Help! The Captain Threw Up: Avid Instrumentalists

(INTERVIEW BY SADAF FAYYAZ)

Published in Is This Music Magazine, on April 29th, 2010, Under Features

Help! The Captain Threw Up are a trio from Istanbul in Turkey. The band has three members, although the trio at times collaborate with others such as Tolga Celik. They formed in 2009 by guitarist Ozan, drummer Uygar and bassist Mert. Instrumental and - well, we’ll let them tell us about the music they make.

What inspired you to make music?
Mert: Our inspiration is to create melodies that we enjoy and the beautiful things around us, the movies, songs, people.
Ozan: It comes from the urge to create and the music itself.
Uygar: We started playing and practicing as Ozan insisted that we shouldn’t just “listen”.
Mert: I was playing a little, then I met Ozan in college and we started playing together.
Uygar: The real thing is, we just loved music and waiting for some sort of Ignition to start.

What are the bands and musicians that shape your sound?
Ozan: In our songs, the traffic and the instruments’ tones, you could easily feel we were influenced by the classic rock bands like Pink Floyd, The Beatles and The Who. Along with these, the bands and musicians from our generation like John Frusciante, Jeff Buckley, Ataxia, Do Make say Think, Explosions in the Sky, God is an Astronaut, God Speed You Black Emperor have also influenced us.
Mert: There are of course some bands that we haven’t been influenced by, but loved - like Jaco Pastorius, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Supertramp, David Bowie, Modest Mouse, The Raconteurs and many others.
What musical genre would you put yourselves in?

Uygar: We don’t tag our genre as anything and limit the things that we can do. Even though we are tagged with genres like indie / post rock / experimental / instrumental on the internet, we can always do more - or less.

What is your source of learning?

Ozan: What we listen to and watch is actually our best resource. Today’s media has a weird way of teaching - and not in a good way. The era we are growing into is actually disconnecting people through the media, and thus our way of life changes into an individual’s perspective more than a rich, wide-spread and common life. Of course not all of the media is necessarily evil, as we learn about the events that inspire us through the media - using our own filters to filter the information, that is. So our best source of learning is a hybrid - evil incarnate and us filtering it!

How do you define music?

Ozan: Instead of defining music, it will be more rational to define what it means to us. Because I think defining music with words will not be adequate.
Mert: I agree, although there are dictionary meanings for music, it only defines the word itself. However music is beyond a word and it defines, it is a phenomenon.
Ozan: There are musicians and musicologists who try to get a better understanding of music; they have worked for some answers, some definitions, and they redefine it. Erkan Ogur has a saying that I wish I had said: “Music is the space between the notes”.

What is different in your music from other bands?

Mert: It is us. We play the things we feel, never try to be a fake version of a band. (But in the process there will be of course inspirations at this matter). We are as different as all the other bands who are trying to just to be themselves, because the expressions that we have are the combinations of the expressions that just the three of us have.
Finally, what is the next step for the band?

Uygar: We don’t have a record label yet, but we’ve got a few offers and we’re thinking about it. We are actually trying to find a producer who won’t limit us and can think the way we do.
Mert: We try not to control our music, so this makes that the point we reach with our instinct is never the same in the end.
Uygar: There is a fact we cannot overlook, it is that we make instrumental music. As Mert said before, every each of the listener taste different experiences and finds new answers.

http://www.myspace.com/helpthecaptainthrewup