Interview with GUINEA PIGS
by IceElfe @ www.PSY604.com
1. Hi there, who is behind GUINEA PIGS?
GUINEA PIGS is a group of 2 brothers from Israel. Avi (31) and Shalom (28).
2. How/when GUINEA PIGS was formed? Why did you choose the name GUINEA PIGS?
One day Avi decided, towards the end of his degree, that he doesn’t want to work in a regular, monotonous job. He was intrigued by the world of music, therefore he quit his studies and started learning the secrets of this magical world.
A few months later, Shalom joined him after coming back from his trip in North and South America.
After long and hard studies, in the summer of 2005, GUINEA PIGS were formed.
A Guinea Pig is a person who is subjected to experimental or other observational procedures; someone who is an object of investigation. We chose that name due to the many experiments we made in order to combine elements and sounds, which evidently created something new and different from the consensus.
3. Tell us a little bit about your musical background. When did you get into (psy)trance? We believe we were familiar with almost every style of music during our life.
That is why we respect and appreciate any kind of music to its various styles. Our first encounter with Trance was in the mid 90’s while listening to a Goa style compilation.
We prefer music that has no lyrics in it because we believe that lyrics have a tendency to "pull" the listener to a specific point in the whole story instead of freeing the thought and feelings of oneself.
To us the trance music is very similar to classical music and we refer them as "thinking music". Both styles are meant for dancing and provide the listener the option to imagine whatever he or she wants. Without being led to a specific point, the listener can take it wherever he wants to in his inner self.
4. When did you decide to produce music yourself? Did you already have your own trance projects before GUINEA PIGS?
We didn’t have a project before GUINEA PIGS. We’ve decided to produce music in the year of 2003. The decision just came to mind without any hesitations, and as Einstein had once said: "Only he who takes a chance and go far, can truly find how far can he go".
5. What is the musical message of GUINEA PIGS? Which elements are typical for your productions?
Generally the message is that the crowd would be able to connect itself with the melodies and sounds and mainly dance. The dance is the expression to everything that’s inside us – feeling and thought. We want people to experience the word "trance" to all its meanings - a deep connection to one’s inner self while at the same time taking all one’s aggressions out which concludes in the Israeli term – "dig".
At the end of our set we wish the crowd would feel, in addition to enjoyment, also calmness and relief. That is why we use elements and sounds both from the night and morning genres. This combination creates the complexity and harmony which bring the crowd to this state. By this we believe we are unique. The trance scene is usually divided into night genre and morning genre. We think that combining the 2 will create the mixed feelings and the desire to break sensory and emotional frontiers.
6. Where do you get your inspirations from? Are there any special events or people that inspire you?
When we think about it, a lot of people helped us, meaning that at first we used listen to lots of commercial music and always felt there’s something missing, a bit empty. So we decided to create complex music and yet to create a balance that everyone could connect to it. To acquire this, we used to make our friends as our test objects and listen to their criticism. Some actually didn’t like electronic music at all. Using all this criticism, we’ve started to create something new that is combined with all kinds of different styles.
So when you think about it, they are the source of our inspiration. An audience that isn’t creating but listening, the music created especially for it and isn’t bound to any external dictations.
7. Do you only have the GUINEA PIGS project or are there any side projects too? What about DJing?
No, we have another side project of chill out music by the name of Groove Sticks. Whenever we need to relax a bit from all the hard pumping sounds, we create a chill out track and give our brains a bit of rest. We love listening to this genre and are hoping to share our creation with audiences all over the world.
We don’t have a DJ set. Our so called DJ set, is simply playing our tracks – released and unreleased – with a couple of CDJs. Our live show however, is a mixture of selected tracks that are reedited, mixed and built differently, and with the help of a good synthesizer, the tracks that combine the whole set will not be the same as they were originally made.
8. What have been your releases so far? And what may we expect from GUINEA PIGS in the near future?
Releases:
How to Get By in The U.S - Civilized Chaos (Geomagnetic Records)
Brain Caged – Black Project D.A.T.A (Mass Abduction Records)
NOT TESTED ON ANIMALS – Debut Album (Zaikadelic Records)
We will release a track this summer on Free Radical Records, a new promising Label from the U.K. and more in the near future.
There is 1 thing certain. You could always expect our music to be powerful, intensifying and perfect for dance floors everywhere.
9. Tell us some words about the actual development of the psytrance scene... Is the hype good or bad?
Music is an amazing thing and there are lots of talented artists in this field, however, it seems that in the past couple of years it is getting more and more "recycled" which makes it a bit hard to distinguish who made what. We hope that this would change soon and music would become again more unique and less commercialized so today’s audiences would be able to experience artists, talents and musical genres from all colors of the rainbow.
We live in times of globalization, but in fact we think that music should not be a part of it. It should always stay unique and special in which the artist expresses his experiences through sounds and wishes to pass it to the audience to experience it in his own special way.
10. A life without music would be...
...a title for a Science Fiction movie.
