interview with Reserve de Marche
What are your names? / Who plays what? / How old are you? Alexander "Lex" Alekseev plays guitar, he is also the founder of the band and the main inspiration behind the music. Konstantin Shtirlitz plays drums and Nikita Kharitonov plays bass.
Have any of you played in other bands? Lex played in several bands of different styles varied from hard rock to ska punk before creating Reserve de Marche, Konstantin has another band Human Factor and also currently is session drummer for symphonic progressive project Lost world band from New York and Nikita played in melodic death metal band Deviant Syndrome.
How is it that you started playing music? It just happened, at some time you just realize that you have to do it, be it good company of friends and acoustic guitar, new fancy application that allows you arrange music by yourself or some record that struck you.
Have you had other previous members? There were another drummer and bassist in the band. Dmitry Pomogaev played drums for the first two albums, Andrey Bagdasarov played bass for the first record.
Where are you from? We all live in Moscow, Russia.
What year did the band form? Band started in late 2009.
What's your style of genre? We try to make music that is heavy and melodic. Some credit it as post rock or post metal.
What inspires you? This band started with Russian Circles, really. Once Lex came across this band from Chicago and then the idea of Reserve de Marche began to crystallize. We all come from different musical backgrounds, so it is really every rock and pop, jazz and punk from the 60s till now.
How have you developed since you started with the music? It is always some technical geeky stuff that develops our style. When we started playing the drummer would listen to the the distinct and loud loop, to lock up in the rhythm. Now we use midi tempo generator, so the loops can really start and finish anywhere.
Do you have other interests of work outside the band? We all work to earn our living, but when we have an opportunity we try to keep work close to music. Lex has small amp tubes shop and is designing his own cables for pedal boards, compact and cheap. Konstantin is giving drum lessons. Nikita is the black sheep of the family in that way, cause he mainly focuses on his office work apart from playing.
Are you looking for a booking agency, and what are your thoughts around that? Most of the time we play in the clubs and we have many of them in Moscow and across the country, we usually work directly with them. Booking agency is good when you are traveling long time and many places. Our tours usually contain just a couple of concerts, so we do it by ourselves.
Are you looking for a label, and what are your thoughts around that? As long as we don't have any label contract, we always look to share and promote our music by any means. Especially with the third album coming up, we try to find someone to promote our music from industry point of view.
What are your songs about? We don't sing, so we can only express the stories behind the music in names of the tracks and albums. The first record is sort of retrospective for those 20 years that Lex was playing music before Reserve de Marche. Our second record is somewhat inspired by Neil Gaiman's American Gods, so we look inside Ancient Greek drama and how it will develop in the modern world.
Do you compose in a certain environment? We have our place, where we gather all our ideas and jam around them for some time to find the sound. It is usually Lex, who comes up with the riff or even the whole piece on guitar.
Have you done any covers live? We play Harper Lewis by Russian Circles. Our drummer has even its own drum cover for the song.
What are the least and most people to attend one of your gigs? It is really hard to count when you play festivals and club gigs. It can vary from 30 people to thousand or so, depends on the stage and the venue.
Do you always play the same songs live, or do you vary? We usually have some of them going in and out and have 3 or 4 that contain every set.
Do you have a regular place you play live often? The was a club in Moscow and the festival held by its owners that we used to play many times, but now we don't have our favorite place. We just go wherever people invite us to play.
What was your first gig like? First Reserve de Marche live action was on Lex's birthday and it was nice and cosy show for friends mostly.
What was your latest gig? We just ended a small tour, that involved capitals of Belarus and Ukraine as well as two other cities in Russia.
When did you start to sell merchandise, and what do you have for sale? We have very little to offer right now, as we are in the middle of working on our third album and haven't got our hands to it yet. It is usually T-shirts, CDs and patches and we also plan some other small things to introduce.
Where can people buy your merchandise? We sell what we have during live shows, and we also have our site, social networks and Bandcamp page where you can get merchandise.
What do you think about people downloading music instead of buying records now a days? It is simple and cheap (even if you buy digital copy), and it is the way how the world of music works right now. We are finding our way in it. There is always someone who wants a hard copy just for the memory. So it not a decline or rise, it just a change that we all adapt to.
What do you think of my work? Now a days, when you have hundreds of bands that write in each and every distinct small genre, it is easy to get lost. You won't know of a great band until someone tells you about it, so those communities, webzines and musical experts and lovers who just have their own blogs, they all are like lighthouses in this immense sea of new music that is being produced every day.
Do you have any role models or idols? Why do you think that they exist? We don't think of models and we don't want to remix anyone's path in music. We just like what we do and try to make it as good as we can. We share some notable figures that we all like, say Ozzy Osbourne, but none of us wanted to go Ozzy's road.
Is it easier to find inspiration from older bands, or bands that are more active today? We listen to anything really, recently we came to really like Australian band sleepmakeswaves, they are really something. And it always something from 70s and 80s that you have in the arrangements. When we are talking about the track we can exchange in a manner like "do you remember that Deep Purple song, I think we can do something similar here" and so on.
What are the biggest obstacles? What advice would you give other bands or artists? When you don't have sponsor's money or record deal, it is easy to give up, because nothing happens. But you should always remember that, first of all, it is you who needs this. And you can always find the way to do it better, and you should do it.
Do you have any new material? We wrote eight tracks for the third album and already made first arrangements for the new one.
What are your web sites?
http://reservedemarcheband.com/ is our official site on English. We also have our pages on Bandcamp, Facebook, VK (on Russian), YouTube.
How can people reach you? Just like you did. Anyone who writes us will get our reply. And we are always glad to talk after the gigs, when we have time to.
What are your plans for the future? We are finishing mixing of the third album and plan to release it later this year. And we always work on new tracks, so it is an ongoing process. Short and simple, we want to write new music and perform it live.
Do you have something to add? Stay heavy, play and like music as we do, cheers! And something special for you personally, check your mailbox, we hope you'll get a little present from us.
