Review Fix Exclusive: Seek Irony’s Kfir and Rom Gov Talk ‘Tech N Roll’

Review Fix chats with Seek Irony’s Kfir and Rom Gov, who discuss the band’s first full length album, “Tech N Roll.” A wild sound encompassing multiple genres, they’re a band that has to be heard to be believed.

Review Fix: Not many band’s have the journey you guys have. Can you just share it with our listeners and tell us how it’s brought you closer together?

Kfir: Rom (my brother) and I have always been a strong back bone in Seek Irony. We’ve been writing/recording music and performing it live since I was 15 years old and Rom was 10 years old. Even though it turned out that the original members of the band back in Israel couldn’t follow Rom and myself to the US, we did go through A LOT together over the years. Now we have new American members who have joined the band but because of that journey, the former members back home will forever be a part of our family. They will always be like brothers for us.

Review Fix: What do you think really makes you guys stand out?

Rom: I feel that growing up far away in Israel, a country that is very disconnected, the band never experienced any pressure to fit any certain trend. That allowed us to develop our artistic growth over the years more naturally, it allowed us to stick to music that really inspires us. On one hand we grew up on Hard Rock and Metal listening to Metallica and Ozzy but since Tel Aviv is such a big Electronica capital we got inspired by a lot of Electronica Dance Music too. We weren’t trying to sound like a certain band but always had a vision of incorporating these 2 styles of music together trying to find the balance between both of those music worlds which we really love. We also choose not to stick to a specific genre of Rock/Metal or Electronica Dance Music. On the contrary, we prefer to celebrate the diversity. It took us many years to develop that balance and today I feel that our version of this balance is what makes Seek Irony unique. We still continue to grow. I hope we never stop growing as artists. Now with the new members of the band Alex Campbell, Adam Donovan and Mikael Oganes there’s a lot more growth to follow and more diversity to celebrate…haha

Kfir: I also feel that growing up in a place like Israel, we bring with us a unique message. Not that ALL our songs are necessarily focused on that lyrically, not at all. But some songs do tell a story that you wouldn’t be able to hear from an American or European band.

Review Fix: What makes this album a special one?

Rom: Tech N Roll is our first full length album. we’ve been writing and recording it over 6 years. We’ve been working on it for so long so It’s great to finally be able to share it with the world.

Review Fix: What’s your creative process like?

Kfir: We usually start off playing around with either a guitar riff or an electronica beat or I would simply write a melody while playing around with an acoustic. Then we usually cut some rough tracks of an electric guitar or basic synths and electronica beats and I would add a rough track of the vocal melody on top of it. Then I live with it for a little while and add the lyrics for the song and as I am writing the lyrics, I kinda shape up the final vocal melody accordingly. Once the naked song with just an acoustic guitar and vocals sounds good, we would then go into the studio and record drums, synths and electronica, bass, guitars, and vocals to complete the whole song.

Review Fix: What do you guys listen to? How does it shape the band?

Kfir: Our range of musical taste is VERY diverse – In Rock we listen to anything from old school Ozzy, Metallica, Dream Theater, Pantera to NIN, Tool, Slipknot, Deftones, System of a down, Rage Against the Machine, Muse to Rob Zombie, Rammstein  to Nirvana, Alice in Chains, Sound Garden to Jack Black, The Black Keys and so on.

In Electronica Dance Music we listen to anything from 80s like Depeche Mode to 90s like Chemical Brothers, The Prodigy to current EDM like Pendulum, Knife Party, Bass Nectar, DeadMau5, The Qemists, Skrillex and so on.

I personally feel that there is no good or bad genres of music – there is good and bad in EVERY genre of music – and as a musician I get inspired by the good music of all genres.

Rom: How does it shape the band? Well…let’s just say we bring a lot of different colors to our music.

Review Fix: How was “Devil in Me” written? is there a story behind it?

Kfir: “Devil in Me” came out a little different from the other songs because usually what happens when I write songs is I come up with a general idea for a melody and only then dive into writing the actual lyrics for it. In “Devil in Me”‘s case, I remember us in the studio, writing the Electronica Drum beat plus the main guitar riff for the verse and chorus and after listening to it a few times, as we are recording it, that chorus melody just popped up in my head WITH the words “you are, you are, you are the devil in me, taking over” and right at the moment, that pretty much defined what the song was about for me.

“Devil in Me” is a song about addictions – whether it is drugs, alcohol, gambling, sex or a love infatuation – you name it. I won’t say which it is for me to allow people to relate to the song in their own personal way. I decided to write it up kinda like a relationship between a man and a woman to give the addiction a life of its own in the song. I felt it had a cooler storyline by turning the addiction into a living personality describing the addiction almost like a person with schizophrenic behavior that has to go through a daily struggle of arguments and battles with that “Devil” inside, in order not to fall back into the addiction again and again.

Review Fix: What is the band like in a live setting? How does your sound change?

Kfir: We usually play the regular full live band version with Rom on Drums, Adam on Bass and Misa on Tri Bass which is a midi instrument that is a mixture of a guitar and and a Kaoss Pad (or an I Pad if you want) Alex on his 7 or 8 string guitars, Mikael on Synths and Ableton Push and I’m on vocals. We play with a crazy fully automated light show that runs on Ableton Live which we have pre programmed ourselves and we have 2 beautiful dancers in Costumes named Inna Grudtcina and Reese Campbell who join us at almost every show. The full band version sounds pretty much like a Live Rock show meets a massive Rave party. People at our shows Dance AND bang their heads :)

We also play Seek Irony live DJ/Electronica sets – So far we’ve been playing them with Rom on Drums, Mikael on Synths and keyboards and I perform the vocals. We perform EDM remixes versions we have written and recorded for our own songs. Soon we will start releasing some of these remixes so everybody could listen to them too. Also on this side of the band we don’t constrain ourselves to a certain genre of Electronica Dance Music. We are mostly concerned about trying to stay loyal to the true feeling of the original song.

Review Fix: What’s next?

Rom: The album is finally coming out, right now we’re shooting music videos for 4 singles on this album. We’ve got some big shows coming up, our songs are starting to hit radios across the US now and our aim is to start touring nationally across the US pretty soon and who knows, hopefully we could make it out to Europe and some other places like Australia later this year or maybe next year. A lot of cool things are in the works and it’s all very exciting.