And here's one more:

http://www.finland.org.ua/Public/default.aspx?contentid=245175&nodeid=31711&culture=fi-FI

Finnish Embassy, Kiev. March 2012.

Poets Of The Fall rocked their way into Kiev hearts

Kiev got to enjoy Finnish music for the third time during March when Poets Of The Fall performed at Chrystal Hall on Sunday March 25th. The Kiev premiere of Poets Of The Fall got an amazing reception as the audience sang along during every song! The band kept the vibes up in the roof by playing older songs as well as songs from the new album, Temple of Thought.

“Wonderful audience”, said Marko Saaresto when he met with ambassador Makkonen. The ambassador thanked for an excellent concert and welcomed the band back to Kiev. The band confirmed that this by no means will be their last gig there. The band arrived to Kiev from Moscow, where they played one of their biggest shows yet the night before. From Kiev they will travel back home to Finland, where after a few days of rest the tour will continue at Tavastia.

And what would a Poets Of The Fall gig be without loyal Finnish fans. Cheerios, four girls who met seven years ago at a Poets Of The Fall concert, have since toured the band’s concerts around the world. For one of them the number of concerts is fast approaching 200.

THank you tiger and DSOL for the translations and thanks everyone for finding the articles.

Thank you all for the wonderful translations and videos!! Your hard work makes it so easy for the rest of us to enjoy these! It is greatly appreciated!

Marko on RadioCity, it's the one from the last week and that's a good one even without understanding it

Radio City March 21st 2012
Marko from Poets Of The Fall at Pauliina’s Boudoir
Part 1

Pauliina: And here at Pauliina’s Boudoir the guest of the day is Marko from Poets Of The Fall. Good day.
Marko: Howdy.
Pauliina: You’re a sporty young man, you ran up the stairs to 6th story.
Marko: Yeah, it’s… using the lift is so difficult, that I rather took the stairs.
Pauliina: It pleases me that the first thing you did after stepping into the studio, you took off your leather jacket and vest and your tie and you opened up a couple of top buttons of your shirt and now you look more relaxed.
Marko: Yes, it’s relaxing. I like to wear that type of clothes but… there’s a limit to everything. I’ve been wearing them since morning. So when I arrived here and the atmosphere was so warm and easy going, I thought that strip tease is my life and I lost the clothes immediately.

Pauliina: Why on earth don’t we have a TV camera or a webcam in here yet?
Marko: Phew, I’m glad!
Pauliina: I shouldn’t have said anything, maybe you would have realized a moment later that we might have one.
Marko: Exactly so. You know at one point you got used to thinking that radio interviews are easy, you don’t have to preen your face. And then all the studios started having webcams and other cameras and it took a while to realize that maybe it’s best not to go anywhere wearing your old pajama pants with holes in them.
Pauliina: Is that what you usually wear, Marko Saaresto?
Marko: Well.. at home I usually spend my time wearing my boxers, it’s comfortable.
Pauliina: The most important thing is to wear at least some kind of pants, from a woman’s perspective. Or at least I think that they should be a) clean and b)if they have holes in them, the hole isn’t in the crotch area.
Marko: Right. Yes, yes, I understand that and that’s what I do myself.

Pauliina: What were you wearing while you were recording vocals for this new album Temple of Thought?
Marko: Ummm, usually I was wearing shoes. And yes, I had pants on as well.
Pauliina: You were wearing proper pants?
Marko: Yes. But what’s amusing is that, eahhh, I’m going to tell something I’ve never told before, but you at least take your shirt off at some point because it gets hot at the studio when you sing, especially in the singing booth that I use, it gets hot in there. So in the middle of a song a shirt might just fly out of there. And then I just sweat in there. Then I have a habit of stuffing my hands into my pockets when I sing to the mic and when I get excited, I press down so hard that my pants slide down. You know? And at one point I just notice that it’s happened again, I’m moon shining, and then you shout out “Wait a sec, I need to pull my pants back up! …Alright, let’s continue!”
Pauliina: Do you go commando, or do you push your underwear down as well?
Marko: The underwear either follows or doesn’t, it depends on how it happens to go.
Pauliina: You have a stylist who helps you out with clothes in addition to her real job and she’s also quite talented in designing clothes, perhaps you could order a harness from her. A bondage style harness that you could…
Marko: Brace pants.
Pauliina: Brace pants.
Marko: With jockstraps underneath.
Pauliina: Yeah. So no matter how hard you pressed down with your fists and your trained arms…
Marko: Oh, thank you.
Pauliina: …they just wouldn’t budge and your chastity at the studio would remain intact.
Marko: That’s true. But then again, I don’t really care about it, it’s just funny. I’ve gotten some laughs out of it because it’s such a silly thing.

