Haken [Interview]
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Last year, Haken’s latest LP Affinity blew my mind, effortlessly earning a place on my list of the best albums of 2016. Never ones to rest on their laurels, Haken are now set to celebrate their first decade in action with remastered re-releases of earliest efforts Aquarius and Visions – not to mention a headlining European tour in a couple of months’ time. I got talking to Haken founder and guitarist/keyboardist Richard Henshall about his band’s past, present, and future – and Kurt Russell…
You formed Haken a full decade ago, in an industry where bands rarely make it beyond their first few years. How does it feel to be celebrating Haken’s ten-year anniversary?
Time has really flown by! It only feels like yesterday that we were jamming in each other’s bedrooms, playing through our favourite tunes. It’s crazy that we’re now in a position to be able to play our music to people around the world, especially in the oversaturated state of the music industry these days. We really do owe everything to the fans that buy our music and come to our shows; we wouldn’t be able to do what we do without their support.
I feel like we’ve accomplished a lot in the last ten years, but in a weird way it kind of still feels like we’re at the beginning of our journey. There’s still a huge amount I want to achieve with Haken and as a musician, so I can’t wait to see what the next ten years have in store.
What’s your earliest musical memory?
My mum is a piano teacher, so most of my earliest musical memories are of waking up to sound of Hanon exercises and scales being blasted out from the piano downstairs. From time to time there would be an amazing student ripping out some Bach or Chopin, which I always found incredibly inspiring. I guess it was around this time that I formed my love for music.
If you had to choose just three moments as highlights of your career so far, which would you choose, and why?
Being invited on the Prog Nation Cruise by Mike Portnoy is definitely one of them. Growing up I was always awestruck by the line-ups he chose for the Prog Nation tours he did with Dream Theater. I always dreamt about one day playing on one of them with Haken. The lineout for the cruise was absolutely insane, and being part of it was even more insane!
Signing to InsideOut was another huge moment for us. When we first started the band we had a list of things we were hoping to achieve, and signing to InsideOut was one of them. I’ve been buying music from the label for years, so to now be on the roster with some of my favourite bands still feels a little surreal.
Touring with Between the Buried and Me was another great highlight for me. I’ve been a fan of the band for years, so to share the stage with them was a huge honour. They were all such a humble and down to earth bunch of guys, which always helps on tour!
What have you found to be the most challenging aspects of developing and sustaining a career in music?
Balancing my work and family life with the demands of touring has always been tricky. Unfortunately, we’re not quite at a point where we can sustain a living solely from Haken, so we all have day jobs that we need to come home to. Haken’s progress has been pretty solid over the last few years, so I’m hoping we can get to where we want to be in the near future.
As part of Haken’s anniversary celebration, you’re also releasing remastered versions of Haken’s first two albums – Aquarius and Visions – on February 3. How did you personally evolve, as a musician and as a person, while making those albums?
Yes, they’ll be available in a new remastered 2CD edition and on vinyl for the first time, which I’m pretty excited about. We asked the amazing Jens Bogren to take care of the remasters for us as we were so happy with his work on The Mountain, Restoration and Affinity. He has a knack of understanding exactly how we want something to sound before we’ve even understood it!
Like all musicians, I feel like I’m constantly evolving and learning new things as I mature with age. The journey is never-ending as there is always something new to discover. Around the time of Aquarius I feel like I grew as a composer. Aquarius was the first full album I’d written, so it felt like I was jumping in the deep end a little. A lot of the ideas came about through trial and error, so the process was fairly lengthy. By the time it came to Visions, I felt a little more confident with executing the ideas in my head, so the writing process felt more fluent.
You’re heading out on a headlining European tour in March and April. Do you have anything special planned for those shows?
As it’s our ten-year anniversary, we felt like it was the perfect opportunity to do a retrospective set. We’ll be playing a collection of our favourite tracks across all of our albums, some of which we haven’t played in a while.
We’re bringing two other great acts along with us, both of which we’ll be announcing very soon. We also have a few other surprises up our sleeve, but you’ll have to come along to a show to see what they are!
What’s the most random thing that’s ever happened at one of your live shows?
At one of our performances on the Prog Nation Cruise, Diego’s keyboard fell off its stand, so the rest of us started to awkwardly noodle around a bit whilst the stage crew replaced his keyboard. During this time a guy dressed in full Mexican wrestling gear decided to join us on stage and stood in front of the drums facing out towards the crowd, eyeballing them with his arms folded. He didn’t move an inch till the set was finished, which was around about an hour long from what I remember! I was a little scared…
If money and good taste weren’t issues, what would your stage show look like?
I’m very much up for recreating the set of Escape From New York. We’d obviously all have to get unnecessarily ripped and wear leather waistcoats and eye patches. That’s a given!
We’d definitely need a few oil barrels on fire, with some shifty looking, scar-ridden vagrants loitering around them, to create some post-apocalyptic ambience. I quite like the idea of the Statue of Liberty’s head being the centrepiece of the stage, with maybe Ray’s drum kit on top. There would definitely to be a 50-foot wall surrounding the crowd.
Kurt Russell would of course have to make a guest appearance and recite manly quotes from the film like “…which one of you assholes gets to die trying to stick me?” over our instrumental track, Portals. It’s going to be great – trust me!
Beyond the tour, what’s exciting you about the future?
I’ve been working on a new project, along with Dan Briggs from Between the Buried and Me, called Nova Collective. It’s a weird sort of instrumental fusion music. We’ll be releasing our debut album in March this year, which I’m pretty excited about!
I’m also really looking forward to working on the next Haken album. We’ll hopefully get started on that towards the end of this year. Aside from that, we’ve got some other tours in the works for 2017, so watch this space!
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