For everyone who has witnessed Cat Empire’s uncanny capability to transform a mellow Calgary Folk Music Festival crowd into a joyfully frenzied mob, Felix Riebl’s recent revelation about his band shouldn’t be too much of a wonder.
These days, Riebl says the six-piece act operates with a simple guiding principle, even if recording in the studio: Cat Empire shines most brightly in a stay-put setting, so they might correctly write songs for a visit setting from the get-go.
“We’ve reached this point in which we want songs to pop out of the studio and just be level-ready,” says Riebl in an interview with Postmedia throughout an excursion stop in Philadelphia. “There’s a dynamic on this band wherein we challenge ourselves to write a song that will get up, or else it won’t get performed. We’ve been given so much fabric. I assume we’ve always been pageant-degree conscious, whether or not we knew it or no longer.”
This is not to mention that Cat Empire’s recent album, Stolen Diamonds, launched in mid-February, doesn’t incorporate an ingenious set of compositions. But the focal point is increasingly on groove and maintaining its patented onstage wildness even as the band keeps digging deeper into diverse international music strains.
Riebl sees Cat Empire’s 8th document because of the final chapter in a trilogy of albums that commenced with 2013’s Steal the Light and continued with 2016’s Rising with the Sun. The not-important thread is manufacturer Jan Skubiszewski, who has been on the helm for all 3. But, once more, the brotherly love is predicated much less on a focus on a genre or lyrical topics and more on a planned push to ensure all the tracks flourish in a stay-putting.
“There’s necessary combustion within the studio,” says Riebl. “With this one and the remaining ones, we didn’t rehearse in any respect, which I think was significant. We arrived at the studio, and I had written many songs, and the band learned them the same day they recorded most of the time. That creates a positive sort of spontaneity in performance. Your first idea for an element, your instincts, are typically those that make it, which isn’t always to mention that a few songs don’t completely change forms inside the studio due to the fact they do. But instead of rehearsing for the long term, learning the components, and performing the song, we wanted to preserve that spark of unknowingness in there.”
Still, while the various tunes maintain that spark, they also benefit from the meticulously built layers piled atop the grooves. Sophisticated horn parts, synths, and samples help deliver a selection of sonic shade to the band’s stimulated tours into slinky ska (Barricades), soul-funk (Adelphia), punchy Cuban (Saturday Night), and even stylish French-pop (La Sirene, which features rich francophone lead vocals from Australian actress Eloise Mignon).
“We’ve always stolen music from everywhere, like bits and portions, and just adapted ideas inside that,” Riebl says with fun. “Coming from Australia, there’s been something almost humorous about that. I suppose we’ve identified as an Australian band, but we truly have from everywhere in the location. I wager our DJ (Jamshid “Jumps” Khadiwala) is quite influential in that location regarding the number of music he performs. Recently, that’s a song from Cape Verde and quite rare ’60s disco and funk stuff he likes. He brings that edge to it, mainly with the samples he brings in.
” This has all conspired to strengthen Cat Empire’s popularity as a band with a capacity to, without delay, fill club flooring and pageant fields with hordes of bouncing converts. Cat Empire were darlings of the folks-fest scene for almost a decade and established to be reliable mainstage headliners in Calgary on Prince’s Island Park. Different galas attract fanatics for an adventurous track in place of acquainted songs. The band can make a rare iciness look in Calgary on Friday, gambling at the University of Calgary’s MacEwan Hall. But Riebl says the group tries to bring a pageant vibe to any venue they may be in.
“The whole idea of a festival in which you pass see bands which you recognize, but you might go to find out bands,” says Riebl. “That may be, without a doubt, stylistically diverse. That’s very much the part of Cat Empire that I like insofar as I can’t describe the Cat Empire sound thoroughly.
It’s very eclectic. However, it also has wonderful surroundings for this institution of musicians and a reasonably free method of performing live music. We’re looking to deliver and receive lots in that space. I suppose that’s why the Cat Empire and fairs get alongside so properly. At fairs, we don’t need to justify ourselves; we have to play.”