Pauliina: On your new album the opening song Running Out of Time has a pretty strong Pantera riffs right at the start.
Marko: Yeap.
Pauliina: Where did they come from?
Marko: It has to make you feel out of breath because time is running out. So the song has to sound like what it’s about. And when I’m the most heavy metal dude out of us all, I would want heavier and harder all the time. But finding the right mood for the song is very important. The music has to serve the lyrics. For me the whole song comes from what the story in it is.
Pauliina: That song has a quirky ending also.
Marko [whispers]: Time.
Pauliina: Yeah, I was just going to ask if you could sing it for me. Could you sing a little before the [whispers] “…time.” Can you?
Marko sings: Crazy running like we’re running out of… [whispers] time.

Pauliina: That was Cradled in Love, a more sensitive Poets Of The Fall, but brand new. And here in the studio, the man behind that voice, Marko Saaresto visiting us.
Marko: Yeap. It’s probably our most sensitive song ever, but pretty good.
Pauliina: From what moods did it come to be born?
Marko: From tempestuous moods. Can you see it? Going through different tumultuous events and looking through them to see what the situation is. There are a lot of story there, very personal stuff, and it’s fun to revel in that for years to come. Like these were the experiences that made that happen and those stories brought something else forth: this was from here and that was from there. There are bits and pieces that created it, but it’s been developed by a certain period of time.
Pauliina: And with this answer you tried to go around my next question…
Marko: Really?
Pauliina: Can you tell what kind of tempests we’re talking about?
Marko: No. That’s the personal part that I don’t wish to bring forth. Plus there a hell of a… sorry for swearing, but there’s so much story behind it that it’s impossible to… we don’t have enough time for that.
Pauliina: Well… We could go for a cup of coffee after the transmission. You would be surprised for how long I can just listen.
Marko: Sure.

Pauliina: I’m not going to bully you more than this. Poets Of The Fall released their new album today, Temple of Thought. A temple for thoughts… And again on this album, one can’t escape to take notice of your voice which is completely in the league of its own. Marko Saaresto, for how long have you been singing?
Marko: Mmm… Quite a long time, since I was three. That’s when I discovered singing. And now I’m a 20-something.
Marko chuckles.
Pauliina: Just like me. So you didn’t have a super mom who decided that her son will be a rock star or a pop singer and then they took you to music kindergarten by force.
Marko: No, no. I did go to a music oriented class at school, which was nice and when I was… seven, yeah, I got a guitar for birthday present and they took me to guitar lessons by force. And it’s all been very useful and all. But when I was… I never did my homework so I never really learned to play the guitar like I should have. Or it was pretty much force fed, I was almost choking on tears at lessons. I did learn, but I hated it. I’ve always been the type of person to do things I want when I want. But it doesn’t work for me to have a schedule and then to have homework to do. I never did any of my homework at school either. I learned everything at class. And if I didn’t, I went to additional lessons, like before my final exams in high school. I had a hard time with math. Cos at one point my family moved, I had to change school and the class I went to was ahead of me at math and I couldn’t pick up. I was very lousy at it in high school still, until I took extra classes and realized how easy it actually was. It took me about a week to learn everything I needed to learn. It’s quite funny how it went, but it just happened that there was a guy who explained it the way I could easily understand. Well, once I start talking, I get lost from the original topic quite a bit.
Pauliina: It’s fine. Can it have been that as a junior high school kid you weren’t quite so mature yet but during your senior year you realized that you have to get it down and you had more motivation for it too?
Marko: Yeah, it’s possible there was that too. But I admit that… No, I mean… Well I admit that point, but the opinion that I have about it is that when I just didn’t know how to do it, and I didn’t get it when someone tried to explain to me, I just didn’t get how this formula or that integration or derivative or anything works. And when that teacher or any teacher realized that that guy’s just not getting it, they grew tired of trying to explain. And after that I just drew graffiti during the class or stayed at home to play the guitar.
Pauliina: Yeah. I still don’t get logarithms ad I didn’t learn it in high school. I understood everything else but logarithm was just beyond me.
Marko: Right.
Pauliina: Do you remember what it is?
Marko: Nope. I haven’t really needed it for anything since… it’s that curve which goes up a little stronger than exponent, but anyway, I haven’t needed it until this interview for the first time.
Pauliina: But you remember stuff like that by heart, still.
Marko: Yeah.
Pauliina. My goodness, I want to take the same extra lessons that you did. Do you think they’ll take me up…
Laughter.
Marko: Of course!
Pauliina: …now that I’m way past high school and getting excited about this. I think I might get logarithm too with such great teachers. Let’s continue in a moment, but now we could have a short break for commercials and then a bit of new Slash.
Marko: Brilliant.

