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We are now only a couple of days away from the “Edendale” release, and Mr. BigBang himself, Øystein Greni, took some time out of his busy schedule to answer some questions from the fans. We really appreciate it!

Øystein Greni answered questions from the fans

BigBangfans.com is looking forward to the 9th of March. Do you guys consider Edendale your best album ever?
That would be impossible to say, albums need to live for a couple of years and then you’ll know if they age gracefully or not. But the songwriting process, the interaction between Niko Olaf and myself and the recording process has bee the best by far in my opinion, especially Olaf´s drumming and Bryan Cooks engineering.

The record is called “Edendale”. Beside the press release explanation for the actual name, is there any other reason for the name?
It’s another one of many unintended Californian puns; eden meaning eden and dale carrying the frightened suburbia prose banner. Still these shameless juxtapositions bear some good fruits.

Having been to a lot of BigBang live performances, can you promise any surprises live in the upcoming tour?
Nikolai will be the surprise otherwise we will try and juggle the songs around for the best possible set-list… I just got a telecaster that will make you cry if you care about great guitar sound!

Over the years it seems the average BigBang fan is getting younger, at least from a live visual point of view. Does it affect the band in any way?
It makes us feel older! Hehe! Or maybe it’s the other way around! From my point of view when we play shows I connect with people that get what we do. You know that seem to understand what the songs are about etc… A girl can be as cute as hell but she’ll still look miserable if her timing is off or she’s trying to flirt during a sad section of a song about breaking up. It’s not as bad as when people on stage do that though… Sometimes I go to shows and you can just tell the bassplayer has no clue what the songs is about.

Will Nikolai stay in the band or is his comeback temporary?
Nikolai is torn between many great projects, BIGBANG being only one of many, for olaf and myself we love playing with him as often as we can, but he needs to spread his talent around and we are in the fortunate position to have a lot of great bassplayer friends that can help out. For this tour Niko will do most of the shows and we are all extremely exited to be playing together again.

"This tour Niko will do most of the shows"

Any plans to bring along more backup musicians on tour, so that you are able to play a broader range of songs?
Ooof… We’ve tried that a bunch of times and it never feels right… There is something about the quick interaction in a trio that I guess could be compared to short-board surfing… Meaning you’re much more flexible than with a great big orchestra. But I sometimes dream of adding another guitar player and a keyboard guy. Josh Moore my brother from Houston would be the one. His contribution to this record is very important.

Seems like a lot of the Norweigan top artists have been offered to perform with KORK lately. Has anyone had a similar idea with Bigbang?
There has been some talk about it, but honestly I don’t think we’re the band that needs this treatment the most. Certain songs would sound cool with the Wagnerian touch though… Niko could write it out etc… But I’d rather do 20 drumkits… The sound checks when we try to synchronize the falling backdrop and the extra drumkits are great!

If you only had time and money to visit one venue on the upcoming Norwegian tour, which venue would you prefer and why?
You never know where magic will occur, some venues we find harder to figure out than others, but oftentimes the shows you dread playing turn out to be the best ones.

Earlier you requested bands to apply as support in Norway. How have the response been and when is there more news about it?
We’ve had great response; we’re still listening and picking the candidates. I think they will add excitement to the shows, and give people more bang for the buck ; )

International tour and release plans have been mentioned. Is there any specific details you want to share, or when can we expect to know more about it?
We are working on it! In general we’re not that great at the networking and business side of things, it seems to me that in some bands that are really good at marketing and publicity, the music sometimes suffers. I hope our lack of business sense benefits the music!

Since you guys have been living in the over-seas for a year, we were wondering if you would like to share the secret of the best surfing spot in California?
That would be like asking a Dane about the best mountains for skiing… I suck at surfing but love doing it. In fact I just got back from surfing Topanga, but my favorite wave is at Surfrider beach in Malibu… None of those spots are secret.

Nikolai and BigBang are back together.

Both “From Acid To Zen” and now apparently the new album have it’s own vinyl release. Will you consider releasing the previous albums that’s not already released on vinyl for the hardcore fans?
We would love to do that, I also often dream of re-mixing “Frontside rock´n roll”, that record deserves a better mixing console than what we had at the time.

It’s 10 years since Electric Psalmbook, any plans for an anniversary celebration?
Not really, do you think we should? We could make a book with the great photos that Nils B Kvam and Alex Kayiambakis shot… Would anyone buy that though?

It’s also been 10 years since the By:Larm breakthrough. What is the incident you regret the most in these 10 years, and what is the bands greatest victory?
Greatest victory will be the fact that we’re still playing and it’s so much fun. Regrets would be not making certain songs better… That’s always a challenge. Sometimes a song will get there after several years of playing it live, other tunes are great on the record but impossible to recreate live.

We heard some rumours that you guys have been filming the recording of Edendale. Is there a new DVD coming up?
We have lots of great material already, and this is the third record after RRTS, so maybe there will be one DVD for every three records.

With that last sentence Øystein reveals his plans of a DVD release sometime in the future. BigBangFans.com can hardly wait! For now, first thing’s first: Edendale is hitting the stores on Monday, the 9th of March! Run down to your nearest recordstore and get it!