"Kultur Shock is one of the rare bands out there that doesn’t want to integrate"

The new studio effort of KULTUR SHOCK - 'Integration' will be out in Europe on 19 September.

On 1 December, the crazy band from Seattle will play theirВ third gig in Sofia - Bulgaria with Bulgarian punk legends KONTROL.

an interview conducted by Nasso Ruskov

HEY GINO, WHAT ARE YOU UP TO MAN?
G:В  I just woke up man.

REALLY? WHAT TIME IS IT THERE?
G:  It’s 8 o’clock and I woke up at 7 – an unusual moment in my life.

WHAT, IN THE MORNING?
G: Yeah. It it was in the evening I wouldn’t have been awake.

TELL US ABOUT THE NEW ALBUM “INTEGRATION”. A LOT OF THE SUBJECT MATTER IS VERY NEAR TO THE HEARTS OF MANY EASTERN EUROPEANS WHO HAVE LIVED ABROAD.
G:  This album is a joke on ourselves. We integrated. We fucked up, we gave in haha. I’m joking of course. It’s about integration, it’s about all the necessary and unnecessary integration that we are experiencing.

We’re the people from the Third World who want to integrate into the so-called developed world. It’s the good stuff and the bad stuff all together. Integration – with evil, with good, with Western Europe, without Western Europe and stuff like that.

HELLO VAL, HAVE YOU ONLY JUST GOT UP AS WELL?
V:   Haha, about two hours ago actually. When you’re talking to Europe you have to do it early in the morning because the parties haven’t yet started at that time there and you can reach everyone.

YOU’RE A SEATTLE-BASED BAND. GRUNGE MUSIC IS STILL QUITE POPULAR HERE IN BULGARIA. ARE YOU GUYS INTO THAT STUFF?
V:   Of course. That’s one of the reasons we had Jack Endino produce our new album. We did 'Kultura-Diktatura' with him as well and he also mixed the live album we recorded in Sofia.  He’s the “grandfather of grunge”. So we’ve always had close ties with  that scene, even though it’s not so popular anymore.  We’re good friends with guys like Krist Novoselic, Kim Thayil of Soundgarden….We have very close ties with them.

IN THAT CASE, DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA IF SOUNDGARDEN ARE PLANNING TO REFORM?
V:   No, no idea. I don’t think it’ll happen though, bearing in mind their relationship with Chris Cornell….

THE NEW ALICE IN CHAINS ALBUM IS HOTLY ANTICIPATED IT SEEMS….
V:   Yes, but that’s a different story – they only broke up because of Layne Stayley’s death. Actually they played at short acoustic set recently, as part of the 'Experience Music Project'.

I SEE THAT YOU’RE RELEASING THE NEW ALBUM VIA YOUR OWN KULTUR SHOCK RECORDS LABEL.
V:   Yes. We’re trying to accustom ourselves to the new realities in music and music distribution. The old way of interaction between a band and its fans isn’t working anymore. We’re trying to shorten the distance between ourselves and the people who like us and our music and who follow the band.

WILL YOU BE BRINGING ANY MERCHANDISE TO THE SOFIA GIG, ON 1STВ  DECEMBER?
V:В В В  Absolutely. The new album comes out in Europe on 15th September. There will be a 40-date tour to promote it.

YOU MAINTAIN A VERY GRUELING TOUR SCHEDULE, WHICH LED TO SOME PEOPLE LEAVING THE BAND. HOW ARE THINGS WORKING OUT WITH THE NEW MEMBERS – DID THEY SURPASS YOUR EXPECTATIONS?
V:   To be honest, they did. Actually that’s not the right expression. The thing is, me and Gino had to think carefully about where we wanted the band to go in the future. So the people we asked to join the band were people that we knew very well, both as friends and musicians. People who thought the same way as us and who were on the same level of maturity as us.

For example, Guy Davis, our bass player, is an exceptional musician. He’s played with so many bands from the avant-garde grunge scene of the 90s and his former bands BenJovi and Guardian Alien have opened for Kultur Shock here in Seattle. Paris Hurley came out on tour with us last Summer, because our other violinist – Matty, is a dad and he can’t really tour. Paris is an amazing musician from the new generation of avant-garde musicians.

We’ve also got Amy Denio, who played on the 'Fucc the INS' and 'Kultura-Diktatura' albums.

THERE’S A TRACK ON THE NEW ALBUM WHERE YOU SING MOTIFS FROM 'DILYANO MOME'. MY GIRLFRIEND’S CALLED DILYANA ACTUALLY. WAS THE SONG YOUR IDEA?
V:   Not really. The song’s called 'Balkanalia' and the original idea for the vocal was Gino’s. After that we made a mess of it as usual.