Pauliina: And that was new Slash with a song You’re a Lie. That sounded, to my ears as well as Marko’s, a lot like Axl Rose, that guy.
Marko: I wonder if it’s coincidence or calculated? I really don’t know what I would do if we had to get a new singer. Would we take someone that sounds like the previous singer so that the sound would change as little as possible or would it be better to go for something completely different in some ways.
Pauliina: Our friend, the internet, claims that it’s a person named Myles Kennedy from a band called Alter Bridge, if you can believe that.
Marko: Ahh. Okay. Oh.
Pauliina: Axl Rose comes off to me as the kind of guy that once he has decided to be angry about something it won’t be easy for him to give in or to forgive or to make peace.
Marko: Yes, could be, I don’t know him at all. But he’s always struck me as impulsive.

Pauliina: Today I’m having Marko Saaresto as a guest at Pauliina’s Boudoir. Why don’t we continue talking about singing, now that we listened to Slash’s new vocalist with a practiced ear. You, Marko, have a very beautiful singing voice and you’ve been singing since you were three. So you thing that singing is something you can work on even if you’re not gifted?
Marko: Yes, it’s something that can be worked on. I think when it comes to anything at all you can work on it to a certain point. There are a lot of technical points to singing which come from the basic anatomy that everyone has. But when it comes to the sound you have, it’s one of those things you just get from birth. But then again, there are many skillful imitators out there who have been able to find someone else’s distinct sound from their body. Or the sound of a machine or different animals, and the imitations can be similar to the point of confusion. That would indicate that if you practice something enough, then… you can find anything in there. It’s a little difficult to speculate on that more but I think I said quite a bit already.

Pauliina: How about when it comes to yourself, Marko Saaresto? You have this curious phase in live during your teenage years. It has a profound effect on men’s voices, what was it like for you, being a singer? What happened?
Marko: It was quite radical for me because I was a full soprano before my voice changed. I did all the highest notes at our chorus and I was the chorus soloist. And what usually happens is that if you’re a soprano as a kid, you turn into being bass range. And it happened to me too, I’m bass-baritone. You can still do a great many things with your voice after that but… after my voice changed, I just didn’t know how to sing anymore, at all. I was completely out of my depths, just wondering what had happened. It’s like your head says that this is how it goes, but your body doesn’t follow up. It got difficult at that point. You’ve been given this gift, and it has always come naturally to you as a way of expressing yourself and until then singing was very easy to me, I just knew how it worked. Whereas someone else might have had to work a lot more for it at that point already. And for me it was easy. But then all of a sudden there was nothing. At that point people thought I was good at singing, and asked me to sing in their bands, and I was like yeah, I can, wait a minute, I can’t… you know? It just became very difficult. So I started looking into why it was so difficult, because I knew how it should work. But my body had changed so much that I had lost my ability to control my body and the technique of singing. That’s when I went on to take singing lessons a while after. And then I went through a whole plethora of singing teachers. They all knew what they were doing, but to get it into my thick skull how it was going to work for me again has taken a really long time, but after a while it came back. And as an instrument it’s just like any other. You can’t see inside your body, how your vocal cords or neck muscles evolve, it’s really something you can get better at all your life through.

Pauliina: Did it ever happen to you, like to so many young people, that you developed a crush for your teacher or professor?
Marko: No, no it didn’t happen at any point, nothing like that.
Pauliina: So you didn’t pick your teacher based on thinking how wonderful that person is and whom you kept thinking of when you went to sleep.
Marko: No, it didn’t go like that. I thought about completely other people.

Pauliina: Hey, tell me a little bit about this song, it’s not the most recent Poets Of The Fall: Carnival of Rust.
Marko: Oh, that one. That was a funny song. It came about as a result of just jamming. It was written on a very beautiful day at the beach. It was the kind of day when people were there to sunbathe and we were writing the song with Olli. And Olli said he has this guitar riff and we went through the ideas we both had. And there were all kinds of sounds around us, people talking. And then he started playing the riff to me and I was like “my goodness, that’s incredible… continue, continue”. And I felt something starting to come out of it and I started singing the song. It simply started coming just like that. And everyone around us went quiet. Completely quiet. All the kids had gone quiet, people were staring at us. And afterwards some came to thank us. And it was just a beginning sketch of that song. But we were like “I think this was somewhat good”.
Pauliina: Let’s find out how it sounds now, as a studio version.

