Lanvall & Sabine Edelsbacher – Edenbridge

Interview by Miriam C.

After a 3-year drammatic stop due a personal loss, Edenbridge‘s back with the brand new masterpiece “The Bonding”. “The Bonding” marks a new sound evolution for the Austrians because, despite being the first album released for SPV/Steamhammer, sees the partecipation Orchester Klanguereinigung Wien and the new bassist Wolfgang Rothbauer. In addition to this, the title-track features the great Sweden AOR maestro Erik Mårtensson. For know more,  just follow us in this interview.

Lanvall: I started to work on the songs for “The Bonding” in 2010. But then the difficult time began as in May 2011 my father commited suicide, Sabine and I changed our places of living and other band members changed their job, so it was a constant process of change. Much of the music was already written before May 2011 but all the songs were finished parallely afterwards and all the lyrics were written afterwards too. This was an intersting process, when I started to work on the songs parallely cause I didn´t have to rush to finish a song and then go to the next one, it was a very relaxing process.

Sabine: Lanvall had the worst time of his life. After this tragedy with his father and other complicated things. During the mourning process other people died who we also knew well. We tried to live in the present and went through all the emotions. Last year my grandmother died in May directly on my birthday. I was glad to be with her till her last breath; she was a very heartly person and I have her in my heart. She was very important for me and my voice development when I was a child. It was really hard for me singing “Death Is Not the End”, because I always thought of her.

Lanvall: Wolfgang is a long term friend and musical colleague of our drummer Max and our second guitar player Dominik. Wolfgang actually comes from the death metal scene and has made himself a name with bands like Zombie Inc., Disbelief and In Slumber, just to name a few. It´s wonderful that for the first time in our career all band members come from the same town, which makes everything much easier in terms of logistics. But he joined the band after the album was recorded, so you can hear me playing the bass on the album. All in all the line-up was very consistent over the last years. Max and Dominik are in the band since 2007. Of course it can be tiring on some hand but this is how life goes. I feel that we have our best line-up ever now.

Lanvall: The interesting thing is that I already had the title “The Bonding” when not even our last album “Solitaire” was released, so this was around 2010. This title came to my mind, and I knew that the following album of “Solitaire” must be “The Bonding”. So somehow, it all made sense when all those tragic losses happened around us.

Sabine: The energy between a mother and her new born child is also called “The Bonding”. There it is very clear what “bonding” means, but this energy is between all of us. I think that we are able to realise that more and more, if we are open to the idea, that we all are connected to each other and to mother nature. It’s like a swarm of birds or a swarm of fishes, and every bird or fish knows instinctively the direction where to go.

Lanvall: It is the third time now that we’ve been working together with Anthony Clarkson from Los Angeles, who did also the new album. We found him a couple of years ago. Well, “found him” is not the right expression, of course. He is simply one whom we are really happy to work with. The normal edition has the nine songs of the album. Then there is the color vinyl, which has the nine songs, plus a bonus instrumental track. The limited edition has the nine songs of the album and, as a bonus CD, all the nine songs in an instrumental version, which is great. I always wanted to have this, and I love that on other albums. Especially when you have music where a lot of things are going on into the music, it’s great to also have an instrumental version, which is also great for the fans (if they want to do some sort of karaoke thing with it) and also for TV stations to use it as a background music.

Sabine: Symbolically, of course, the cover has a deeper meaning. When you take a look to the cover for the normal CD and for the vinyl, you see this fossil ammonite from the inside, where the river is going in and all those fractals. It was very important to bring the title, “The Bonding”, to life, and there you have the suction effect where everything is going to be sucked in this spiral. When you take a look at the limited edition cover, you have the ammonite fossil from the outside in the form of a book. When you open the book, then you come to the inside, where the normal cover is going to be seen.

Lanvall: Our deal with Napalm Records expired last year and we couldn´t agree on a new one. I got in touch with SPV by Spring 2012 and they signalized us heavy interest. They were in process of change and got new investors and owners so everything took a while. Finally we signed the deal in Hannover in February this year.

Sabine: My designer is Martin Gettinger, who is working on the opera in Vienna. This is the second album we´ve been working together. I always have an idea in my mind, which I tell him. Then we go shopping for all the materials and there it is always a creative process, where we exchange ourselves and where he´s bringing his ideas in. He´s drawing the sketch then and this is always looking like pictures from a catwalk. When I come to the try-on we are just working on little details then.

Lanvall: What was different this time is that we recorded the 53 people of the orchestra in groups, starting with the strings, then woodwinds together with brass and finally percussion. This gave us an optimal basis for mixing the orchestra later as we had separated groups which had more clarity. On “MyEarthDream” the orchestra was recorded together which also great of course but it can happen, that some brass instruments are ruining the mix if they are just a little too loud, so you don´t hear anything of the strings anymore. This time we also doubled the strings in every phrase which gives you this wonderful big strings sound.

Lanvall: The song “The Bonding” was planned to be a duet from the beginning on, and I had a long list of male singers, but none of them really seemed to fit for me. Then I went to a CD store, and discovered the last Eclipse CD (“Bleed & Scream”). I was totally blown away by Erik’s voice, and immediately contacted him. He immediately wrote back, and said he’d love to do the duet. Then he recorded his parts in his studio in Sweden and when I got his files we were blown away by the great stuff he did. He sang it exactly the way how I had it in mind when I was composing it. I sent him “The Bonding” 2 weeks ago, and he was blown away by the production, and said he is so honored to be a small part of this masterpiece. This was really a great honor for us to have such a great singer on the album, of course. So, yeah, it’s nice to hear such words!

Lanvall: Would be great of course. In our case it would be even better if there were something special, like a full concert with an orchestra, that would be the perfect scenario for a DVD.

Lanvall: Still inmidst of interviews and promotional activites. Tomorrow Sabine and I will do an acoustic show case on the release party of the new German issue of Penthouse magazine which is great. The release party will take place in a legendary night club in Vienna. About some further live shows we are currently checking the situation with a new booking agency, so we will see if there is something happening in the second half of 2013.

Hi to everybody and thanks for the interview, Sabine and Lanvall

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