Seven Percent Mind Usage came back only a few months ago from North Carolina where they were working on the mix for their new disc…

MI: Here I sit in Rash Gash on 21 Chaim Vital in the Florentin neighborhood in South Tel Aviv, catching up with Idan Epshtein of Seven Percent Mind Usage who works here. Idan graciously let me listen to the new Seven Percent Mind Usage which is going to be called “Fertilize the Sun”…they got the final mix no less than two days ago and are waiting for the masters…it sounds a bit different then their previous stuff. Still has edge, but … hey Idan, what’s with that James Bond shit I hear in the intro for the first track?

IE: We were always doing stuff familiar with movies and soundtracks, detective music, telling stories and helping the music raise the lyrics, not just write music and then the lyrics. Only Tal wrote these lyrics, crazy stories about so much stuff and everything he saw, personal and not so personal, and all the music was chosen to tell a story together with the lyrics. “The Winter Massacre” which you can hear on the Myspace, it’s like a scene between two people in a car driving and talking, reflecting about the environment and how we destroy our own world,and it’s saying truth through the outlook of two people. And also in the full CD we have plenty of crazy stories. Tal got really crazy influences, like, one song we have is about a girl who got so jealous that she grew arms out of her eyes and all the boys start to like her, because she has four arms, she has more what to do so they all came to her. After a while, they stopped coming to her house so she asked one of the boys, “Why, what happened?” and they said that the fat girl across the street grew another mouth.

MI: That’s horrible.

IE: Yeh! (laughs) But when you read the lyrics you get a whole lot of subcontext and between the lines, you can see it’s a metaphor. But if Tal will see me analysing his words he’s going to kill me. So let him explain it sometime.

MI: Tal’s in Cuba now, like you said. So what is the general plan regarding Seven Percent Mind Usage at this time?

IE: Now we just got the final mix and we’re waiting for the master. After that we’re going to send promos to labels and wait to find a home for the new CD. At close range, in Israel, we’re going to do a show approximately in the middle of May. We’re going to do it big time. Headlining show, plenty of merch, do it differently.

MI: Why differently?

IE: We’re going to invest and emphasize the show as a performance, rather than to see a live band go on for 15 minutes and go down.

MI: Sounds awesome.

And so does the disc. Listening to it as Idan rings up a customer, it’s got like, Stone Temple Pilots, Faith No More and Queens of the Stone Age kinda shred, with a groove more palatable for mainstream rock radio. Regarding their influences, Idan says,

IE: When it comes to us, we think we need to give the listener the opportunity to get his own perspective on the music. And if he sees influence it’s good, but we don’t want to say to him, “These are our influences listen to this, check it out.” A lot of bands in group shots wear t-shirts of bands in order to give respect. We give respect to a band we like, but not in that way. Also, we never go out against or for drugs, or alcohol, or tattoos. None of us have tattoos except our new drummer, and we drink teas, y’know, and I remember when we thought about making lighters of 7% to sell, but we don’t want to give an impression that smoking is cool, cause we don’t think so.

MI: Why do you think it’s important to say that?

IE: We want our music to speak for itself and not us as persons to influence a crowd. Our music and the words we sing should be the influence. If a kid is gonna read this interview and disagree with me about our music, it’s OK, as long as he gets it from the music and not from us and our actions. Too many times I heard great bands and people are like “He’s a jerkoff.” I don’t care, I love his music, what he says in his lyrics make sense to me and my life, so it’s cool. Generally people should start emphazising music and not the bands themselves, not the genres and stigmas and stuff. People forgot that it’s music and not fashion.

MI: How was recording in North Carolina?

IE: The recording itself was in the Tzolelet in Tel Aviv under the hands of Guy Webb.

New guy walks in asking for a cable… meanwhile, there is this pimping Pink Panther stuff,,,,

IE: ..(spells Webb’s name)… he’s like the 5th member of 7%. He’s been with us like five years so it’s impossible to mention 7% without mentioning him. On this note, I give respec to Adam Nish, NishMa, he’s the 6th member, because all the way he’s helped us with our image, and our merch, and our artwork and everything. He’s also part of the 7% famiglia…

MI: I know how to spell famiglia because I’m from Brooklyn.

IE: And now we go to Jamie King in NC where we did the mix and are gonna do the master. He is the most awesome guy we ever met. Before he is a great soundman, and a great technician, he’s a great person. The first thing when he saw us, he just hugged each one of us like a bear, each one of us.

MI: Between the Buried and Me, right?

IE: Between the Buried and Me, He is Legend, Swift, Kill Whitney Dead..

MI: Never heard of that.

IE: It’s pretty big in the South, grindcore, samples crazy!!

MI: So how was the States?

IE: We love the South, we love North Carolina, we met so many people there, and made so many connections, so many fans. Especially I would like to mention Chase O’Neal (of “Damona Waits”), Christine and Hooper that introduced us to the south as appropriate- with some moonshine and a place to crash. We got crazy stories.

MI: We got time for the craziest story you got.

IE: I can’t even remember it now. I’ll think about one that makes sense….hey, we swam in Dawson Creek, that’s pretty cool! And we played beerpong. A lot. All across the US.

MI: What’s beerpong?

IE: You don’t know beerpong? It’s all over the US. Its college stuff. It’s fun. You got cups like in bowling, 4, 3, 2, 1 on each side, each cup is like 1/4 of beer, each player on each side of the table has a pingpong ball and the purpose is to throw it into the cup on the other side of the table. If you make it, you have to chug it, and the person who ran out of cups is the loser, but he’s drunk. And if you win enough times you will be drunk also. It’s a win-win situation. You know Squirrel Nut Zippers? We hooked up with them, we went to the pub til 5 AM and got drunk inside. I love them.

MI: Anything else you wanna say?

IE: Here in the instrumental (listening to it) it sounds like the most movie soundtrack ever.

MI: You hooked up some Danny Elfman in there!

IE: Yeh, exactly. Tim Burton stuff.

MI: It’s beautiful.

IE: Here comes the beast!

MI: I can’t wait to get a copy of this.

IE: Well, you can get our old EP and merch at these places: UFO in Dizengoff Center, Disc Center in Tel Aviv, the Third Ear, B-Side on Florentin and merch.co.il/sevenpercentmindusage – and you can order from any place in the country on there. In two weeks, we just printed picks with gold ink and buttons, and new T-shirts are gonna be here soon.