^^ that was really interesting. Good questions. As always, thank you for the translations DSOL.

Thank you DSOL, this was really interesting and fun to read.

Radio City March 21st 2012
Marko from Poets Of The Fall at Pauliina’s Boudoir
Part 2

Pauliina: And, Marko Saaresto from Poets Of The Fall. Hello again.
Marko: Hey, hey. Hey, Hey, hey. Hey.
Pauliina: A showcase of your range, right there.
Marko: Yeah.
Pauliina: And I’m grabbing on to your singing voice still, because my own isn’t much to speak of. I don’t do karaoke even when drunk and it’s enough to tell a lot.
Marko: Okay.
Pauliina: So you had to learn how to sing all over again after your voice changed during your teenage years.
Marko: Yeap.
Pauliina: But you didn’t give up on it, you never got the feeling like “this is it”. Like “I sang pretty well since I was 3 years old but now I’m just Marko who only sings karaoke if even that”.
Marko: Drunken karaoke.

Pauliina: Is this somehow a very central characteristic trait of your personality?
Marko: There is a certain kind of not giving up mentality that I have, and I’ve always understood that I don’t know everything about this world so I’m pretty allowing of myself when it comes to making mistakes and being wrong about something and not knowing something. But when it comes to something that’s really important to me, such as singing, which is a very natural form of expressing myself, I just think that there must be someone out there who knows this stuff, mentors and teachers. No matter what it’s about, when I find myself at a dead end or something such, I just think there must be someone out there who knows, if I don’t know how to move on. And I’ll search for that someone who knows for as long as I need to. And that’s my vision in the tunnel, to find the person who’s going to help me out with it. When it came to singing, that’s how it went, I found a singing teacher and another one and another one. And often times the teacher didn’t have time for me, or they moved elsewhere. I’ve been tutored by some opera singers as well, but once they got signed with different opera houses in other countries, they had to move. And so my singing teacher changed every now and then. Sometimes things were left unfinished. With some of them I was able to work with for only 6 months, with others even up to 3 years. And then at one point I felt like I could quit with the lessons, that I knew enough. And for quite a while that worked well, but then I wanted someone else to have a listen of my voice again and I realized there was still many things I could learn.

Pauliina: So what happens during a singing lesson, Marko? If I were to go on a lesson for the first time and I would feel nervous and wouldn’t know what to expect. What might be the first thing a good singing teacher would likely ask me to do?
Marko: Ummmh, if I were your singing teacher, I would most likely want to know about your background, what kind of music you like to listen to or want to sing, and that will determine what we should start doing. And then I would listen to your voice, and find something in there that clicks. A good teacher can tell a lot by your posture and how you’re using your voice. The way your breathing functions, how evenly it flows. That’s how you see the areas that need developing and are worth developing. And there are different rehearsals for them and you pick out a couple of those that feel alright and start using them as tools to develop and experiment your thing. That’s how it goes. And then you pick out some songs that you want to do, one by one and you look into the song and spot the difficult parts that need improving or going through a little more.
Pauliina: Throw in some kind of a rehearsal, something basic.

Marko: A basic rehearsal. Well, this is what I’m going at the moment. My teacher told me that I have to… it’s a kind of a complaining mode. Mmm…eeeh, complete vocal technique calls it curbing. Like I should complain more. Like “eaaaah”. I’m supposed to do that while humming, I easily hum with a much softer sound. [Marko hums for an example.] So now I have to do this instead. [Marko gives another example.] This kind of stuff, like I should learn to lean towards that type of sound. That mode is the sound that I use for singing. And when there are difficult parts, certain higher notes that I find difficult, when I keep doing that it becomes easier and more natural all the time. And when my head tells me to sing something in a certain way, I’ll be able to pull it off. Once that is under control and comes easily, I’ll probably find something else that feels difficult. And at one point there was a time when I was training my vibrato like crazy. I wanted to be able to pull of all kinds of different styles of it.
Pauliina: Show me something. A really loud one.
Marko: A loud one?
Pauliina: Loud.
Marko: Ah, I have to go further away from the mic.
Marko screams out a heavy metal vibrato.

