Experimental trio Cleaning Women was our selection for this month’s MAP post after the release of their latest album U. We also called planet Clinus 1, where the band resides, and spoke to CW04 to find out what these three cleaning robots have to say about the new album.

It’s been a long time since your last release, how did it go with the band during this time?

Yes, it’s been a long time since the release of ‘Aelita – the Queen of Mars’ but during this time, we’ve been quite active actually. We’ve been playing live and also we’ve composed music for some silent movies, such as Dziga Vertov’s The Eleventh Year, for example. We also made a update of Aelita live soundtrack with some updated tunes. The highlight to us was in Luxembourg Philharmonie where we performed the soundtrack in January 2008. Huge spectacle with huge screen and sold-out crowd. There’s also been active building of new instruments done by busy bees CW01 and CW03 over these years.

What can you tell about composing and recording this new album?

The composing happened mostly in the same fashion as before. We start to play around some musical or sonic idea that in the end it leads us somewhere. But this time the recording session differed from the previous ones. We recorded the whole album by ourselves in our rehearsal place, which is some sort of cave eight meters under the ground. We used a lot of the place’s own echoes in the recordings and did quite a lot experimenting with sounds. This is also more live-sounding record than our previous ones, which have sounded a bit “dry”. This one has more air around it. We’re really happy with the way it sounds.

Your music combines many different sounds, but what are your main influences? What bands and artists do you usually listen to?

We don’t think about that when we do our music so it’s not relevant.

One obvious aspect of your music is that it is very cinematic. You have participated in projects putting music to films and during some concerts you score old films from the early days of the Soviet Union, like The Battleship Potemkin, how do you approach these projects?

After we’ve seen the film, the first step is that we usually compose short themes or melodies or rhytms. We also may remember some tunes from the past and use them. Then we start to add all these pieces together with the film. Nowadays we use ProTools to do that, earlier we did it on paper. Usually this phase is very intuitional, we just throw these little pieces around and see what kind of impression we get with the film. After we get some kind of structure together, we start to develop these themes. Then we compose some more material which may lead us to somewhere else than where we started from. It’s a creative process, but we always follow very carefully the film’s own rhythm and intentions. We want the film to have the main role and our role is just to amplify and follow the film’s storytelling and structure. And of course, we give our own interpretation of the film but on film’s condition. Then usually there’s always some parts that are very difficult to make music to. Then we just grind our teeth, drink some coffee and force the music out of ourselves. Or sometimes we leave some room for improvisation too, but usually not much.

Your music also appears in the movie Musta Jää (Black Ice), did you write and record for the film or did you already had that song?

I think we had the song already, we were recording that song and we made the final version that was supposed to appear on the film. But actually I think they used a demo take of the song or something. At least it sounds a bit different to our ears than the final version we gave them.

If you could choose, what new or old films would you like to score?

We’ve been looking for old movies to make music to. If someone has some ideas, let us know. But no more films made in Soviet Union. I think we’ve had our share of those for a while.

The band plays with very particular instruments. What’s the story behind that? How do you create those instruments?

I’m not doing much of that stuff, but in general it’s something like if we need a new sound, like a metallic bang, we try to find some thing that relates to the sound we have in mind. Then there’s also these more complicated instruments like my bass laundry rack. I think those ideas just crawl out of CW01′s head. He’s really good putting things together with metal wires and tape and screws etc. Then he keeps building up towards his vision until it’s ready to test and play at rehearsals and gigs.  Of course, Cleaning Women play cleaning equipment. But if you think about it, some might take it as a statement towards do-it-yourself attitude and recycling.

A couple of years ago, you tour with other Finnish artists in China, how was that experience? What music did you discover there?

China is something else. The culture and history and everyday life are different than we’re used to here in the North. It was pretty hard to say what was their reaction to our music. We played in different places, really official happenings, high-class night clubs and some rock clubs. I’d say that the rock clubs were quite similar gigs that we’re used to here, but then there were places where definitely there were some barriers between us and audience. At least it took some time for them to figure us out, I mean men in dresses, weird “western” instruments. Maybe they were more culture-shocked than we were. We also noticed that Finnish heavy metal is a big thing there, as anywhere. I found a Impaled Nazarene CD in a small village in the middle of China. Of course I had to buy it. The funny thing was that the CD didn’t work and there was a poster of Yngwie Malmsteen inside.

Finally, how’s the weather on planet Clinus 1?

Funny that you asked, today we don’t have weather at all here. Somehow the whole atmosphere vanished last night. We have to use our oxygen masks and stay underground.