“On Facebook I vent my frustrations, but maybe I should be careful”

It is too early to imagine the moment when we will return to performances like before in a busy club, with beer in hand and without a mask on our faces, but Israeli music continues to show signs of recovery. One of them is the “Then. Now” project, in which musicians and producers bring Israeli masterpieces to life. The musical venture, supported by Volvo Vsounds, has provided a livelihood for dozens of artists and employees in the music industry, in days when most of them are in uncertainty. The father of the project, the veteran producer and artistic director Haim Shemesh, chose three classic albums and found them new “parents”: “The Golden Calf” is the bad version of the album “Ehud Banai and the Refugees”, “Watches” – Maya Belzitzman and Matan Efrat Inside Him “by Shalom Hanoch and” You Come to Me “, Tamir Gordin’s version of Sharon Lifshitz’s” Cinema “album. The “golden calf” is out today (Thursday), the rest will be released in the coming weeks.

Sun recounts that Prover was the first person he approached about the project. “Alongside the paralysis of the quarantine, there was also a powerful sense of outcry and protest in the air. The loss of control of the deranged establishment in front of the eyes has taken thousands to the streets, mostly women and men belonging to the culture and music industry. The bad choice was natural. He is a revolutionary. One of the deepest and most edgey musicians in Israeli culture in general and in Israeli music in particular. The combination between him and the refugees should already create sparks of hope and anger. It was clear that he would take the album to a new, more extreme place. A different and more dramatic story. “

Mochich, 49, is the son of musician and arranger Ilan Mochich, the big brother of musician Tom Mochich. He began his musical career at the age of 15, when he joined Meir Ariel’s charisma band, where he played alongside Yoav Kutner, Yehuda Adar and Miki Shaviv. In the early 1990s, he screwed up the Israeli rock scene and was a member of the Safed elders, Noise and Mess bands. In 1993 he participated as a music producer, composer, musician and singer on Berry Sakharof’s album “Signs of Weakness” which combined electronic music and rock, and he continued to collaborate with Sakharof on several other albums over the years. In the mid-90s he moved to New York, but continued to keep in touch with the local rock scene, and worked over the years with Maor Cohen, Yuval Banai, Yahli Sobol, Shlomi Shaban, Johnny Shuali and others.

In an interview with Ynet from his home in New York, he recounts how the renewed album was born. “Haim approached me about four months ago, just when some good people came to the aid of the music world, and told me that there are now a few pounds and want to do something with them, and offered to record cover albums. Some ideas came up when I thought about it, but this album won.” With the idea and budget proves worked out, but he had a bigger problem. “Two weeks before Haim called I broke both my hands while riding a scooter. When he called I was already with a cast on both hands, and I told him I would be happy to do it, and right after that I started thinking about how to make a record without hands,” he laughs and continues, “but the need He is the father of invention, and since I realized I could not play guitars or drum on the album, I used my collection of analog synthesizers from the 70s and 80s. Despite the cast, the fingers worked and I could use the keyboard. The technical. And so that it did not come out an annoying electronic record I played everything live, without Coffee Feast. I wanted it to sound electronic, but it also sounds new to me, because I started with electronic music very early. This album is very suitable for drums and synths, because they need cycles, And almost all the songs in it are on the same scale and without a lot of chords. “

Assaf proves to the project some of the great musicians of Israeli rock: Berry Sakharof, who performed “City of Refuge” 20 years ago, sings “The Golden Calf” here; Corinne Allal received “Your Time Has Passed” and “Stage Works”; Assaf Amdursky presents “City of Refuge” and “Continues to Travel”; Eran Tzur “Mix the Plaster”; Efrat Ben Tzur the “Blood”; And Kfir Ben Lish opens with “Black Work.” “I couldn’t sit with the singers in the studio both because of the corona and because of the budget and time constraints, and I had to make the singing take excellent, so I went for sure and chose the ones I trust,” he explains. “This time I started from the end, I asked them to sing how they wanted with some kind of accompaniment, and after that I built the arrangement. It came out very natural like this. To Berry I gave the ‘Golden Calf’ because it is an exact connection between singer and song, and I shared the rest – sometimes coincidentally Does the job for you. “

The result – as expected from the way of working – is very different from the original, but also beautiful and interesting. Proves, by the way, admits he does not know if the builder has already heard the final version. Two who played on the mythological album and will not get to hear the new versions of Mochich and his singers are Jean-Jacques Goldberg and Yossi Elephant (who also produced the original album) and this album is dedicated to them. He proves both he knows, but with Elephant the connection was really mystical. “In the early nineties, when I was 19, I played a lot of jams at the Logos Club in Tel Aviv, and Yossi used to get there and we connected. For a year he literally took me under his wing, until the day he died in Logos, right in front of my eyes. “Levels, he was kind of a guide for me and I took something of his spirit with me. He stays with me to this day.”