Pauliina: That was one kind of a singing teacher, or a mentor, Michael Monroe. Marko Saaresto, are you familiar with this Voice of Finland format?
Marko: Mmmh, yes, somewhat familiar, yes. I don’t watch TV so I haven’t really gotten into it.
Pauliina: How can you live without a television?
Marko: Quite brilliantly. I have so many different things to do that I think… I watch TV when I watch something on DVD. Like I’ve watched all the CSIs, House and all that so I just bought the DVDs and watched from them. Or a movie, if I want to rent or buy one, I do like to watch them. But just randomly turning on the TV and watching whatever happens to be in, for me it doesn’t work. For me it’s just a brainless waste of time. I rather do something else.

Pauliina: These days you can watch different series online legally, at the websites of different media houses and TV companies, after they’ve been shown on TV, should it interest someone. You can also get music online legally. From Spotify for example. You had a rather interesting coming out about Spotify when it comes to revenues. I have this news from Voice right here, and if it can be believed, your songs were listened for 26 000 times and all you got was 14 cents as a band.
Marko: Yes, this is a funny one. I actually got feedback from Spotify on this and we talked about it and I said a lot of good things about Spotify, it functions very well towards the consumers. You pay a certain amount of money, and it’s the kind of payment where people probably pay a lot more money for Spotify than they would normally pay for CDs within a year. And you get a huge library of music that you can listen to any time you like and so. It works very well to consumers. And without a doubt works very well for Spotify and they’re working on developing the system so that it would work better for artists as well. So the direction is a good one. But so far it’s not quite there yet. And the sums I mentioned were just a vague recollection, just something I took out of my hat. They wanted a correction on my statement because they do a lot of work for rectifying the situation and I agreed, I don’t mind making a correction to what I said, I’ll do it with pleasure.

Pauliina: So, Marko Saaresto, are you trying to take your words back?
Marko: No. Because point is that when they do a good job and I hope they will continue doing a good job… The point I had in my statement, which got a little too much attention, was that it’s still not at the level it should be, to be a good thing for the artist as well. I’m sure it’s going to the right direction. I got some accounting numbers a while ago just to be rightly informed and in my opinion the sums aren’t the point. The point is that the situation is where it is and it’s moving to a better direction. And I’m sure it’s moving to a better direction in their opinion too and they want to keep developing it. But I think according to one revenue document there was 15 845 plays and I think I’ll get bad feedback from this as well, and the amount of revenue was 66 € and change. So it’s still not at the level it should be. And the latest revenue had been over 1000 €. But I don’t know how many plays that 1000 € included. I wasn’t able to acquire that information.

Pauliina: What can a band get for 1000 €, for example? If you think about what amounts of money goes into keeping you guys in the business.
Marko: You don’t get pretty much anything for that. A couple of plane tickets for some gig.

Pauliina: I once interviewed this Jonathan from Spotify. Or actually... no, yeah, their CEO. Yes. And it happened on the phone and we had 15 or 20 minutes reserved for it and he was on his way to Tampere Music and Media event and he was sitting in the taxi, going from Helsinki to Tampere by taxi and I tried to talk numbers with him. Like net sales and coverage and so. And he started his answers by saying “You know, Pauliina, it’s a very good question”. And he spoke to me with his fine English for a long time, and had I been there in person with him he probably would have given me a glass of wine and some flower. And I asked again and said that it was a very fine answer, Jonathan, but you didn’t answer the question I was asking.
Marko: Right.

Pauliina: And we kept playing mouse and cat for quite a few dozen kilometers there. But afterwards he had told his Finnish wife what an expert reporter I was. That I hadn’t fallen for the “You know, Paulina” trap.
Marko: You didn’t fall for it.
Pauliina: But still, I didn’t get any numbers.
Marko: Right.
Pauliina: I never got the numbers. I’m still waiting for Spotify to actually give information about their net sales and other figures in their media statements.
Marko: Yeah.

Pauliina: But it’s a good thing that they’re trying to find some kind of a channel for…
Marko: It’s really great in my opinion as well. And for my own part I want to cheer them on for trying to find new ways to do business in this field and I want to support them in the work they do and in the direction they want to go. I’m just hoping something good will come out of it for us artists as well, in the end. For real.

Pauliina: Next up we have some Def Leppard and Pour Some Sugar On Me and if you don’t have this album yet and would like to have it, remember not to download it for free. Go to a record shop or buy the monthly Spotify membership.
Marko: Yeah.

