I caught up with Kfir Gov, frontman for Seek Irony, before their trip to the States Sunday to record with Sylvia Massey Shivey…

MI: hi!

KG: hello

MI: So what’s up? how’d u get the deal?

KG: well… last year, Seek Irony decided, after playing shows for 2-3 years around the Tel Aviv area, that the band can’t get any further than where it is. So we decided to organize our own US tour. Basically, we contacted lots of bands in the states and organized shows with them all around California and Texas. When we arrived in Texas we met up with a band called Kritickill who is pretty big in their area. They played with bands such as Sevendust, Slipknot, Flaw , Coal Chamber, Fear Factory and many more. I was this whole time in touch with their manager through emails, who promised to help us out when we get to Texas. His name is Ray Vanhoozer.

Anyway, when we got there the promotion was tight, the local radios were talking for weeks about the band from Israel playing with Kritickill. At the show there were about 1000 people. The show went great! Better than we expected even. We sold in one night a third of the amount of all the EP’s we’ve sold in 2 years in Israel. Crazy night, lots of girls, I’ve never signed so many autographs in my life…Anyway, Ray, who was Kritickill’s manager at the time, couldn’t believe what was going on. Now, he and Kritickill had a few issues between them that lead them to split apart and he became our manager. All is good, no harm done, they found another manager, we’re all friends.

A week after that show, Ray put us on another show in front of a Sony Red company. It was a showcase of ten bands that had sent demos and the label wanted to see them live. We played that night. Ray got us the best slot at 11pm. It was a tiny club but we ripped the place apart. From that show the reps from the label took us to their studios in Dallas. Bad ass studios. Many great artists recorded there – used to be owned by Fleetwood Mac. Anyway, we recorded there a few songs under their production for 3 weeks… all on their expenses but we were not happy with what was going on there. They started talking with us about a development deal, but we have decided not to sign on with them.

MI: This was Sony Red?

KG: A company that builds artists for Sony Red. 11260/Sony Records. So… we left the studios and flew back to Israel but stayed with Ray. Ray really digs the Israeli concept. We represent ourselves as an Israeli band abroad. We even discuss the situation in our country quite a lot. We even have a song written about the holocaust called Poli.

Meanwhile, while we were there I got the opportunity to speak with a few reps of major labels. I was trying to understand how we could get their attention. One of the guys that helped me a lot is an A&R at Capitol Records. He told me about a few secrets to the industry.

MI: Like what? 🙂

KG: One of them – is that through famous producers – it’s easier to reach the majors. They don’t really listen to demos. So … we started searching for a producer to do the job. Meanwhile, I see our friends, Betzefer do the same thing, which led them to Roadrunner Records. Ray and I talked with a few producers and about a month ago. He contacted Sylvia Massy Shivy – Multi Platinum Producer (Tool, System and many more) that has worked all her life with all the majors. He sent her out “Fake”, one of our new songs. You can hear the demo version of that song – the version she listened to – on our new website.

She loved the song and immediately returned us back an email saying she would be very interested in working with us. A week after – I called her up and spoke with her for the first time. She said she wants to sign us on a production deal. So, we talked the details on the phone – both of us very excited, and a few days later we got the contract through the email. It took us a few weeks to find a good/known and familiar industry lawyer that would be interested in representing us. He negotiated the details of the deal for us, a few days later she approved and that was it, basically.

MI: I’m really happy for you. So what now?

KG: Well…we’re flying off to Houston this Sunday. The foreign office is helping us with promotion and media this time.

MI: Misrad Hachutz!!? Like Israeli government office!??

KG: YUP!

MI: How did you get in touch with them?

KG: Just called them up, told them about the contract we have signed, they were really cool… forward me to one of the head people at the Music and Sports department and they said they’d love to help.

we’re planned to play a few shows in Texas. We’ve just wrote three new songs that we want them to be on the album. Our keyboardist is in Mexico now… he’ll have to add his thing to these songs in the following month, and then we’ll drive up to California to record our first full length album with Sylvia in her studios.

MI: You’re going to Mexico?

KG: No, he’ll meet us in Texas. We’ll probably play a few showcase shows right after the recordings in order to get some major labels interested. And Ray, Sylvia and our lawyer will help us shop the record to all the major labels in the states. We plan on meeting the lawyers in NY before we get back home in January.

MI: Why did u guys choose Texas and CA in the first place? Did u know kritickill before?

KG: We met through the net on garageband.com. It’s a site that musicians review musicians on. I liked their stuff and wrote a cool review about them, That’s how we met at first.

MI: How would u describe your sound?

KG: Our sound…mmm… something between hard American Rock like Korn, Disturbed, System and Techno. Also a lot of new age electronics. Our keyboardist, Yoav, loves Infected Mushroom. If you wanna listen – go to our website now. There are 4 songs you can listen to that we have recorded recently.

MI: B’hatzlacha!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

KG: Toda!