Exposed Vocals Interviews Mohai Experiment

Exposed Vocals: So tell us your story. Where did you grow up? What made you decide to become an artist?

 

Mohai Experiment: Hi there! First of all thank you very much for giving us this space. I’ve to make a preliminary remark because this is a really strange and particular band. Mohai Experiment is a “band from the past” that has had its activity from 1996 to 2005. So the writer (and also guitarist of the band) is working on re-arranging and publishing all the songs written in that period. We wrote a lot of material, so I’ve space for minimum 4 albums and for now I’ve just released the second one.

The band is from the Turin area (Italy). We started our activity from a common passion for progressive and experimental-like music (King Crimson, Alan Parson’s Project, …) and formed an instrumental trio. Each of us has had his previous musical experience and background, so we merged a really wide spectrum of influences.

 

Exposed Vocals: How did you come up with that name? What was your inspiration behind it?

 

Mohai Experiment: well, it is the mixture of a tribe name with the “experiment” label, like an ancient clan discovering new territories… So, basically, we underlined our progressive nature and our way to travel between the lines of time and space, other than our particular and personal way to conceive the music itself.

Exposed Vocals: What do you think about online music sharing? Do you ever give your music away for free? Why?

 

Mohai Experiment: online music sharing is one of the biggest evolution in the music history. Is a totally new concept that is usually underestimated (and, probably, not really understood at all). As an artist, you could be in a few seconds to unknown ears and your listeners are able to enjoy your music in every moment, condition and mood of their life. And this is huge…
We don’t like to give music for free by definition. We could make a gift, of course, but the gift is always addressed to a specific person and not any random person who press play.
So today there are plenty of platforms where people can listen to our music and these platform pay us when someone listen to our music. As simple as is. If you don’t recognize the value behind a song, our song is not for you.

Exposed Vocals: Since everyone was a start-up once, can you give any smaller or local bands or artists looking to get gigs and airplay some tips?

Mohai Experiment: well, can’t tell so many things about gigs because we did the last one more than 10 years ago, but we could talk a little bit about music.
As a band, one of the most important things is to build a unique sound. All chain’s links are important: all gear (instruments, amps, effects, …), good rehearsals, good self-training, recordings and re-listenings. I mean, if you want to do it seriously, you’ve to think about that as a job…the most beautiful one 🙂  And second most important thing: think at your product (album, ep, single) as a mom care about her child. Do it in a perfectly, obsessive way. I’m not talking about perfection in absolute, but also the dirtiest chord deserve to be played in the right way. And don’t try to mix and master it by yourself if you’re not able to. Go to a good studio and work with these guys!
And then the airplay will come…

 

Exposed Vocals: Where do you usually gather songwriting inspiration? What is your usual songwriting process?

 

Mohai Experiment: songwriting is a sort of magical thing. Before playing, it’s important to be able to listen. And songwriting is listening… Listening to the universe and in the meantime into yourself, because inspiration is there.
Usually the songwriting process start from a guitar and/or a drum line, so sometimes melody rules, sometimes rithm do. The first idea is really important and have to be recorded immediately, then usually we write the “before” and the “after”, only as a raw progression. After that, it’s time for arrangements, adding synth lines, 2nd and 3rd guitar melodies, bass and drums. Usually the song is listened several times until it could pass the selection process, and often lot of parts are being cutted or replaced a few times. The song is “ok” when you could listen at it several times without getting bored 🙂

Exposed Vocals: Do you have a band website? What online platforms do you use to share your music?

 

Mohai Experiment: we don’t have a band website because we only share music albums, so it’s really useless. We have a YouTube account, Soundcloud, BandCamp and our music is on the most known platform like Spotify, GooglePlay, Amazon, iTunes…
Here some links:
– BandCamp: https://mohaiexperiment.bandcamp.com/
– YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCSntJNlBKK51DdDNj9P61kw
– Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/album/6pW4BlkuBlKePGaDTxs3uz
– Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01FT5UUVE?ie=UTF8&redirect=true
– GooglePlay: https://play.google.com/store/music/artist/Mohai_Experiment?id=Ad2uvi4bbonlctbnb5fizgmgdoe

We’re also in Twitter: https://twitter.com/MohaiExperiment/

Anyway, if you search for “Mohai Experiment” on the internet it’s easy to find everything…

 

Exposed Vocals: If you were given half a million dollars and a year off, what would you do? How would you spend it?

 

Mohai Experiment: wow, nice question to reply at! Well, first of all I’m thinking about building a better studio for the recording and songwriting process and this task could take half the budget and time. The second half could be used to organize a 6 month tour all over the world, refounding the band and enjoying traveling and gigging!

Exposed Vocals: How do you find ways to promote your music? What works best for you?

 

Mohai Experiment: internet is full of good (and bad) ways to promote music.
Talking about social media first… It’s important to build a good “home” there, where people could find all about you and where they could interact. Of course it’s important to stay there taking the right time to manage it and interact as well.
Our main platform is Twitter. Here we can manage all the communication tasks in a easy and quick way. Twitter is fast, smart and reactive. Of course you need to know a little bit in deep this beast because is easy to do wrong things as well.
A good YouTube channel is also important to sharing some contents. I always think is better to share less, with good quality and with something to say then “just share something”, and internet is already full of trash…
On the Twitter side, we always and very often post links to songs because is our main product, so people could simply click and listen. And this is our unique way to make a contact with people.
Exposed Vocals: So, what’s next? Any new upcoming projects that you want to talk about?

 

Mohai Experiment: as said before, I’m working on publishing new albums of a “dead” band, so the next project is…the next album. I know that this could sound a little bit strange, and this is really an experiment inside an experiment…
Maybe one day, if some conditions change, I could also thing about a reunion for live gigs…

Exposed Vocals: If you weren’t making music, what would you be doing?

 

Mohai Experiment: for me, something related to the space field. I really like astronomy and I’m enthusiast about all its topics. I love space science, the relativity theory and also simply watching at all the beautiful pictures from the NASA website. So something like a space researcher could be a good alternative to music 🙂

Exposed Vocals: How do you juggle the rest of your responsibilities while trying to stay ahead in your music life?

 

Mohai Experiment: I’m a professional composer so all my job responsibilities are related to the music area. My main field is soundtrack composition where I produce songs for movies, tv series, documentaries, videogames etc. In the meantime I manage and produce a few bands where I play guitars and bass. (my website: http://www.peterhamerproductions.com)
When I had another job, I dedicated almost all evenings/nights and weekends to make my dreams come true. Lot of sacrifices, lot of studio time and less friends, parties and other things like that.
So if you want to realize your dream, you have to think at it seriously and start doing things in that direction and you must be able to sacrifice everything for it…

Exposed Vocals: What should fans look forward to in 2016?

 

Mohai Experiment: eh, nice question. I’m working on the 3rd album but I don’t think to release it by 2016, also because I’ve just released the 2nd on 31 May 2016. Probably the better thing fans could do is simply ask me/us what they would and, as always, we can manage all requests 🙂