This is fascinating!!! Thank you so much, DSoL!!!

That RadioCity interview was interesting to hear
It really was a coincidence that Marko and the interviewer lady were talking about maths and I just had math class two days ago about logarithms at evening school. And I happen to suck at maths also

@DSoL

This Radio City interview was really interesting. Thank you so much for this looooooong translation.

@DSoL
Thaaank youu so much for our ability to read all of these articles and interviews!!!! <3

Great interview!! Thanks for the translation! I had listened to the interview last night and was LOLing at the noises he was making at one point. Now I know what he was doing
Thank you!!

OMG! DSOL! The last one was marvelous, but it must have taken forever! Thank you so much!

Thank you Tiger! Your English is better than mine! So please don't think it's bad at all!

serinde, dang if you don't find everything! Thanks so much!

Thanks to all for photos as well! Very fun, and great ones!

South American gig? When was confirmed a gig in South America?

Thanks everyone for interviews and translations!

Short interview with Marko here. It's an English one already.

I'm so behind with interview... it'll take me forever to get back at them all
Thank you so much for all the collective efforts to find them and translating them.
DSOL; the Radio City one was really great

Very nice one, serinde, thank you!

And very interesting the Radio City one, again a great work, DSoL, thank you!

another interview

Thanks serinde for finding this!
Metrolive.fi
Original article and photographs by Tiia Öhman


The singer of Poets of the Fall skateboards inside his apartment

Photo captions:
1.The singer shields his ears while the band is getting noisy during sound check.
2.Signing the back stage roof.
3.Marko dressing up for the evening.
4.Last check up on clothes and then off to the stage.

INTERVIEW The singer of Poets of The Fall holds on to his inner child

Poets of the Fall published a new album, Temple of Thought. Metrolive.fi snatched Marko for a revolver interview.

Why don’t you seem like your age, 40-something?
-(imitating the voice of a small child) But I’m not, I’m four plus one. If you were here, I’d show you with my fingers, like four fingers up from one hand and one finger up from the other.

Society creates a pressure to drift to a certain track: a house loan, kids and everything that’s traditional. Have the paths of your life ever been defined by the way one should live?
-Yes, many things have, the “should” is something I’ve found a good choice to learn away from. It would be good if people learned that it’s the most useless word in the vocabulary. Even curse words are better than “should” because “should” creates pressure to be someone or do something that they should.

-Whatever you do or whatever you are ought to come from what you really want to be and what you want from life. A house loan has to be paid of course, and children need to be taken care of, for sure. I for one have a very high work ethic. Anything that’s agreed upon will always get done.

A couple of years back you had a skateboard in your car. When did you last use it?
-Hey, I have a new skate board! The weather being what it is, I’ve skated inside my apartment (laughter). I do it just about every day.

You’ve studied several different professions and you have many hobbies. Do you have too much energy or is this some ADHD of life?
-I want to try all kinds of things. If I get into something, then I’m willing to go far with it, but if not then I’ll leave it at that. Maybe it’s some kind of an ADHD of life rather than too much energy, because I get tired easily sometimes. In some people’s opinion I’m perhaps like… Well, I once wrote a song that goes “like a child forever”. That’s the kind of philosophy of life that I perhaps have: to preserve your child-mindedness and to be curious and to want to learn and see new things all the time.

What’s the most childish thing you did this year?
-Probably got angry over something useless.

What’s the most grown-up thing you own?
-It may be that Le Corbusier divan. In my opinion it’s somehow really grown-up.

Do you remind some comic hero?
-Hmmm, yeah, spider man! Or actually maybe Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes. Yeah, Calvin!

What would you build out of lego blocks?
-The Eiffel tower and a Sphinx.

Which one of these would entertain you most on a road trip: a book, a pen, a phone or knitting pins?
-The first three! No, some good book. Yeah, a good book.

To what movie would you like to do the score for?
-I cannot say at all. Perhaps some Harry Potter. Yeah, that could be something with dramatic stuff going on, so you could do something tasty with it. Finding Neverland came to mind as well.

If your recently released album Temple of Thought was a movie, what movie would it be?
-It would be a strong dramatic thriller about love and relationships. There would be many different people in the story and relationships between them… and one of them would do paragliding as a hobby.

@ Dark Side of Light: thanks so much for translating all this stuff, the last interview was a delicious way to start the day!

thanx again DSoL, as always. You're great.

