interview with Alien Encounters
Have any of you played in other bands? Yes. Each member of the groupe has played in several other bands. I personally before I created the band Alien Encounters was playing in a band called Roswell Farm. I was also having my own instrumental band as I was playing instrumental music during several years. You can find my latest instrumental album on itunes on the link below
We rehearse around 2 times a week when are preparing gigs.
I discovered you a few days back when you sent the mail to me. So i went on your facebook page and you blogg. It’s motivating to have people like you making us still believing that we have supporters. Thank you. I love Sweden and I travel a lot there by the way.
Yes I’m recording a new album right now. Below are some extracts of the instrumental parts.
See links below.
How is it that you started playing music?
Since young i got blown away by Jimi Hendrix and bands like AC/DC, Led Zeppelin, Deep purple. That’s what made love music and start playing guitar.
Later listening to Joe Satriani, Steve Vai, Derek Sheridan, Allan Holdsworth, Bumblefoot and band Like Dream Theater, Planet X, etc. pushed me to practice harder my instrument and compose more music.
What are your names? / Who plays what? / How old are you?
Fabrice Garcia is the lead singer
Florent Chatelier is the keyboard
Laurent Bourgin is the Drummer
Alex Collard is the bassist
Ayman (me) I’m the guitar rhythm and lead as well as the composer of the songs
We are all between 45 and 55 years old.
On the album I cooperate with a lot of musician around the world to record the songs, like Bruno Sà, Erich Martins etc.
With tha band above we perform live.
Have you had other previous members? Not really. In a way we have always together.
Did you make music even when you were young? Yes. I started at the age of 21/22 and the same for the bands members.
Where are you from? We are from France.
What year did the band form?
We formed the band Alien Encounters in early 2016. Since then we issued 2 albums that you can find on itunes and all download platforms.
What's your style of genre? We play a mix of rock, metal and progressive music.
What inspires you? Bands like Sons of Apollo, Dream Theater, Planet X, etc.
How often and where do you reherse?
When we don’t it’s often one time a week.
Each album is telling a full story through the songs.
How have you developed since you started with the music? As mentioned earlier. The more you want to compose something original the more you need to practice harder to master the instrument and the sounds. So we evolved a lot between the first and the second album and we still have a long way to go. It’s a never ending story to stay in business.
Do you have other interests of work outside the band? Yes we all of us have a job to live from. Unfortunately we can’t pay our bills from music.
Are you looking for a booking agency, and what are your thoughts around that? It’s tough to answer. We don’t have a booking agency. It’s a lot of job for us to find new goes and festivals where to play. A booking agency light ease up our life.
Are you looking for a label, and what are your thoughts around that? With digital music development; I’m not sure that this is really of interest anymore. We have our own label and we distribute our music through the regular digital channels. Future of music is to play live and loud.
What made you decide to make this music? Telling stories.
What are your songs about?
The first album was telling the story of an airport employee abducted by Aliens and then transformed through his travel to another galaxy into an Alien himself.
The second album is telling the stories of existence of Multiverses. We live in a universe and each action or consequence of what we do makes us travel in another universe.
Who does the composing and writes the lyrics? I do the whole thing. And when rehearsing with the others we adjust and fine tune to improve the basic ideas.
Do you start with the music or the lyrics? I start usually with the story and the music and combine both to develop more lyrics and improve songs structures.
Do you compose in a certain inviroment? Always in my home studio.
Have you done any covers live? Yes a lot. We covered a lot of Ronnie James DIo repertoire. Black Sabbath, Rainbow and Dio. We have a band with the same members called Last in Line.
What language do you sing in? English
What are the least and most people to attend one of your gigs? Well it goes from 50 people to few hundreds of people.
What ges are most of your concert attendants? between 20 and 60 around...
Do you always play the same songs live, or do you vary? For each gig we adjust a lot depending on the time we play and also the public we have in front of us.
Do you have a regular place you play live often? We play often in our home town Lyon in France.
What was your first gig like? The first song of the first gig is always very stressing and then you fell like released and you just fly
What was your latest gig? We played for a festival called Leymfest.
Have you had to cancel a gig? Yes because the singer lost his voice.
Where have you played live this year? Mostly in France. We would like to play live in Germany, Sweden and Switzerland which are the countries of rock and metal. Not the case in France even if we have a lot of good bands.
Where do you plan to gig the comming year? No serious plans for now. We are waiting for some good opportunities.
When did you start to sell merchandise, and what do you have for sale? We have our 2 albums mainly in CD format.
Where can people buy your merchandise? On our concerts or on our facebook page. We choose to distribute only digital around the world and physical after the gigs.
What do you think about people downloading music instead of buying records now a days? A lot yes. We can’t make any living form music anymore.
How do you think the music industry have changed because of this? People who distribute the music are the ones making money a lot of money. People who creates music makes nothing or earn nothing. A bit strange that creators are less important than distributor...
What do you think of my work?
How do you think and know that this interview will help you in the music business? I just don’t know and don’t want to know. I just do it because a very king person, you, asked me to do it.
Do you have any role models or idols? Not really. I do have a lot of bands that I like a lot though.
Why do you think that they exist? They probably exist.
Is it easier to find inspiration from older bands, or bands that are more active today? Absolutely both old and new bands. I think that music is a constant evolution. You need to know the background to evolve.
What have been your biggest obstacles? Financing the recording an the production of the albums.
What advice would you give other bands or artists? Never give up. Believe in your success and it will one day happen.
Do you have any new material?
What are your web sites?
How can people reach you? Thorough our facebook page we are very reactive.
What are your plans for the future? Record the 3rd album and maybe get famous :)
Do you have something to add? Thank you so much for proposing this interview, you have a great facebook page and great blogg. Hugs from France.
