Interview by Tony Cannella
Eklipse hail from Germany and are an all female String quartet – what a concept. They recently made their American live debut on tour with Kamelot and Delain. I was interested to see how the band would go over with a metal crowd and I got to experience firsthand the enthusiasm that the band generated with their live performance – in fact they went over incredibly well. With their sophomore release “Electric Air” out now, Viola (who also plays Viola) was kind enough to answer some questions for us.
Please introduce the band members?
It’s Miss E. on violin, Viola on the Viola, Helena on the Cello and Scarlett on Violin.
Your new album “Electric Air” is out now. Please tell us a little about it.“Electric Air” is an album which is pretty clean, just with strings. We have some great new arrangements for our new songs and we think that we have made huge progress in our musical development. We hope that our fans will see our new baby as a musical frame for the stories and emotions we want to express.
How have the responses been from fans and media?The responses have been incredible. After our concerts we always try to be around at our little merchandise booth to get to know a few of the people and give them the chance to to take some pictures together. It is always wonderful to hear how much our music is appreciated.
For anyone who hasn’t heard Eklipse. How would you describe your music?We are a string quartet playing pop and rock music. We are playing instrumental music without any vocals. While on CD we try to keep it clean, on stage we add some drums and electro sounds to emphasize the dramatic elements of our music.
You are currently on tour with Kamelot. How is it going so far?It is going really well. Honestly: better than expected. We are on tour with two metal bands and don’t really fit into the expectations of the fans attending the shows. But the reactions are very good, we are a little surprised about that. The audience is literally exploding in reaction to our arrangements of the pop songs. Especially the R’n’B Song “Cry Me a River” is working very well on stage. Apart from that we have a very good time together with Kamelot and Delain. It’s a fun time hanging out together, having some drinks after the
shows and chat… Just like a big family 😉
The American crowds are incredibly friendly and open to our non-metal-music. When they come to the concerts they expect to hear a metal support band. So when we enter the stage it must be a strange surprise for most of the people. Nevertheless everybody seems to really enjoy the 30 minutes that we have on stage. It is great to have such loud (!) audiences!
This is your first time touring North America. What are you impressions so far?Oh yeah… it is really a huge country, overwhelming. We are in the bus, riding it through the US and seeing all kinds of
landscapes while looking out of the window. It is very beautiful. The people are just great, so open, so kind. We are always having a
chat when there are people around. 🙂 So all in all, having a great time!
We were all very excited when we heard that there is a chance to be on their album, and we are so very glad that it worked out! Kamelot is an amazingly friendly, helpful, fun-to-tour-with band!
Yes, at the shows where the stage is large enough we join Kamelot for the song “My Confession”. Also Miss E and Helena do a very cool act on “March of Mephisto”. But maybe you google that and have a look for yourself.
How have you gotten along with Kamelot and Delain?It is so much more fun than you can ever imagine! Going on tour with whatever band is always a challenge. There can be so many unexpected problems, technical failures or plain misunderstandings. But on this tour everything went almost perfect from the beginning. I think we all got very close to each other and hopefully we will be on tour with the guys again!
What are your plans following the Kamelot tour?We have some tbc dates in the next month but since they are still tbc it is not safe to announce them yet. What we CAN announce is a 4-concert-tour in Germany with “The Mission” from December 19th to 23rd – isn’t that amazing?
Have you ever thought about adding guest vocalists on your albums, or will you continue to be strictly an instrumental band?The next step for us is just working on our new album and going our way with the instrumental music. But we are always open for surprises. We never know what will happen in the near future. 🙂
Do you think you might eventually write original music or will you continue to do covers?For now we will stick to playing cover songs, but it would absolutely thrill us to write own music and getting to play it. As I said: You never know what will happen in the future.
Any songs you’d like to cover on future releases?So very many! It is always the hardest part to decide on the songs. We do get asked a lot when we are going to cover a metal song… so that could happen… or not 😉
Thank you for taking the time to answer these questions. Is there anything you would like to add or say to the fans to wrap this up?We would like to thank all our friends and fans for all the love and support they showed us in the last years. We are having the time of our lives performing all over the world and just hope to continue playing a lot of shows and get to know great people.
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