This was great! Thanks for finding and translating - I like the 'should' thing

ps. Marko had a skateboard in his car? lol... that's cool XD

Thanks so much @serinde for that nice interview!

DSOL, you just translated my fave Marko interview EVER!

I always thought I had a problem, with authority, with not always seeing things in an adult way, wanting to wipe the word "should" out of the English language as well as the phrase "why don't you act your age" ( not used in the interview, just from me ) and thought riding my horse in my house would be an awesome idea in bad weather!

@Snow Welcome

I love interviews not only because they're entertaining and allowing to know Poets just a bit better, but I mostly because Marko is such a wise guy with great attitude for life that I always find his thoughts valuable and sometimes I'm even able to feel better and more confident about myself, about how I see life. Replacing at least some of "should's" with what I "want" and feeling less and less in need to justify this, explain myself. And yep, I'm getting philosophical right now, so I'll just stop


And now he skates in his apartment, I started wondering how big that apartment is

Well, I just have to second you, Snow, in almost everything!

Thank you, serinde and DSoL! This one was just delicious.

for your inner child, any place is big enough to do some skating

Yle X: New Music Evening Shift, March 19th 2012

Radio spoof: New Music Evening Shift
Host: New Music Evening Shift guest tonight is Marko Saaresto from Poets of the Fall. Hello.
Marko: Hey, hey to everyone, also to myself.
Host [laughs]: How am I doing?
Marko: How am I doing, really? To ask myself that…
Host: And then if you could answer it as well.
Marko: I’m a little bit confused right now.
Host: You’re making my job very easy.
Marko: Yeah, thanks. Why don’t you just go and have some coffee, I can just… well, yeah, go ahead.
Host: You’ll just talk about the album. At least it would be an interview you would enjoy. Or I don’t know if it would be.
Marko: You’ll just look at me in horror when I go and press that button from there. “And next up we’ll listen to some Bon Jovi.”
Laughter.
Host: Why don’t we go about this in a traditional manner. I’ll ask the questions and you’ll answer whatever you’ll answer.
Marko: Mmm.

Host: Every other year the definite sign for the arrival of spring is that you guys come out with a new album.
Marko [laughs]: Spring is here!
Laughter.
Host: No, it really is. When you look at it, Revolution Roulette, Twilight Theater and Temple of Thought, every 2 years the album comes out in March.
Marko: Yeah.
Host: It isn’t a coincidence.
Marko: No, thanks for telling me how to measure the passing of time. Every time the album comes out you can think that it’s been 2 years since the last one. Like “yeah, it’s all good”.
Host: Well there was that compilation album in between that came out last spring.
Marko: Yeah, there was that. But it goes like once the album is out we tour for a year or one and half years. And after about a year, you kind of curdle and then you have to get back into the studio. And by that time there are all kinds of song ideas and pieces of lyrics written on a cigarette box, a whole pile of them and stuff like that. And then you go and work on them.

Host: Yeah. One of the things that have always happened around the new album release is that it goes to album chart number one spot.
Marko: Oh, I wish, I wish it would!
Host: It’s happened every time and of course it will happen this time around as well. I don’t even dare to think about how the world… how the balance of earth will be shaken in case it doesn’t go straight to number one.
Marko: Dear listeners, now a paid commercial, the new album will be in stores on March 21st so go there, Temple of Thought.
Host: So do you have a big party planned for the 5th number one chart spot?
Marko: We have this traditional “let’s hiss open our bottles of coke”. That is how outrageous we can really get at our studio.
Host: So you haven’t even had any variety there, like sometimes Coke Zero or Light Coke…
Marko: I guess someone has had a Coke Light sometime, and if I recall correctly, someone even had carbonated water once.
Host: Whoa!
Marko: Oh-hoh-hoh-hoh, that’s pretty far out there already.
Host: It was during that insane 4th album.
Marko: Those crazy years back then, yeah. I think we’ll soon have to move on to some kind of a powdery substance, now that we’re starting to get a bit older.

Host: Oh no, not at all. Well, your new album Temple of Thought will be released tomorrow. And it’s the 5th studio album and an ending to a trilogy.
Marko: Yes.
Host: And if I understand right the two first albums, Signs of Life and Carnival of Rust, are the two…
Marko: They’re the first two parts.
Host: They’re the first parts. So how did it take you so long to put together an ending to the trilogy, you have 2 other studio albums in between there already.
Marko: That’s because people don’t want to be completely logical or chronological in what they do.
Host: At least not all people.
Marko: Not everyone. At least not me. I’m such a messy guy that no one can figure me out. But it’s fun to do things in the order they just happen to come to mind and depending on what’s giving you inspiration. But this was a really clear one, I knew when we were working on these… at least by the time we were working on Carnival of Rust. I knew it was going to turn into my trilogy perversion at one point. That at some point there’s going to be the final part for the first two albums.

