Dear Emrecan hi. First of all thank you for talking to Metal Perspective. I think that we have a lot of thinks to discuss.

Hi Giannis. It’s a real pleasure talking to you. Well as you mentioned I guess we have a lot to discuss, so shoot:)

Although there are a few other releases preceded, "Sojourn" is your first official work, isn’t it? Can you tell us a few things about it?

Yes, you are right. "Sojourn" is our first official release and we have released it through our own record label, Tavanarasi Media. Before "Sojourn", we had a demo, titled as "Unforeseen Reflections", which had some pretty good reviews and comments on the net as well as in pressed magazines and at radio stations.

We have recorded "Sojourn" here in Ankara, Turkey in between January and May 2005, and sent it to USA, to Jim Brick to master the album.

At the same time, we wanted the album to be a powerful one, as powerful as it can get, and decided to work with Kerem Beyit, a young, but highly acclaimed artist, for the cover and booklet illustrations of "Sojourn".

For releasing "Sojourn", we have reached an agreement with EMI Turkey for Turkish distribution, as well as the collaboration of The End Records and Musea for international online shopping partners as a beginning. We are now patching up more distributors and shops through the globe for "Sojourn" and for our upcoming releases.

Are you satisfied with the final result? What do you think are the virtues of "Sojourn"?

We are satisfied with the final result, if we consider the time we have recorded it. Of course, it does not reflect the technical and musical aspect of Dreamtone for the time being, considering that it had been recorded almost over 1.5 years ago, set aside the composing stage, which took another year or so, but it was a successful start for us and it took just reviews from almost all of the media channels we have promoted it.
We think that "Sojourn" is a good conceptual piece of work. Its artwork, narrations, lyrics and musical connections reflect a pretty good structure, which supports the overall storyline pretty well. It has a good musicianship in it, devoted with passion and moreover, even if it resembles some elements from our inspirations, it is quite original in nature, which is a pretty important and hard thing to come by nowadays. So, considering all these things, yes, we are satisfied with the final result. But, you know, there is always room for improvement and we intend to have quite some for our new record hehe.

Conversely, what are the disadvantages of "Sojourn" or better stated what are the things that you think you need to improve?

Record was one thing for us. However, it was the best we had at that moment. The studio, the equipment and most importantly, which covers all these actually, money. We are particularly happy with the final outcome but we would be happy to have a better recording. We are now expanding our options and opportunities and we believe that Dreamtone will move several steps further with each record. Another thing was that we had to form a record label, which caused us a delay of six months. We would be more comfortable if we were able to release it in late 2005 but a small delay is not that important as things had to be in this way. You know, you cannot force it. It happens as it is supposed to be, whether you intend to do it different or not.

I have to admit that I was impressed by the wonderful cover and the professional packing (high above the professional standards). What I want to ask is how is related the cover of ""Sojourn"" to its title?

Thank you for your compliment, we try to give out our best. I will answer your next question with this answer as well as two questions are similar in nature. The cover reflects of an angel, a corrupted one to be precise, who is chained. According to the story, there is an angel who tries to get back to his family, to the reallife but God rejects his ask, telling him to stay beside her (by the way, we wanted to have a woman to represent God). As usual, our guy is a bit hasty one and he tries to get back, whether the God would be happy about it or not. At that point, Devil gets in touch with him, seeing his corruption inside and convinces him to have an agreement. The devil grants him with a passage back to Earth, while chaining his soul to himself in secrecy. Tricks and foulplay as you see.

The cover basically reflects that concept. A corrupted angel, chained and his chains held by his captor, the Devil. The ships at the back are images of souls being carried towards the afterlife, which is being represented by the horizon in our artwork. However, a ship has docked to the shores, while all others are sailing towards the horizon, it stays near the shore. That ship is the one which has carried our fool and sad angel. The city, a foggy and rusty one, reflects the life of our angel. Well, basically, we tried to explain what is inside briefly but for someone who read and understood the concept, cover artwork offers a bit more, near to the inlay illustrations. And "Sojourn", which resembles a meaning of "a temporary, brief stay", is being symbolized by the overall picture. A ship gets you to the shores while everyone else seems to be leaving, and you are not free to roam as you are chained. Someone will pull your strings eventually and will take you back. That is how we wanted to symbolize "Sojourn".

"Sojourn" seems to be connected with a conceptual line. Is there a particular concept behind it?

I guess I covered it in my previous answer :)

What are the stimuli for your lyrics?