GINO, YOU GUYS ARE EXTREMELY POPULAR HERE IN BULGARIA. DO YOU FEEL MORE AT HOME WHEN YOU PLAY IN THIS REGION COMPARED TO, SAY, WHEN YOU PLAY BELGIUM OR SWITZERLAND?
G:   I have to tell you – since I was 9-years old I’ve always had some sort of anxiety before gigs. It varies from place to place, but I’m always uncomfortable.

The moment I step onto the stage, it’s great, so it’s not stagefright. Even my mother doesn’t want to speak to me on the day of the show, cause I’m a horrible bitch. When we’re playing the Balkans, when we’re going “home”, I really consider Sofia as home, on a par with Belgrade and Skopje. Maybe Sarajevo is the only place where I feel more at home.

But Sofia ia also my home, as well as the rest of Yugoslavia and the Balkans. So the cramps in my stomach are even worse in Sofia than in Western Europe. In Western Europe they see us as rare animals. We’re there to integrate.

Kultur Shock is one of the rare bands out there that doesn’t want to integrate and one of the rare bands who are representing our people and want to keep their own culture. So I guess it’s even worse back home. People know what is up and they understand every single thing and every single word of what we’re saying, so the responsibility is even bigger.

DO YOU GET SICK OF BEING COMPARED TO BANDS LIKE GOGOL BORDELLO FOR INSTANCE?
G:  Well, probably less than Val. He’s really getting sick of it hahaha! Listen, they’re my friends, it’s all fine, it’s all ok. It’s just that people need to understand they are two different kinds of music.

They are Americans playing our music for Western people the way they would like to hear our music. They like our artistic touch, not so much us. Their mainstream success pretty much…I need to be really careful right now…

Their mainstream success is pretty much proof that they are from here and are playing for people from here. When Western Europe and the US are thinking about us, they think of exotic people who clean toilets during the day and then dress in white in the evening and try to entertain them at the weekend.

They think of us as their entertainers. They would like to take our art, but not really us, because we stink. Kultur Shock’s job is to remind them that we, as foreigners, are not as nice as they think we are and to remind them that we have a mind of our own, as dirty as it may be. If they want to mess with our music, then they have to take our mentality too.

YOU’VE PLAYED WITH LOADS OF BANDS. WHO WERE THE COOLEST?
G:  We loved playing with all of the bands. We played with Iggy Pop a couple of times. We’ve played with Gogol Bordello more than a couple of times. I don’t really know who the coolest were. You know Fun-da-mental, the UK band? They’re really cool, we hung out with them a lot.

OH YEAH, WHAT WAS THE GUYS NAME…AKI?
G:   Yeah, Aki’s great. I hung out with Moose, their lead singer. He’s insane. They’re really nice people. We played with them in Kazan, that’s in Tatarstan.

After that they went to Siberia and waited three days for us. They were texting us to get there as they had no one to talk to. They pretty much stayed in Siberia for three days without any friends. So when they saw us again, we became even bigger friends. So they’re really cool guys. Manu Chao as well. All normal people are really nice to hang out with.

THIS IS GONNA BE YOUR THIRD GIG IN BULGARIA. CAN WE EXPECT SOMETHING SPECIAL?
G:  Of course. We have a new album. We have a new…well, we don’t really have a new sound, although a lot of the critics are saying that we’re becoming more serious than before.

Kultur Shock is a different band you know….The biggest difference between us and the rest of the world is that we never really wanted to make it big and then break-up. We wanted to do this from the beginning until we’re 95 years old.

And then when I’m 95 I’m gonna get hooked on heroin and rob a bank. That’s a joke actually. But we do want to do it until we’re 95 and the only way to do that is to be better and better on every single album and to pay attention to the quality of the music.

So what I can say right now is that our two shows in Bulgaria were great – I mean, one of them is on the live album and it was one of the best shows we’ve ever played. I don’t know which one is better, the first or the second…

HOPEFULLY THE THIRD…
G:  This one needs to be different, because we don’t want to be the same all the time. Kultur Shock is a big family as well, so some people have returned to the band, like Amy…So, it’s gonna be a different sound and I think a richer performance. Just because we really want to improve every single year, every single day. The only purpose to our existence is our music and our artistic expression.

OK, SO WE LOOK FORWARD TO YOU LOT COMING OVER TO KICK OUR ARSES IN DECEMBER.
G:  I can’t wait. I’ll be a bitch before the show and after the show I’ll be the beautiful person that I am.

rightsВ Tangra Mega Rock