Cinematic Cityscapes and Post-Album Tattoos With Lithuanian Indie Band Colours of Bubbles

The Beijingers | May 15, 2018 10:23 am | Add a comment | 1323 reads

Melancholic and languid sounds are arguably the most distinctive flavors of the colder side of Europe's indie scene. Lithuanian band Colours of Bubbles aren't looking to break any rules in this regard, instead, they look to use their minor-led music as a call-to-arms in order to awaken the inspiration needed to make the world a better place. It's cinematic music that calls for visuals, whether on stage or in the minds of its listeners.

Hailing from the small town of Siauliai, the four members of Colours of Bubbles began playing while they were in school before going on to tour cities at home and abroad. Now they're heading to China and we were able to speak to the band briefly before their May 17 Yue Space gig about their inspirations, playing with a chamber orchestra, and their mysterious matching post-album tattoos.

TBJ: The instrumental portions of your music play a significantly stronger part in the song than your lyrics. You tend to use an incredibly broad and varied tempo, tune, or emotion to take listeners through a truly cinematic journey. What influences your music and how do you mostly go about producing it? Does one of you come up with songs or do they come from improvising together?
Colours of Bubbles: Regarding the album She is the Darkness, we first came up with the idea of creating a cinematic sounding album. We were into movie music at that time, so we thought it would be cool to create something similar ourselves, which is how that album and those songs were born. We were inspired by Hans Zimmer, Ennio Morricone, and numerous other composers.

We never improvise creating songs. Usually, Julijus (vocals) has the initial idea of – harmony, melody, lyrics – then we altogether complete the final sound.

You are known as a student group. Are your studies also related to music?
Not really. We finished our studies several years ago. Our bass player Paulius studied music technologies. He‘s a sound engineer at Siauliai drama theater, so he‘s usually responsible for the technical things in our band. Tomas [the guitarist] graduated from music management but doesn‘t do that. The rest of us studied in different fields not related to music.

We heard you all had tattoos done after the release of your debut EP. Is that true? What are the tattoos?
Well, we actually get tattoos after every studio release. We now have three of them. The first one was after the EP Today I Am Feeling Better Than Ever (2010). Tattoos are like child‘s sketches; they're all different. The next one was after the album Inspired by a True Story (2014), the name of which we got tattooed on our skin. Our last studio album was She Is the Darkness (2016), the album that we are bringing to China. For that, we tattooed different brasses.

What topics do you tend to address in your music? Or what emotions are you hoping to inspire in the audience while they listen to your songs?
We would like every person in the concert to create their own movie in their mind while we perform. We hope that our songs and all that cinematic sound will inspire, induce, and trigger a movie of their own.

What’s the indie rock scene like in your hometown? Are people welcoming and accepting of your music?
We grew up in Siauliai in northern Lithuania. There are lots of people who saw our growth and metamorphosis into what we are now. So we always have a lot of support when we have a show there. There is one song, "Home", in our repertoire that is dedicated to Siauliai. We love playing it live very much, especially when people know it or feel the need to clap together with the sound of drums. It’s magical!

You have recorded an album with a chamber orchestra. How did that idea come about and how did it work out in the end?
Yes, the last album utilizes concert recordings from the Vilnius Saint Christopher Chamber Orchestra. It was recorded live in Saint Catherine church in Vilnius. It was pure magic and it still is. We always dreamed of playing a concert with the orchestra. Our music is based on orchestral sound (timpani, brasses, string instruments etc.), so we worked really hard to make that dream come true. The result is just perfect – you must hear it to feel it.

So far we have released three singles from this album ("Ten Thousand Snowflakes", "Storm", and "Phoenix") and we are looking forward to playing some more concerts with the orchestra in the future. We have already announced our summer concerts with the orchestra in our hometown and in a medieval castle in Trakai. Those will be very special concerts for us. We are looking forward to them, but right now all our thoughts and preparations are for our She Is the Darkness China Tour. We are looking forward to this great adventure and we hope to find a new, open, and music-loving audience in China. See you soon!