Lyricwise, we are not very keen of strictly sticking to a seldom or similar subjects. With "Sojourn", we hid some basic elements of human nature behind a fantasy fiction story. Back in Unforeseen Reflections, we had more personal lyrics, dealing with death and its impact on oneself, near to some political elements. We are now working on our new record and our first single title, Snowfall, deals with political and social issues about Africa and its nation. You know, they are being harrassed.

We will play a bit political and social probably in our next record, which is currently scheduled for 2007’s first half. It will have some fantasy elements and personal elements as well in lyrics but the usual theme seems like this at the moment.

Also I noticed that although you are a progressive metal band (I must say that according to my opinion you are a power/progressive band) you follow a very conservative approach for your compositions. For example you do not have lengthy songs, full of solos and instrumental parts. Is this something purposive or it came eventually during the composing period?

We never compose to have a strict formula actually. We are five different musicians with five different points of view. We discuss all the material and shapen it according to our own tastes, while keeping the original pace of the songs. Most of the time, songs are being composed by one person. Either Oganalp, Onur or Burak composes the song. Then the guy gives it to general consideration and re-shapen it according to overall view. Then we record it, which is a stage that adds extra touches to the initial piece of work.

For us, it is not that important to be classified as a power metal, progressive metal or dark metal band (we hear this one as well, told for us recently). We classify the music purely for commercial issues you know, in order to reach to the right audience. I mean, we can label the music as hard rock, but then, people would be shocked when they listened the album. Our influences are Blind Guardian, Symphony X, Ayreon, Shadow Gallery and such. As you can see, they are all power/progressive metal bands. So, we try to label it as power-progressive or progressive.

And besides, we would be bored to have long hours of solos and instrumental parts. Not every song is that successful to attract attention, set aside a long one. It is very hard to compose one and unless we believe that it will be another The Odyssey (Symphony X), we prefer to stay on safe ground. It would be a torture for listeners to compose long partitions just to stay within the borders of a precise genre.

I see an intense activity in Turkish metal. What is the current state of Turkish metal?

Well, I will be sincere. Our scene is quite a slow and weak one. Turkish cultural improvements always came 10-15 years behind the schedule and now, we are yet to find what metal music is. In the recent years, promoters found out that this is also a commercial branch and so, we have started to see good bands playing here in Turkey, some even touring like Anathema and Apocalyptica. Internet also helps a lot to this scene. Economic status leaves listeners in a handicap, whether to buy CDs and lay low in their lives, or prefer living and using the net. The scene will get better in time, resources becoming easier to find, like internet and connections and all that but I don’t think it will get big as Germany or Greece or Japan in the future. It is not something related only to metal music or bands, but to the overall economic scale of Turkey, which is not the best to see.

Do you think that your band can lead the Turkish scene?

Why not. We are not a band that thinks "We will lead the scene and evolution will start with us!". Being a leader is not something that you can want and become. It needs time, it needs sacrifice and people will eventually see you as a leader. Being a leader doesn’t mean to be a leader in all aspects though. We may produce a good album with certain aspects and people may follow that idea, create better ideas through it or we may have a good stage costume and it may affect certain musicians etc. I hope we can become one, if we are supposed to do so, with our good achievements. I would prefer people to follow really good examples to evolve in balance and time will tell whether we will be a good example or not. We believe that we are a good one at the moment though for bands of our size or new bands starting their musical journey.

I think that your move to avoid folklore elements was right, as it seems a profound and easy way for any band that comes from Eastern countries. However do you ever think of adding such elements?

Who knows? We are experimenting with ethnical ideas and instruments but if the song doesn’t need an ethnical, oriental approach, why should we put some in it? We are not of those people who insists that musicians should put their ethnical side to their music. Turkish music is a hard one to perform and it is quite different from the classical western music, so it needs practice over it to perform, set aside composing it with elements of global culture. We are not close to any ideas but we will be cautious about using ethnical elements. Don’t get me wrong, we even have our ethnical instruments at our homes but just for the sake of having something ethnical sounds ridicioulus to us.

Judging by your biography you must be very proud of your live appearances. Can you tell us a few things about your gigs? Can you share your impressions from your latest support place to Blind Guardian?

We are happy with our live dates. It may seem less when compared to other bands but we had very good live appearances and we don’t remember any that we said "We shouldn’t be here". They were all entertaining and educating as well as promoting. Generally, most of the underground gigs attracts 50-100 people here due to time conflicts, venue problems etc. Of course there are some that attracts more but I don’t remember having a gig, save our first one, with less than 100 people. We played to several hundred people at festivals, had TV appearances with our live performances, near to becoming studio guests.

