Interview with Piri Reis
Rezine: Who does what in the band?
Piri Reis: Hello, we are Piri Reis from Malaysia. Piri Reis consist of 5 band members which are Mira as vocalist, Arwith and Farhan both as guitarist, Jaka as bassist and Fakhri as drummer. Nice meeting you guys!
Rezine: How did Piri Reis started?
Piri Reis: We started on the 20th June 2014, still new. We started as 4-piece which is Mira, Jaka, Farhan and Fakhri. Mira was the bassist and Jaka was the vocalist at first. We jammed together for a few times. Later, Arwith came to the picture by telling Fakhri that he wanna form another screamo band but with a female vocalist. We invited him for a jamming session. We changed our position and tried jam together. Luckily it worked somehow. From there we started to get serious with it by planning our next phase and so on. Our first gig is called Forgive and it was held on 16 August 2014.
Rezine: What's the meaning of the name of the band?
Piri Reis: We have different band name before, but it seems the name doesn't fit us musically so Arwith came up with the idea, Piri Reis was an Ottoman admiral, geographer, and cartographer who draw the first world map, for us its quite impressive for someone who can draw a world map in that era, its beyond our imagination. Anyway we chose the name because we liked it.
Rezine: What's the band for you?
Piri Reis: We're more than just a band, we're like brothers & sister, a family, we hope the bond will be forever even if the band is no longer active. Everyone takes part in every band’s progress and everyone is there for each other. This is where we express our thought and feeling.
Rezine: Have you been playing your melodies for a long time before you decided to add them in songs ?
Piri Reis: It depends. Usually one of us will come out with some melodies and send it to the rest of band members. And then, we will meet and practice together until a song is formed. Because everybody has their own taste and opinion and it is important for us to feel satisfied and happy with the result. Some songs take a few weeks to complete, or maybe only a day.
Rezine: What's emoviolence for you?
Piri Reis: Emoviolence is sub genre of emotive hardcore band from the 90's, we love this sound as much as other Hardcore subgenre. We like it to be more chaotic and fast.
Rezine: What are your influences?
Piri Reis: For us we are highly influenced by the European screamo band such as Kaospilot, Tristan Tzara, La Quiete, Louise Cyphre, June Paik.
Rezine: What inspires your lirycs?
Piri Reis: All song wrote mainly by our vocalist, Mira with help from other band members such as the songs' title were from Arwith's idea.
Basically the lyrics are mostly inspired by Mira's past experiences which affected her and still affecting until now. Like, First There Was An Ophera, A Masquerade and The Padang Jawa Virgin Vigilante is about a bad heartbreak and how the suffering consumed her life and in the aftermath, she literally loves being in pain. It eats her.
The Devil's Deed Of Donetsk is basically to tell a story on how depression feels like indirectly to her. She used the depression as a subject, metaphorically reflected as a human or creature in this lyric.
Rezine: I love the song when life hand you a grenade, what inspired the lirycs?
Piri Reis: Thank you! When Life Hand You Grenade is about living in a war zone, on how the people is dying to go through just another minute in their life thinking they might be the next victim. They only pray for a better life and that's the only wish. Mira also highlighted that many people wanna help the people but they lied. They didn't do it sincerely, because there's always agenda behind every actions they make. And again, the people suffered more. That's also why we used the poem from Rafeef Ziadah called 'We Teach Life, Sir' which is dedicated to Palestinian youth.
Rezine: Do you have songs that are not available yet and we might here another time?
Piri Reis: Yes we do. We are actually just finished recording for our next releases. The first release will be on September with a great Japanese band called Sto Cosi Cosi. Then, we are still in planning for more releases, but we still don't have an actual confirmation yet. Godspeed!
Rezine: Is there a theme you like to talk about in your songs?
Piri Reis: Actually there's no theme in our songs. We usually write random stuff that we experienced, seen or heard. We never decide to have a specific theme for any song.
Rezine: Whats coming up for Piri Reis?
Piri Reis: We are now in preparation for our Japan Tour 2016 from 10 September - 19 September 2016. It's pretty exciting and scary as well because it's our first time to play in Japan. And with this Japan Tour, we will release a split with Sto Cosi Cosi. We are hoping everything will be okay and honestly we are very grateful for this opportunity.