Although almost 35 years have passed since the release of “Ehud Banai and the Refugees”, the album continues to be relevant. According to Mochich, “When you do a cover record, the last thing you want is to mimic the original. I haven’t listened to the album lately, except when I wanted to find out which chord. I treated the songs as new songs, and even changed chords and added harmonies that were not original.”

Banai and the Refugees’ album was originally released at the same time as the beginning of Mochich’s professional career, when he joined the “Meir Ariel Election Campaign” tour as a very young drummer. “I saw ‘Mami’ at the age of 14, and even though I came from jazz I was very impressed,” he recalls. “The only ones that sounded original to me then and not just an imitation of something from abroad were Ehud and the refugees and Rami Fortis and Berry Sakharof of ‘Stories from the Box’. I felt and heard a revolt there, which is in my character. Many years have passed since then, but my connection to it remains strong. ”

Do you think that such albums can still be released in the country, or that the musical and cultural climate has changed?
“This is a difficult record with a lot of social protest. The ‘golden calf’ already says it all – that everyone acts out of confusion and despair and worships the wrong thing. This golden calf still exists today in a world of disinformation and worship of the wrong way out of fear. Even those who vote for Trump or Netanyahu choose I do not know if society today is open to protest and if it is able to look in the mirror.The refugee album came out as the golden age of music, before the internet and in a more innocent and cynical era, when quality and content were important.Today, everything is cheap pop.There is more freedom “Options for creation, but there is no filtering of information and the things that are easy to digest are the ones that float. But these are snacks, not a healthy or complex meal.”

Nearly 30 years of proving living in New York. Thoughts of returning to the country come up all the time, but he admits that because of the corona “everyone grabs the chair next to him and sits down, and I do not move either. I do not know if I can fly and return at all.”

How does the corona pass over you there?
“A few years ago I got mixed up. I stopped going on tour and moved on to home life and working in a studio. So by the time the Corona closed the show I was already trained and ready compared to my friends who took it very hard when they stopped performing. New York became more fun. The tourists stopped coming, the rich ran away To their summer homes, the students went back to their parents, and the real residents got the city back.It became very local, unlike Disneyland which usually is.The summer was amazing, people drank alcohol and restaurants took out tables to the street, which is not as common here as in Israel or Europe. It will be now. ”

What is less fun to prove are the projects that have been stopped or postponed because of the plague. “I’m very skeptical about returning the world to something normal, and I think it’s going to live with us for a long time to come. Today, if I see people without masks shaking hands, I’m appalled,” he laughs and immediately gets serious, “we chase our tails with all the mutations “And in all this, there are politicians who make a fortune out of it. The world is in chaos and I have no idea how it will come out of it. Unlike the war, there are no ceasefires here because there is no one to do them with.”

I often see your posts on Facebook. You’re a pretty angry guy.
“I read a newspaper and see what’s going on in the world, then go to Facebook and get upset. This is my place to vent my frustrations, so it might look like that, but now that you tell me that, maybe I should be a little careful,” he laughs.

What does not make him funny are the conversations he has with his friends and colleagues from Israel about the state of the culture that has been sitting here for about 11 months. “I mostly hear from them about the system’s contempt for the meaning of culture in a people’s life. The system, designed to make order out of taxes and collect taxes to invest in physical things as well as culture, does not. Culture is the infrastructure of the soul and depth to life, if you take culture from man. There will be nothing left of him. “

Next year, the Safed Elders’ debut album will celebrate 30 years. Any thoughts on a reunion or a new album?
“Each of us is busy with other things, so I do not see it happening. Besides, we are the fringe of the fringe – a punk band with a lot of humor, and there is no demand for this kind of rock ‘n’ roll in the country, and certainly can not have a permanent existence. In general, it’s weird “In my opinion, everyone becomes serious when it comes to music. Humor is the pinnacle of depth, and it gives freedom to see more sides and not be afraid of them.”