PROGWERELD ANDROID MINI INTERVIEW

Progwereld is a Dutch website dedicated to symphonic and progressive rock. Mario Van Os from Progwereld interviewed József Tőzsér on February 2012. Here is the English version of the interview and the intr part (Kindly provided in English by Mario).(The interview can also be downoaded as a PDF file).

 

ANDROID MINI INTERVIEW
Hungary is not the country that is well known for its progressive music. When we last year did a country contest on our forum, it was quite difficult to call good progbands for Hungary. Further than Omega, After Crying and Solaris, the most of us did not get. So when the two CDs of Android fell on my doormat, I found the time was right to get further acquaintance with these guys and contacted keyboardist József Tőzsér.
 
Some readers may not know you. Please tell us something about the origins of your band.
ANDROID band was established in 1980 in Debrecen, Hungary, by students and a teacher of the Lajos Kossuth University (currently University of Debrecen). The group had a chance to practice at one of the dormitories. Keyboards, amplifiers, bass guitar were also provided by the university as we did not have money to buy them.  
 
Your first album “East Of Eden” was published almost 30 years after your formation and about 13 years after the first tape-recordings of it. Please tell us something about this process.
 While some band members played together in various formations, we played under the name of ANDROID only in three periods, between 1980-1983, between 1994-1996, and from 2008- till now. As most of the band members pursued other professions after finishing the university, we did not really go into music business, except the release of the “East of Eden” on tape in 1995 which material was completely re-orchestrated and re-recorded in 2009. Now we are old enough to have free time to spend more time on writing music, playing and recording and our affiliation with Periferic Records helps to distribute our music all over the world.  
 
You recently published a new album “Midnight Ball”. Please give us a short rundown: What are the themes, how did it come to be, etcetera.
Unlike the fully instrumental “East of Eden”, „Midnight Ball” contains songs with either recited texts or with lyrics. Out of the nine compositions, four are longer „micromusicals”, each having a short intro song. A characteristic feature of the album is that many of the songs have literary connection. Midnight Ball is based on the novel Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov. Judas Iscariot and Pharaoh were inspired by Robert Graves’ book, King Jesus and Boleslaw Prus’ novel, Pharaoh, respectively. Matthew 26:47 contains an excerpt from the Gospel of Matthew, while I’ll Be One with God was inspired by the Book of the Dead.
 
Who would you say are your influences, and what music do you enjoy listening to?
 Perhaps we were most influenced by the terrific music of the Polish band SBB that played a coupleof times in Debrecen in the seventies. We should also mention Fermata, Yes, Pink Floyd, ELP, Mike Oldfield, Tomita, Kitaro and at last but not least, DreamTheater.
 
What are your plans for the near future?
 We are putting together and ANDROID “sordino” project, which we can play for smaller audiences. Also we are working on new songs, but haven’t decided if our next album will be instrumental or not. We already have materials for both.
 
Would you like to say something to or share something with the Progwereld readers?
Unfortunatly in Hungary progressive rock is not a popular genre, although in the past many great groups existed (like Solaris, After Crying). We hope to find our listeners mostly abroad and hope that readers of Progwereld will like our type of music. You can listen to mp3 samples at our website (www.androidgroup.hu)
 
Mario Van Os Progwereld
14-02-2012
 

PROGWERELD ANDROID MINI INTERVIEW (pdf)