And Blind Guardian gig was a great one actually. I don’t know the exact numbers, but I guess there were around 2000 people there, watching us. And most of them were clapping hands, screaming the choruses or the famous "Ooh" parts with us. There were even people singing the whole damn songs! And you know, playing to someone else’s audience is perhaps the hardest thing for a band as the audience will eventually want to get rid of you and if this "someone else" is Blind Guardian, you are in big trouble. Well, we weren’t in any trouble and we had a good show. We were happy, I heard that the audience was happy in general and the promoter was happy as well. So, it was a nice experience.

And besides, we met with a band that influenced us in the first place, chit chatted with’em and had some time. It was truly a perfect Sunday for us.

Also what do you prefer? Playing live or performing in the studio?

That changes from person to person I guess. Some of us prefers playing live, some prefers recording and some prefers composing in front of his computer. Each one has its own goods and bads. Unless you are a big or known band, playing live may get a pain in the ass. You may be treated as a junk, you may have a shitty sound, which we usually have in Turkey even for big bands like Megadeth and there is always the risk of not having an audience. On the other hand, it is fun! Composing has its own high and lows. Creating a new thing is a very much fun part. For days and nights, you just daydream about how would the song will sound at recording and how may it suit to the album, who can do an artwork for it, bla bla… You know, you simply fly away out of this world and start living within the song. But, at the end, you may loose your touch and inspiration and it may turn out to be another pain in the ass…
It is very hard to decide actually.

The guest appearance of Gary Wehrkamp is a very interesting point in "Sojourn". How was this realized?

Oganalp and Gary had a dialogue formed back in 2003, prior to an interview done by Oganalp for the music magazine he works. Here and then, Oganalp talked to Gary and discussed stuff about Dreamtone, and Gary eventually accepted taking part in the album. He recorded his own stuff at his studio and sent it to us, then we mixed the stuff with background themes and added them to the final mix. We are hoping to work with him in the future as well.

However Gary contributed as the narrator of the story. Would you like to have a more extended role? What prohibited a more active participation?

We would definitely like him to have as a guest "musician" next time. He is a great guy first of all, a great friend and a very good expert who discusses everything with you, without getting bored of replying to long e-mails. And he understands what we are trying to do. He is a great musician and a composer, near to his performing abilities and we will definitely have him play in our future works as well (of course if he wants to get involved hehe).
We weren’t able to have him play any instruments in "Sojourn" as the recordings were already started when his contribution became clear. We didn’t want to have him as a "post it" guest appearance that we had added in the very last minute, so we basically used his narrative voice. We needed a narrator with a good accent, preferably a native speaker, and eventually, Gary become our narrator. I don’t know if we will be able to have him play in our next album but we are willing to work with him in the future. Gary is a busy guy, working on several projects and so. We may have some schedule problems but time will tell…

You have placed some songs in many web services, like Download.com. How useful was this for your promotion campaign?

Well, people like to listen before buying a CD and we tried to give them that. We had like 9.100 downloads so far, promoting the band. People either liked the songs, or hated them, it doesn’t matter. But they are becoming aware of the band day by day and these free mp3 sites have some credit in it, from our perspective. Sites like download.com or myspace helps us to reach a wider audience. We are getting e-mails from people, asking where they can get the albums and stating that they liked the songs presented at those websites.

We know that some people are trying to create a negative image of the band by giving low grades at those websites, but the best grade is the one that a listener gives in his/her head, so we don’t care. And we don’t understand why someone would do such stupid things anyway.

Before I close this interview, I would like to talk about a political issue. Turkey is trying to enter to European Union. How do you think that a political action like this will help you?

That is not a solid ground to step. Too many ideas and very little knowledge of general population, from both sides (Europe and Turkey). Politics’ a science that is like the wind. It may blow from one side a day, and from the opposite one on the next. Being a part of EU doesn’t mean a positive or a negative thing from our perspective. It will have its aspects, good and bad. It may help in one thing for bands like us though, that is the foreign transportation fees, which are perhaps the biggest obstacle for small bands like us for touring Europe. But from other perspectives, we shall see what will it offer to us, both as a country and as bands.

That’s all from me Emrecan. I wish you all the best.

Thank you for the interview. Hope to talk to you soon! Near to our expanding Turkish one, we have formed an international forum and its fresh; we welcome any listeners to our domain at www.dreamtone.net! Take care!