108 interview

108 is back... and how! Fuck, their new album "18:61" is one big hardcore explosion with some of the heaviest and most mellow parts these guys have ever written. Want to know where the songs get their intensity from? Just read this email interview we did with Vic DiCara...

PRT: Probably the question everyone wants to know more about… on your Wikipedia page it says ‘On March 23, 2010, before the release of 18.61, it was announced that Rob Fish had quit the band which led to the demise of the group’. What’s up with that?
Vic: Jesus fuck. It's on the god damned WIKIPEDIA page? What wikipedia page (anyway)? Yo. We have not broken up. Click here to read the scoop!

PRT: When you dropped “A New Beat From A Dead Heart” in 2007 you already said that it was more of a continuation of 108 rather than a reunion. Were there already plans back then for more albums?
Vic: yeah. no. we don't plan. we act. you can tell that we don't think things out - for better or for worse. we are making new music NOW.

PRT: We’re three years later and you’re back with a new album called “18.61”. What inspired all the activity these last years after a decade of silence?
Vic: It took a decade of silence to hold us back. Well, actually it took a decade of silence for things to MAKE SENSE. I'm not sure if people really understand what a mind trip it is to actually try to become enlightened and liberated from material existence. It is a huge, huge, huge thing. It took us a decade of silence to let the rubble fall into place and the dust to settle so we could see things clearly again and once again make progress in a way that the external world could see.

PRT: You guys live spread out all over the place. How hard is it to write an album that way and then to get together and record the whole thing in a single weekend?
Vic: It's not. It's fun. Most bands that live on the same block just noodle around all day long or whatever. Blah, boring. When we get together we explode and the big bang happens. It is more fun that way.

PRT: Not only did you record it in just two days, you did it in a studio with analog sound. I think it gives the band a more organic sound than ever before. Was this a way of capturing your live sound on tape?
Vic: Analog was important. Not so much because of the sonic quality of tape vs. digitial but because of the implications of tape - you record live takes, you don't go back and punch in on a dime. It makes things less artificial, more sincere. More honest.
By the way, thanks for the compliment on the new record!

PRT: The new album is named after the 61st couplet of the 18th section of Bhagavad Gita. You’ve always been a band that carries out their beliefs in their music. It always makes me wonder… does it ever bother you if people listen to you just because they like the music without taking anything else from it?
Vic: No. That is fine. In fact that is what people should do. People should be sincere. I don't, personally sit there and try to plan out the spiritual meaning of a 108 song. I just let it happen however it wants to happen.
If a person is ready to evolve to the next level and start elevating their consciousness, then their mind and ears will open up to that level (whatever their level is) of listening to 108 (or any sound, actually). Everyone experiences things according to their own subjective level of consciousness. That is WHY this world is the world of ILLUSIONS. Because we are all just stuck in our own subjectivity.
Eventually 108 will open chakras, even of moshaholics. And in their next life they will encounter some similar band or whatever, and they will light up on it and blossom.

PRT: With “Crescent Moon” and “Early Funeral” you recorded some of the heaviest and most mellow songs in the history of 108. I think it makes this your most intense album so far… did you set out to make this one more adventurous with an ‘anything goes’ kind of attitude?
Vic: The next record might be even more extreme in this regard. Not sure yet, of course, since we haven't recorded it yet. But, no. We never "set out" really to do anything. There is no need to set out. Krishna is the artist of artists. We are in touch with Krishna, so whatever - we just need to open chakras and move fingers and pens and things happen. By the GRACE OF GOD as they say. No need for strategy or planning. We sit down to create, and we create. Krishna makes it happen or not happen, and both results are perfect for us.

PRT: Probably the dumbest question ever… my only excuse is that I really don’t know a lot about Hare Krishna. To me it seems to be a very peaceful philosophy. How did you come up with the idea to combine it with some of the most violent music around?
Vic: Ironically this is probably the best question to my taste. Violent? OK. Maybe. I see what you are saying. Meditating with your legs crossed wearing tights with a candle burning... that shit is "peaceful." That's for people who need to chill out. That is NOT all there is to yoga - that's just the side that is popular today with people in the West, who basically have no clue about these things anyway except for the exceptions.
Yoga is about connecting YOUR CORE to the CORE of EVERYTHING. That is as peaceful as it is violent. As happy as it is depressing. As brilliant as it is dark. It is EVERYTHING. It is the big bang. It is the source of every single experience.
It is very intense.
108 is intense.
I don't think it is "violent" per say, just "intense" as fuck.