I had the chance to interview Pegasus, one of the greatest Swiss bands out there, after they made Open Air Gampel dance to their addictive electro-rock sound in August. You can find all the details about the concert in the review here.

Thank you again to Andrea Gujer from Musik Vertrieb for making this interview possible. Thanks a lot to Noah Veraguth and Gabriel Spahni from Pegasus for letting me interview them and for being so friendly, we had a nice chat 🙂

 

The Liberation: In which way your new album “Love & Gunfire” differs from your previous albums?

• Pegasus (Noah Veraguth – Singer): Well it’s a bit more progressive in terms of electronic sounds, we use them in different ways than we did in “Human Technology” for example. It has nothing to do with the albums we did before “Human Technology”, it’s a bit more like “Human Technology”. It has a concept of sounds and a concept of themes, the second half of the album is like an entire suite. I think it’s an interesting album, I’m proud of it.

The Liberation: Good! What did supporting Hurts bring to you as a band?

• Pegasus (Gabriel Spahni – Bass): We went on a Europe tour with Hurts, we had our own tour as headliner after that in the same cities and our shows were nearly all sold out. I think the shows with Hurts really helped to do that, it was a good start to play more gigs.

The Liberation: Are you planning to go anywhere else?

• Pegasus (Gabriel Spahni – Bass): We are planning to release “Love & Gunfire” in some countries in Europe and then we’re gonna tour there again, so yeah sure!

The Liberation: So are you ready to take over the world after Europe?

• Pegasus (Gabriel Spahni – Bass): (they laugh) Are you ready?
• Pegasus (Noah Veraguth – Singer): I am. I’m not sure if the world is ready for us. (laughs) It’s something you have to build up. We’re an act that has to build, play and play and build its own community. I think the tour we did with Hurts was a good start, we got to know a lot of important people from the music industry outside Switzerland. It was a very important step for us. We’re building on that, we’re gonna release “Love & Gunfire” in Europe we’re gonna tour Europe again and we’re gonna see where it takes us. It’s gonna be a lot of work and especially a hard work.

The Liberation: How does your producing process work? Do the lyrics or the melodies come first?

• Pegasus (Noah Veraguth – Singer): Well, it’s both at the same time. You’ve got a good melody, you’ve got the good chords an then it grows. From there you get to the good lyrics, you’ve got a good title and you’ve got a good song. After that you write the lyrics. It’s something that grows, every song grows from just being a riff and be played around. From there you get the idea, you build it up and take it somewhere. Then you make a demo at your place and then you show it to the guys, to the producer and you decide what to do with it. I think the magic happens when you’re writing the song, in the studio it’s much more somewhere where you often have to recreate the magic you felt when you were writing it. The studio is a complicated place for me.

The Liberation: And what about you?

• Pegasus (Noah Veraguth – Singer): He doesn’t do shit!
• Pegasus (Gabriel Spahni – Bass): I like to be in the studio because of the all process. For example the last album we did, “Love & Gunfire” it was as if we had different stations and different studios working and everybody could work on something different, somebody was working on a beat, someone else on the songs, on the guitar, on the vocals. I like it a lot.

The Liberation: Making a living out of music in Switzerland. How do you see it?

• Pegasus (Gabriel Spahni – Bass): I think Switzerland is a good place to make a living out of music. I think it’s harder in other countries from what I’ve heard. But still, it’s hard work and you have to give a lot.
• Pegasus (Noah Veraguth – Singer): You have to establish yourself. Once you’ve established yourself from there on it gets easier. But I think the start of everything is very hard to do because you want to invest most of your time in the group but you still have to earn money with something else. But then, when you earn money with music, with what you love, making music, it’s a privilege to just do what you like and what you are passionate for.

The Liberation: Do you have any big plans for the future?

• Pegasus (Noah Veraguth – Singer): Get married, have four children and settle down in Locarno. (laughs)
• Pegasus (Gabriel Spahni – Bass): Play a concert on the moon!
• Pegasus (Noah Veraguth – Singer): Yeah play a concert on the moon. No, we have a long term plan, we want to bring everything outside of Switzerland, we want to make it grow outside of Switzerland and as I said before this is something that’s gonna take a lot of work and time. But we are patient enough because we had the same thing in Switzerland, we didn’t breakthrough from one moment to the other, we really had to build it up with every album. It’s gonna be a lot of work but we’re ready for it!

The Liberation: Have you already started writing new songs?

• Pegasus (Noah Veraguth – Singer): Yeah, we’re actually working with the guitarist of Hurts (Lael Goldberg) at the moment, we’re jamming around with him, exchanging ideas. That’s one of the great discoveries we had playing with Hurts, because we got to know the people in the band and they liked us very much and they are ready to invest some time and play with us and try out new sounds. This is what we’re doing at the moment besides touring.

The Liberation: What about the concert you just played? How did you feel on stage?

• Pegasus (Gabriel Spahni – Bass): I liked it a lot. We had never played at Gampel before so this was our first time. It’s really cool, you know the view here, and the people were really cool.

• Pegasus (Noah Veraguth – Singer): The same for me. It’s just that afternoon shows are more relaxed, because people are relaxed, the sun is shining, the weather was good, everything feels easy and there’s not so much pressure when you play at 4pm or 5pm in the afternoon. So I enjoyed it very much. I had a bit of a problem with my voice though, because we’ve been working very hard and sleeping very little and yeah…

The Liberation: I didn’t notice it.

• Pegasus (Noah Veraguth – Singer): I screamed, I screamed. (laughs) In the last song it was hard to keep my voice.

The Liberation: I thought it was awesome!

 

 

Simona @TakeMe2aConcert