts Studios and was mastered by Sushiko-Music. Everybody did a great job and we are very thankful for that. The album is a width of our musical work. You can find listening-examples at
www.finetime-music.com or at our MySpace-presence
www.myspace.com/finetimemusic Simply take a listen and get an idea of us!
5) What can you tell me about the lyrics on the album?
We try as well as we can not to give birth to even more trivial shit. There is already enough of that. Our lyrics deal with topics which are close to our hearts and mostly have a sociocritical background. When we have a song for which no fitting lyrics come to mind we have no problem to leave the song instrumental or we enrich it with adequate samples. Who wants to listen to the millionth musical version of the Romeo and Juliet-theme barks up the wrong tree here.
6) In what ways has this CD gone beyond expectations?
Hmmm, we surely expected a good sound performance. But that the sound became that good no one had really expected. Debut-albums sometimes like to have some technical problems, but Thomas Polejowski from Tronicarts created such fantastic spheres of sound out of our rough cuts. Listen to the subsonic sounds of "Mothership passes by" for example, and you know what I mean. And we were a little bit surprised how much the audience likes our CD.
7) How has your relationship and cooperation with your label Sushiko-Music been like so far?
The relationship could not be better!!! For a start we didn't sign an exclusive agreement, what we would never do. Then we had all the time we wanted to finish our production, what was really good for the creative capability of the music. In addition to that the guys and girls of Sushiko-Music love our stuff… and therefor we love them ;)))
8) How did the band name fine Time come to your mind?
Well, there is no story around that. The name simply describes the effort to afford the audience to a fine time.
9) What inspires you to keep growing as musicians?
Music is like real life, I guess. You always keep growing whether you want to or not. I think it characterizes us as a band that we were open-minded to new things and we still are today. We all listen to completely different kinds of music, which influences us of course. It is quite interesting for us to see that in the rehearsal room something completely new develops out of that. The inspiration comes out of the music we listen to and out of life itself.
10) What ideas, motives and personalities, would you say, were crucial for the definition and development of Fine Time as a creative unity?
First of all there is the idea of independent music, that there is more than mainstream, that you do with ferventness what you are doing and that there are no rules except for our own concerning music. This is a development which is mainly due to the 70's and the punk-movement. So ways were cleared, which we only had to go then. The motives are rather egoistic natured. We enjoy what we are doing and we get along very well with each other. We don't make music to please other ones or to show how great we master our instruments. We play music to have fun and to live out our creativity. It would go beyond the scope of this interview to list all personalities that influenced our development as a band. Besides fantastic musicians, bands and great people there are first and foremost our friends and families to mention.
11) As EBM/ Synth-Pop are your main music styles – to what other music do you listen to?
OK, you asked, Ruud ;)) I'll rather try to name the styles instead of listing thousands of artists: all kinds of synth-music including EBM, Ambient, Dark-Ambient, Synth-Punk and classics like Kraftwerk as well, what is rather minimalist. But we like the guitar dominated stuff like Hardcore and any kind of Metal as well. Furthermore we like some Hip-Hop and Trip-Hop, Classic, Pop and Reggae. As I said, we three guys all have a different musical taste, and that inures the benefit of Fine Time.
12) How long have you been in the music business and how has it changed through the ages?
When can you say that you are in the music business? We all play music for many years, more or less successful. Today music business defines itself mostly through promotion and less through quality. That is our impression at least. We know many very good bands, which are unknown to the masses. These bands aren't considered or taken seriously by the music industry. You could say that these bands aren't in the music biz. They are great bands though. We all published our own songs before Fine Time started, so we can say that we are – at least partly – in the music business for 20 years. To go into how the music biz has changed through that time is in my opinion a feature-length topic. To give some keywords: buying-up of small indie labels by the 4 big majors, launching of the internet with the possibilities to promote and download (chance and horror for artists at the same time), DJs as top-stars, promotion through casting-shows like "Pop-Stars" and "Starsearch" and things like that… I think everybody noticed that some things changed. And there will be much more alteration in the future. Appearances of stars like Madonna in "Second Life" and games like "Singstar" were only the beginning. Entertainment changes completely at the moment and I think we have to wait and see what will happen in the near future. I don't want to sound pessimistic at all. I think some of these changes are really good. Everything what helps on can't be appraised badly, right?
13) Tell us about your cover "Quite unusual" from Front 242!
Well, Front 242 is a band that influenced Tom and me very much. As everybody knows Front 242 are from Belgium and in our opinion they are the greatest export Belgium ever had. Really these guys are simply great. And as a tribute for this band we reissued the song "Quite unusual" and in the process we tried to transfer the sound into our today's world. We added some phat guitars and the song was perfect, at least in our sight… different opinions are accepted for sure ;) Admittedly it was very difficult to sound out the sophisticated nuances of this title. Tom made a really good job of it - my respect for that!
14) Are you currently working on a new album or are you planning any new releases? What about the future?
Presently there is no new album intended. Maybe we will release an EP with cover songs, but this is far in the future. We are going to take one's time that we need to compile new material and to implement new ideas. Maybe we will record a maxi-single with fantastic Mernaz as vocalist. We will see… we'll keep you up to date on our homepage. What we are not going to do is play live, we are not really looking for possibilities to perform live at the moment.
15) It was a pleasure to talk to you about your musical activities. Any last words for your EBM-Industrial fans?
Thanks a lot Ruud; it was a privilege and a pleasure for us. To all our EBM-Industrial fans: thank you so much for your support! It is good to know that there are many others out there who tick like we do. It is due to you that this music is still alive. Thank you!
16) To close this interview we'd like to thank you for your time. Do you have any final words or questions for EBM-Industrial.nl?
Oh yes, I have one question. When are you going to arrange an EBM-Industrial. nl party with live music and nice people in your beautiful homeland? We would love to take part in such an event at any time ;)
Thanks EBM-Industrial.nl for your fantastic work and your dedication, and very special thanks to our friend Ruud!!!
