Our interview during Heidenfest couldn’t take place the last time, this time I got a chance to talk to Jari of Wintersun. And Jari answered all my questions very thorough. And he revealed a little bit on the upcoming Time album.
With Heidenfest Wintersun was back at the stage after a long time. For them it was a shot tour (6 concrerts) but they were glad to be back and they did a fabulous performance!

Folk-metal.nl (FM): Congratulations with the fabulous gig in Tilburg!
Jari: Thanks! All went well and especially the audience was fantastic! The audience showed they really appreciate us, we felt special by that and that caused a nice climax for our last Heidenfest show.

FM: Despite is was a short tour, you guys were back again. How did it feel to be on stage and tour again?
Jari: It felt good to play live again. We were able to let our fans listen to a bit of our upcoming album and it was of course a long while ago when we got to play. It was a pleasant change. Besides this we have a lot of more professional stuff nowadays like in-ear monitors. Finally we could hear ourselves what we were playing.
We have to work on our set up, there are definitely things which can be improved there.
During Heidenfest we also had a light and soundtechnic. He took a lot of work form our hands. We didn’t have to put down our own stuff and by this we had more time to warm up for the show. He really safed us a lot of stress.

FM: Are there moments you miss playing in a band? To play half the time and to travel across the world?
Jari: Well…. of course a great show is always a kick. Which is a good feeling after all the stress and waiting the whole day. Playing with the guys is always a nice thing to do.
The touring can’t be called a vacation really. There’s almost no time to relax and see things. Besides that, I’m not a traveller. But it’s always cool.

FM: And then the question everybody want to know the answer too. How is Time going? A lot of things went wrong and you guys are busy with it for a long time. How do you keep the band together and motivated?
Jari: At this moment I try to mix everything but this caused a lot of trouble. Which isn’t a real surprise because some of the instruments like the rhythm guitars are bad recordings. Besides this there are millions of tracks of orchestra, synths and vocals which can’t be mixed in nicely if the recordings are bad. So we probably have to rerecord the the rhythm guitars, which will be difficult without a studio. I’m thinking about this from day one, because we had problems in the studio where the guitars were recorded.
Another problem is the lack of computerpower. Some of the tracks are that big, even my 12-core Mac Pro can’t handle it. So I’m going to sort that all out.
Every once and a while I’ll send the mixes to the guys to get some feedback and to keep them involved in the mixing process. And by this they can hear the progress. But of course everybody’s patience is tested, but they knew from the start this album would be gigantic. Until now they haven’t lost their motivation and I hope they never will.

FM: Are we going to get some guest-musicians besides the regular band-members? Who would you like to have for Time?
Jari: There’s one song in which a choir-session is planned with the guys and a guest-musician form another band, maybe more. But I don’t want to reveal more details about that before they have actually done this.

FM: In an old interview I read that you were listening to Japanese music at that time because you wanted to use that in a song one way or the other. Did you succeed? What kind of other special thing can we expect?
Jari: Sure. There will be a lot of oriental influences on this album, it’s a kind of thematic album. One of the songs is fully based on this melodies. Besides this a lot of special things can be heard. But again, I won’t tell you to much about this, because I have no idea when Time will be released.

FM: Is there a possibility, after the shows, Wintersun is becoming a real band and we get to hear more from Wintersun?
Jari: We are a full band now. As soon as this album is released we will plan bigger gigs and we’re coming back in the spotlights.

FM: Thanks for your time and this interview and I’m really looking forward to Time.
Jari: Thanks for the interview ? Cheers!

Interview and Photography by: Dorien