SICRADICAL: I know you’re here starting your solo and promoting your solo career, but the Guano Apes is a very important band for us teenagers here in Portugal so I’ll take you back to those years and tell me what you remember.

SANDRA NASIC: Oh everything, I mean… We have been travelling so often, and we have been here so often and we had such great fans and great gigs here. The festivals were always very beautiful and I know that we really had, like, freaky fans sometimes and… I mean, it was always funny. I can’t really remember everything but we had parties here.

SICRADICAL: Okay. Taking you back to your solo career, I saw that you play a lot of instruments, bass, keyboard, guitar. Tell me about this side of you.

SANDRA NASIC: Yeah, I also didn’t know that I’m so good…! *laughing* No, I’m just kidding, just kidding! I was always playing guitar a bit, but of course not in a band – we had a good guitarist there. So there was really no need for me to play on stage and I could just concentrate on the vocals and the lyrics, so this was a band thing. This is of course totally different to what I’m doing now. Now it was important for me to really make my own stuff, and I knew that it’s somehow gonna be easier for me to… Umm… How do you say that… autodidactisch? Do you know what I mean?

SICRADICAL: Yeah, self-taught.

SANDRA NASIC: Yeah, and I’m like a child in the studio, I sit there and try everything out, and I can’t read notes really but you don’t have to. *laughs* I just started to write everything and I played the guitar, and I listened to it and said ‘okay, that’s really good, go on’. Then I played bass and also worked very well. I mean it’s good enough for song writing, but when it comes to recording on the album, of course I was inviting some musicians to play my stuff really good. So for song writing it’s really enough for me to play everything.

SICRADICAL: I heard the record from the start to the end, and the second song is very... for a dance floor. Is it because nowadays music is becoming more of a ‘melting pot’? Do you understand what I mean?

SANDRA NASIC: Yeah, yeah…

SICRADICAL: How did you come up with the idea of the samples?

SANDRA NASIC: It sounds like, very ‘bit orientated’. I love that, I’m also totally into electro stuff, of course in Berlin it everywhere, if you go out it’s electro going on everywhere. I enjoyed that music and when I moved to Berlin I started to work with electro producers, for example T.Raumschmiere *laughs* That’s a funny name! And uh… yeah, I made a song with him before I started my own record and I really liked that. This was also a big influence on my record.

SICRADICAL: I’ll take you then to one of my favourite songs, the lyrics were really weird the first time when I heard it, which is the ‘Right Lane’.

SANDRA NASIC: Weird?

SICRADICAL: A little bit…

SANDRA NASIC: Not weird. *mimics*

SICRADICAL: Okay, nothing weird, but tell me about it. Where did you come up with that idea?

SANDRA NASIC: ‘The Right Lane’? You know, everytime I write it’s really very natural, so I don’t sit there and go ‘okay, what should I write now?’ It goes like a river, because I first start with the music. And I had this riff on ‘Right Lane’, and when I build up the music and the arrangement of that, I start to write my vocal melodies, and I record the melodies. And then I sit there, and then the words come fluently. It came totally naturally. I mean, ‘Right Lane’ is a bit of…

SICRADICAL: It’s a bit aggressive…

SANDRA NASIC: It’s cutting the past, somehow. It was really important for me to close the doors to the past somehow. But I think it’s a really, really good rock song and I would have never written such a song with the Apes, so it’s kind of a new rock thing for me.

SICRADICAL: Okay, and now taking you to a bigger ground – so many musicians. What’s it like, working with so many musicians? You had, like, four different people on the bass, four different people on keyboards… How is it?

SANDRA NASIC: Cool. I was on the road, in the studio, everytime with the same bunch of people for, I don’t know, ten, twelve years, and of course it was really exciting for me to work with the new people. We were talking about my music, and it was just funny for me to know them and to see how they play. To work with them, to say ‘no, this is shit. You play it like that…’ *laughs* It was a very important experience for me.

SICRADICAL: And how long did it take you to finish it?

SANDRA NASIC: The whole record?

SICRADICAL: The whole record.

SANDRA NASIC: It took me actually a lot, lot of time. One year off after the band, and then I started to work on the record so I guess it was a year, yeah. But you know, I took breaks in between that sometimes, and did different stuff with some other artists, just to be open minded.

SICRADICAL: I just remembered. Your experience with Apocalyptica. I saw that video, very good. And how was the invitation, how did it come?

SANDRA NASIC: Well this was a long time ago, you know?

SICRADICAL: See, I know you!

SANDRA NASIC: Yeah! I’m very proud of that project, because I think I was the first singer they asked to participate on the record. Before that they never worked with singers. And so I felt it really was a cool idea and I liked the stuff they did.

SICRADICAL: The video was very good.

SANDRA NASIC: But it was so cold! Of course we shot it in Germany, it was so cold, freezing, until four o’clock in the morning. But the song was really good. And I love the guys, they are really nice... tall guys.

SICRADICAL: Taking you back to the promotion of this record, it’s just been released here in Portugal, so are you gonna go on a tour? What’s gonna happen? Where can people get more information about it?

SANDRA NASIC: Of course on my homepage, there’s all the information. I think we’re gonna make the tour for this record at the end of the year. And yeah, I’m gonna do some European shows.

SICRADICAL: Does that mean Portugal?

SANDRA NASIC: Yes, I will come! Sure, Carlos! I want to see you again! *laughs*

SICRADICAL: Okay Sandra, thank you very much.