Text: Alec Coiro
Images Courtesy of Motorama and Terrorbird Media
Terrorbird sent over the advance copy of Motorama’s Dialogues, and it instantly became a staff favorite. Even the erstwhile Brian Poirot and I agreed on this one.
Named for the Socratic dialogues that made Plato famous, the new album continues Motorama’s career-long project of creating ultra serious electronic pop music that works equally well for dancing and listening. If you’ve seen thealt music map that’s been making the rounds, Motorama pretty much borrows from the best of all the nodes that aren’t driven by guitar and live drums. However, perhaps due to being headquartered by the Azov Sea, the band manages to achieve this sound without the taint of pastiche or derivation.
To find out more, we reached out to Motorama spokesman, Vlad, for further insights into the new album.
Most of our readers will probably be hearing about Rostov-on-Don for the first time through you guys. Can you tell us a little about it?
It’s a big city situated on the river Don in the South of Russia, not far from Azov Sea with the population of one million people or more. It’s our birthplace and home where we live and work.
Unless I’m miscounting, Dialogues is your fourth album. What did you set out to accomplish with it?
Yes, that’s right. The aim, as always, was to share the music that comes out of me.
Was there anything you tried to differently from on previous records?
I use traditional methods in songwriting, playing around with the guitar or keyboards, in terms of arrangements we’ve tried to record some unusual instruments for Motorama, like bongos and drum machines with shuffle effect.
I’ve had the album in deep rotation since Terrorbird sent over the advance copy; listeners will be in for a treat. I keep thinking I can guess the influences, but I don’t want to assume anything. Can you name some of the important ones, and do you think their influence comes across directly in the music you make, or does it work more by a kind of osmosis?
I don’t have any names in particular, I was growing up listening to soviet bands like Kino and singers like Muslim Magomaev, then in the middle of 90’s with the help of my father I discovered Kraftwerk, they were and they still are a huge inspiration for me. I’m not a fan of modern bands, more into folk and church music.
Is there a common theme between the songs that resulted in the album title, Dialogues?
From the very beginning the main inspiration for the name was Plato with his Dialogues and then later one of my friends told me that all songs from the album could be seen as dialogues between someone.
Do you have any plans for videos or tours to go along with the album, particularly one in the U.S.?
Yes, very soon we are going to finish a video for a new song from the album, but I’m not sure about the US tour, we don’t have any dates for the moment.
