The Life of EYE

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Athena Ehkteraei

"THE MOST POPULAR PHRASE IN THIS BAND is ‘Shut the f*** up,’” says Bojan Preradovic, frontman of Dubai-based rock outfit EYE (Empty Yard Experiment). “Then,” he adds, “we sit down and talk about it.” Preradovic, along with his bandmates, drummer Josh Saldanha and guitarist Mehdi Gorjestani, is discussing the process by which the five-piece (bassist Kaveh Kashani and keyboard player Gorgin Asadi couldn’t make it) make decisions about their music, lyrics, marketing, and the visuals that play such an important role in their live performances. Basically, everything that affects the band is dissected and decided by all five members equally. Unlike many bands that claim to be a democracy (then end up following the ‘Some are more equal than others’ system), EYE really do give the same weight to each person’s opinion. Which sounds great, in theory. In reality, though, things can get messy.

“None of us really agree on anything,” says Preradovic. “We argue a lot and we swear at each other a lot – we’ll say the most appalling things to each other, but it’s all in a good spirit. And we’ve come to a point where it’s a cool equation.”

The contrast between even these three band members is evident in our conversation. Preradovic is a lively, thoughtful speaker, happy to talk in depth about pretty much anything. Gorjestani, on the other hand, doesn’t say a lot. At one point, he manages to speak for almost a full minute – his most verbose moment of the day. The subject being how little he likes speaking. “This is the most we’ve got out of him in a while, man,” says Preradovic, laughing. Saldanha (who sits roughly in the middle of the other two on the chattiness scale) says that Gorjestani rarely talks much, even in the most heated arguments. “We had this one discussion, I remember, where everyone was throwing their opinion in, and every so often Mehdi would just go [adopts deep voice] ‘Yes.’ That was it.”

“The whole point,” Preradovic continues, “is that we all bring our own influences and our own ideas to the table. Which is great. We fight a lot, but my closest friends now are these guys. It’s a dysfunctional family. A really dysfunctional family. But that can be useful, because you need to able to say exactly what you think – brutal honesty, you know? And know that the guy’s not going to kill himself over it. Or kill you.”

“We try to solve everything on the spot,” Gorjestani adds. “If there’s something bothering you, you have to talk about it at that moment.”

Once things have been discussed, says Saldanha, “we literally sit down and vote. It takes a long, long time sometimes, but at least everyone gets heard.” And all of that tension and all of the different viewpoints, all three agree, play a crucial part in the band’s creative process.

“I don’t know many bands who are mixing post-rock, progressive rock, progressive metal, alternative rock and, like, indie,” says Preradovic.  “I guess what we’re trying to do is mold all that into a new genre.”

THE SEARCH FOR SOMETHING NEW was a driving force behind EYE’s formation, back in 2006. Gorjestani had already been playing in a band with Kashani for a few years. (“That didn’t go well,” is all he has to say about that particular venture.) When the other band members left, the duo met drummer Sami Al Turki  (Saldanha only joined last year) and decided to start another group.

“The initial idea when we formed EYE was, ‘OK guys. Enough of this typical rock band stuff. Let’s do something else,’” Gorjestani says. So they did. For one thing, they didn’t bother finding a vocalist, instead composing their own instrumentals – incorporating progressive- and post-rock influences (Tool were an early reference point) as well as more mainstream fare like Metallica. Secondly, from the very beginning, they incorporated visuals into their performances, using mainly abstract imagery as a backdrop. “Since we didn’t have a vocalist, the idea was that the visual element would be the face of the band,” Gorjestani explains. “That was kind of the lead singer.”

It was Al Turki who was responsible for most of the ideas for the band’s imagery originally. But all four of them (Asadi joined soon after EYE formed) would work on coming up with the right sights as well as the right sounds. “Sometimes,” Gorjestani says, “it would take, like, a month to do the visuals for a single track. For one song, I remember, we wanted to do this visual at a certain time of day; when the sun was about to come up. And every time, we’d f*** it up, so we’d have to go back the next day, and the next…”

EYE quickly gained a surprisingly large fanbase for such a niche band in a country where left-field experimentation in the arts is rarely widely embraced. “We used to collaborate with other artists – not musicians, but photographers, sculptors or whatever,” says Gorjestani. “So it was arty, but different. Not the kind of thing you often see. Especially in Dubai.”

The band were also keeping things interesting by always incorporating improvisation into their live shows. “We’d have the basic song structure,” Gorjestani says, “but then we’d try and play it differently every time. And we really put a lot of feeling into the songs – expressing emotion through the actual music. Maybe that was the start of [making a name for ourselves].”

This is an extract. To read the full story, pick up a copy of Rolling Stone Middle East

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