Gabro & Frankly Irrational

ugrap.de auf Exkursion in Skandinavien: matt 2.9 sprach mit Gabro und Frankly Irrational aus Helsinki über ihre bisherigen Veröffentlichungen, den schweren Stand von Rapmusik in Finnland, und alles weitere was es bei einer ersten kurzen Vorstellung eben so zu sagen gibt. Wer auf die Musik des Duos neugierig geworden ist sollte unter allen Umständen auf der offiziellen Homepage vorbeischauen und sich die kostenlosen Downloads klarmachen.

Hi guys, what’s up? I think it’s pretty cool that people can download your music off of your homepage. Besides, the site doesn’t offer too much information about you guys though. So please, introduce yourself to our readers…

Frankly: Hello, my name is Frankly Irrational and I’m a 25 year old rapper/ beer drinker from Tampere, Finland…

Gabro: … and I’m Gabro, 25 years old producer from Hyvinkää/ Helsinki, Finland. My world goes around the music: producing, playing accordion and percussions in different bands. Gabro & Frankly Irrational – that project is one with many other projects, but right now it takes most of my time because of the recordings of our new album. And that’s not too bad at all. What else about me…the way I fight against the long and dark finnish winter and keep my body and mind alive is playing Capoeira.

How did you get started makin’ music? What’s your musical background? And: Which instruments are you playing – I mean, I saw your first gigs-video, but I suppose you guys improved your musical skills since back then, huh?

Frankly: I started playing drums when I was about ten years old and I was mainly inspired by Heavy Metal bands like Motörhead, Venom and Obituary. I still play the drums, now in a blues band. And it is basically my main money income. Besides that it’s rapping and partying…

Gabro: Hmm… it just started when I copied my first tracker – Screamtracker 3rd – from a friend of mine. It happened in the early 90’s and the material is at least interesting – I still have evidence from those days in the form of a tape. Huh, but after an early teenage Heavy/ Grunge/ Punk period, I was inspired by the production of DJ Shadow, DJ Krush, Pete Rock, DJ Premier – the sound of the early 90’s. I started to create my own beats. Nowadays, my influences come from any stuff which gives me goose bumps, from Klezmer to Afrobeat. And you can hear it on our upcoming album. And I’d also like to mention that I have played accordion for 10 years. How street-credible can that be…?!

How did you two meet each other?

Frankly: Gabro met my cousin in the service, and one night partying, my cousin introduced him to me. And some time after that, when I moved to Helsinki, we started making music together…

Gabro, what equipment do you use for producing? Most parts of the production sound really organic. As I read on the softonemusic.com-site, you have a lot of life-instrumentation on your production. Are those friends of yours who are playing the instruments, or who are they?

Gabro: Right now I just use really simple trackers and the sampler Boss SP505. Our upcoming album contains a lot of live elements from drums to horns, so what I need to do is just push the record button. There are a lot of samples in my early productions, maybe because I didn’t know as much musicians before and it was easy to make music in my own living room.

Are you producing, too, Frankly?

Frankly: Not really. I concentrate on my thing, because there’s people who are very committed on beat making and producing, so I let the professionals do it. I might make a beat sometimes just for the fun of it…

Where do you find your ideas for your lyrics?

Frankly: I don’t know, maybe I go through something and write about it. Or I might just listen to the beat and try to come up with something that fits the mood… the basic answers.

Have you always been rapping in English? Or did you start in your mother tongue?

Frankly: I started in English, but recently I have been doing stuff also in Finnish. In fact, I’ll release my first Finnish language album by the end of the month. I try to keep ‘em both in shape.

What’s first, is it Gabro’s production, the lyrics, or just the idea for a new song?

Gabro: It goes both ways. Sometimes, after we have recorded the vocals on the beat I may change the beat even three times. And Frank is perplexed.

Are you getting a lot of international feedback? I mean, I stumbled over your music when I watched the Elekrep-video. How did you get hooked up with the Elekrep-guys anyway?

Frankly: Yeah, for example this interview… and people contact us from around the world and it’s cool, but also strange.

You’ve been touring Finland in early 2007. Are you planning to tour somewhere else soon? I can imagine you’re putting together a pretty cool show with a live drummer, a saxophone- and a trumpet player…

Frankly: We are planning to do gigs of course, and hopefully also in some other countries as well…

Gabro: … after we finish our new album, we’ll start to make gigs more actively and also in other countries I hope. Personally, I’m a bit bored to have gigs just with mic and turntables, so that’s why we color our live gigs with live-elements. And it ROCKS! Oh yeah: big thanks to our music supervisor – Mikko Kuiri who recommended our music to Elekrep’s director Jaakko Itäaho. That was the way our music ended up to that movie. And like Frank said, lot of good feedback is coming around the world.

What is Finland’s music-scene, especially the Hip-Hop-scene, like? Over here, Scandinavia is known for high quality rock- and metal-bands while anything else, like Hip-Hop is more or less blacked out. Other way round: what’s your impression of today’s international music scene, and yet again of today’s hip-hop scene(s)?

Frankly: I think its kinda the same everywhere, we have some more commercial groups in the media spotlight, and everybody who knows something ’bout “real” hip hop is dissing ‘em.. *laughs*

Gabro: Well, I don’t listen as much Hip-Hop as I used to, so I have fallen off a long time ago. But shortly, today’s MTV-rap doesn’t make an impression on me… by the way, if the finnish population rate is around 5 million, there must be at least 2 million heavy bands…

Most of the features of your current releases are from Finland. Are you planning any collaborations with international artists?

Frankly: I don’t know, would be fun to do something, waiting for that.

Gabro: Not planning any, but all the doors are open!

Alright, thanks a lot for doing the interview with us. Do you have any last words, any shout-outs, “thank-you’s” you’d like to throw out there?

Frankly: Thanks for everybody supporting our music, let the good times roll!

Gabro: … and thank you for asking those stupid guestions.

Gabro & Frankly Irrational @ myspace:
http://www.myspace.com/gabroandfrank
http://www.myspace.com/gabromusic