ANALENA

.:FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS ABOUT ANALENA

What is Analena and where is it from?
Analena is a so-called musical outfit with its base in Zagreb, the capitol of Hrvatska, or Croatia if you prefer.

Can you give us a brief history of Analena?
It was back in 1997 when Mijo, Zet and Six crossed their paths. After a typical matching of ideas, tastes and visions they decided to give it a try and to form a band. One year later, after a couple of strange circumstances Ana was in the band as well. It took almost four more years and another weird situation to find Miran and keep him in the band. So now Analena is Mijo and Miran playing guitars, Ana on vocals, Zet playing drums and Six playing bass.

Sometimes Analena is labeled as a band from Croatia and Slovenia, why is that so?
That is because one of us (Miran) is from Slovenia and the others are from Croatia. This somehow makes us an international act and it gives us this our-place-is-everywhere-where-we-want-it-to-be feeling in a world full of borders and regulations.

Where does the name Analena come from?
Analena is a Sanskrit word and it means "by the fire" or "like the fire". Sanskrit is a language that was used in ancient India and many important scriptures, like the Vedas for example, are written in it.

The name of Analena's singer is Ana. Is Analena named after her then?
No, this is a pure coincidence. Check out the answer above. Ana joined the band after the name was chosen. In fact, there was another girl singing in Analena before Ana. Her name is Irena, and if you look for it really hard you might even find some of Analena's early recordings with her in the band.

How would you describe the music you create to someone who never heard of Analena?
To be honest, this is a difficult task. First of all, we don't like describing music with words. Yes, it sounds kind of pathetic, but it is true. Music is an expression in sounds, beats and rhythms, and somehow our emotions, feelings, frustrations or anything else are presented most efficiently or even the most beautifully through music. That's why we chose music as an outlet instead of spoken words or letters written on a paper or some other form of art. We don't create music with the intention to fit into some pre-classified labels, but to let our creativity go beyond it. Also, we don't need words or anything else to limit our musical expression. One smart guy once noticed: "How can you describe the taste of an apple to someone who never ate an apple before? It's impossible."

How do others describe your music then?
Postpunk.noise.pop.power.emo.galaxy.hardcore…

To which bands are you compared?
Uh, the list is huge and more than strange… At The Drive-In, Pretty Girls Make Graves, Yaphet Kotto, Cave-In, Anomie, Envy, Pixies, Girls Against Boys, Submission Hold, Planes Mistaken For Stars, Life But How to Live It, Red Monkey, Deus, Quetzal…

What are Analena's lyrics about?
Our lyrics are dealing with a wide spectrum of our experiences with life, written from a personal point of view. They are far away from being preachy or a simple shouting of various slogans. Big words that are praising revolution somehow disappeared from our vocabulary - we believe we took off that blindfold. We are writing about our fantasies, our friends, about ourselves, about love and dreams of a perfect world by our tastes, about never-ending circle of change, the transitory nature of all things, …

What is Analena's political agenda, are you ready to change the world?
Through all those years we somehow gave up on our plans about changing the world in a way most people expect the world to be changed. Of course this is not because we think everything is all right out there, but simply because life taught us enough lessons to know what is real to expect and what we can do. Dreams of a world where everything is perfect are always welcome, but the recipe that will bring our society to that point is still well hidden. That is why we just want to change ourselves, to fix things in there, as we would like them to be. By doing so we consequently change our surroundings and maybe that's the world we can have an influence on and change for the better.

What do you think about religion?
Analena as a band or its members as individuals definitely do not have anything in common with organized religion, but at the same time we are all individuals with different views on various things, that is why our relations to religion vary from person to person. We think that those are deeply personal matters. It is an undeniable fact that religions are the base of all civilizations, therefore we think that if you want to understand cultures, civilization and the present world order you must have at least some basic knowledge about religion and it is good to spend some time studying different world religions for deeper understanding. In addition, as much as we might get angry with some narrow-minded religious radicals, it pisses us off even more when we hear someone fiercely attacking religion. In most cases, those people never studied any of those religions and don't know what they are about.

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Created: 01.06.2004.