Host: Ok, But it wasn’t something that was going to happen right then after the first two albums, that you had to do different kind of stuff in between first.
Marko: All albums are in some ways related to the time when they were created. We had all kinds of influences around us back then and from those things Revolution Roulette came out as our third album. And the thought behind that of course was to be careful of what you wish for.
Host: Yeah, yeah.
Marko: And here we now have Temple of Thought, which is about being human and how things always have at least two different sides. Usually many more than just two: depending on how you look at something it can look completely different.

Host: About the lyrics, like you said, you’ve gone through many different themes on this album, but musically this is a familiar continuation to Poets of the Fall. So if one has listened to Poets before, one is sure to find this album as well, there aren’t that many surprises there. But what on earth! The Happy song! The last song on the album and it goes really weird there.
Marko: Yeah, but if you think about one trilogy ending or about to end, there’s a small introduction to the next one already. If you think about Revolution Roulette opening song More, there’s something similar here.
Host: Yeah.
Marko: So that’s how we’re going on. But yeah, The Happy Song…. Just the way it has been named, it is quite happy, that song.
Laughter.
Marko: We just had to let go a little, and when we were working on it we knew it was going to be the ending song of the album. The whole theme in all the songs, the story that I don’t really have the time to tell right now, I’m glad it gets an ending like that on this particular album.

Host: Does this somehow reflect... Are there more of these psycho type of songs in your desk drawer? More of this “way out there” material?
Marko: Yes. Yes, there are. But it might never even end up on an album or we haven’t even intended something for ourselves. But somehow that one was just so, that it… it…
Host: That one will probably wake people up a little. But with a whole album full of stuff like that, would it wake people up a little too much?
Marko: I pretty sure it would wake people up too much. But I think it’s a good thing and we’ve always had songs from one end to the other. If you think about Cradled in Love and then about The Happy Song, it’s pretty much…
Laughter.
Marko: It’s the whole spectrum of experimental viewed from all angles.

Host: Yes, yes. True. To continue with a tradition, you’re going back to Russia this spring and it’s become a traditional thing for you guys to do. I checked out the structures of my previous interviews with you and all of them ended with “So, you’re going to Russia”. Once again you’re targeting Russia, it seems to be a good place for you apparently.
Marko: For us it’s a big market area and a great place to have concerts in. We have a lot of people there, and every time we go back there are about twice as much people as the last time. It’s going to be like that this time around too.
Host: Is it really so that the Russians are crazy about you, or are there a few rich oil magnates who pay big money to get you over there.
Marko: I’m just waiting for some rich oil magnate to want us for a private gig in his boudoir or something. But really, the word of mouth works so well over there, like “that was a great gig, you should see them too” and people come. A couple of years ago we had some Finnish fans coming over as well cos they had heard that it’s crazy. And they came to talk about it after the show, like “we heard it was crazy, but now we know it really is”!

Host: So you’re going to the same place as last year when your tour started. It’s a familiar place.
Marko: Familiar place. Yeah, it was a great place.
Host: Finnish fans will get their chances to enjoy Poets of the Fall live show as well. A sizable Finnish tour coming up.
Marko: Absolutely. We’ll never ever skip Finland. Finland is our home.

Host: Yeah. Well you’ve already been doing this for years and if you think about playing music live and how things are on the tour, has anything changed over the years?
Marko: It’s become a lot more fun and it’s more relaxed these days. Like way back in the early days we used to be tense and stressed and really particular about everything, cos we didn’t have the experience yet. And then it started turning into a routine and at some point it just became numbing. I was really fed up and almost wanted to quit doing this stuff altogether. And then some time passed by and it became really jolly. I think it’s a pretty standard learning curve for anything: first it’s exciting, then it gets boring and finally you learn how to be.
Host: So now you’ve finally learned how to be?
Marko: Yeah.
Host: Life is smiling.
Marko: Yeap.

Host: Day after tomorrow the new Poets of the Fall album Temple of Thought is coming out. You can find information about the upcoming gigs on the band’s website. Marko Saaresto, thank you for this and all good things to you.
Marko: Thank you.
Radio spoof: New Music Evening Shift, YleX.