The Quiet Earth Orchestra
Printed From: Progarchives.com
Category: Progressive Music Lounges
Forum Name: Interviews
Forum Description: Original interviews with Prog artists (which are exclusive to Prog Archives)
URL: http://www.progarchives.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=71962
Printed Date: April 19 2024 at 09:33
Software Version: Web Wiz Forums 11.01 - http://www.webwizforums.com
Topic: The Quiet Earth Orchestra
Posted By: toroddfuglesteg
Subject: The Quiet Earth Orchestra
Date Posted: October 06 2010 at 11:09
|
The Quiet Earth Orchestra looks like a title for a big band but is a one man project so far initiated by John Ludi from Chicago/USA. He's working on his album since around 1999 with some breaks here and there but 2008 has finally seen it brought to light. John Ludi plays all the instruments and also provides the vocals which makes this album to a completely rounded piece of work fulfilling his appreciation of writing lyrics and composing modern prog music. (words by Rivertree) I got in touch with John Ludi for his story. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Your biography has been covered in
your
ProgArchives profile so let's bypass the biography details. But
why
did you choose that name ? I'd
actually had that name lying around in my head for quite a
while...probably since the late 90's. It was from the movie The Quiet
Earth, as opposed to the Genesis song (though I love the Genesis song).
The Orchestra bit came about after I had gone through about an
orchestra's worth of various potential collaborators in search of other
people who would be into contributing to the album. Quite a few
expressed interest and then just kind of blew it off, as musicians are
wont to do. It's sort of a bit of wry humor, I suppose.
What is your musical background and
were you involved in any other bands before you started The Quiet
Earth Orchestra ? I
started singing and playing when I was about 12 or so. A friend of
mine in junior high school played piano and trumpet and was more or less
a prodigy, and we started messing around making horrible little parody
songs just for a giggle. Around that time I borrowed the Bongo Fury
album by Frank Zappa and Captain Beefheart from the local
library...which was a revelation. A further revelation was hearing the
first King Crimson album perhaps a week or so later. At that point I
felt my muse awaken and I started taking music very seriously. I
obtained my first guitar, an SG copy, and started learning how to play
lead lines before I
ever learned chords...really working on speed and trying to sound like
Fripp (though unfortunately I didn't focus too much on accuracy...and I
have retained a lot of those bad habits over the years). Around
1977 I also started listening to the English wave of Punk and was
inspired by the rage and the politics, so I kind of dropped the Prog
thing for a while in favor of music that I was more immediately able to
play, and formed a terrible little basement band with a couple other
early Punk fans...fortunately there are no records of this project as it
was completely awful. My
musical explorations continued and I stumbled upon the Ralph Records
bands (The Residents, Renaldo and the Loaf, etc), which inspired me to
start a band called Pliny The Elder, which lasted a couple
years and recorded about 200 "songs" of widely varying quality. After
that dissolved, I decided that I needed a more accessible platform for
my socio-political and philosophical notions, so I spent another 5 years
in a band called Soft War, which was not unlike a blend of Midnight
Oil, REM, and (at times) the Pixies. After
another year in a Minneapolis-based band called The Hate Gods (which
was not dissimilar to Soft War), I decided to just become a solo
artist. I recorded several albums under both the names Tim Elder and
John Ludi. During the recording of a John Ludi album called Hell's
Laughter and Heaven's Ache I started coming up with a lot of musical
ideas that were of the
extended-composition variety and started laying them down as part of
what would eventually be the Quiet Earth Orchestra album.
Which bands were you influenced by ? That
is a HUGE list...there are literally thousands of artists who have
inspired me..but specific to the QEO project, it would mostly be a lot
of the 70's bands and related artists: Emerson, Lake and Palmer,
Genesis, Gentle Giant, Steve Hackett, Peter
Hammill, Happy the Man,
Jethro Tull, King Crimson, PFM, Renaissance, Van der Graaf
Generator, Yes, all the usual suspects.  Please give us your long or brief
thoughts on your only album The Quiet Earth Orchestra released in
2008. How would you
describe the music ? It's
almost like a gothy symphonic prog...at least part of it. I think the
term "eclectic" would also apply. The first three songs had been lying
around for quite a while and have a certain uniformity of approach and
sound, whereas the 2nd part of the album is a much more recent and
diverse creation. I am very fond of the album overall, but the one
issue I have (that several reviewers were also kind enough to point out)
is the absence of an actual band. I would REALLY have liked to have
recorded this with other people in the mix..especially a live
drummer...and I tried to get a great many on board, but I think I did a
good job with making do with my own range of skills. I
did record the album with a live band in mind...all of it could be
played by just 4 people, including myself...but the idea of putting a
band together at this stage is not really on the horizon for me. There
actually IS another QEO album called World Without Words, that is a
collection of a bunch of instrumentals that I recorded around 1994 or
so...it is not nearly as good as the self-titled QEO album, but it has
it's moments. It is more world-beatish than Prog. Where can this album be purchased
from
and how is it's distribution ? In theory it is still on CDBaby, but you can download it for free off of the main John http://johnludi.com - I
currently have 7 albums up there for free download. I am following a
"donationware" type of model, so if people like it enough that they
would listen to it more than once or twice, it would be really nice if
they donated something to defray the costs.
How is your writing and creative
processes ? How
do they work? It's hard to define...sometimes it is a lyrical idea
that creates music around it, sometimes it's the inverse. Sometimes it
starts as a chord pattern on guitar or keys, sometimes it is an
improvisation around a drum pattern. At
times there are certain lyrical topics I want to deal with, and since
I've written probably over a thousand songs over the years it is pretty
easy for me to get a lyrical flow going in a poetic sense.
What is the latest updates and the
plans for this and next year ? Not
sure. I recently blew the dust off my instruments and started
practicing again and ideas have been coming to me once more...but
whether they are in the Prog arena is hard to say right now. I
had announced my retirement from music about a year ago and I'm still
kind of in that mode. I was extremely demoralized by the fact that both
the albums I released in 2008 were being "torrented" so widely...to the
point where if only 10% of what I suspect was being "torrented"
actually paid me what I would have gotten from CDBaby, I could have
afforded to record at least a couple more albums and thus give the
public more music to enjoy. But at this juncture, even if I
started recording again I may not ever release it...why bother if it is
just going to be stolen? That whole thing really kind of killed my
recording career as it is hard enough to be an independent artist in the
first place...especially if you are trying to do it on your own and you
can't afford to pay to promote a project if you know you won't be
getting anything back for it. To wrap up this interview, is there
anything you want to add to this interview ?
Those of us who
are not living in mansions and have to work for a living are going to be
increasingly dropping out of putting out material if people are going
to just keep stealing it from us. I would love to put out another QEO
album or three, but every album I put out takes a certain amount of life
force out of me, and the added insult of having it digitally bootlegged
just makes it not worth doing anymore. I'd be better off busking in the subway. A too familiar story these days, I am afraid Thank you to John for this interview His PA profile is http://www.progarchives.com/artist.asp?id=3799 - and his homepage http://johnludi.com - |
Replies:
Posted By: memowakeman
Date Posted: December 06 2011 at 18:05
|
Funny name for a one-man-band, a very talented one indeed! ------------- Follow me on twitter @memowakeman |