Gogol Bordello Talk Super Taranta! And Madonna

For anyone who managed to squeeze into Gogol Bordello's legendary set at Toronto's Drake Hotel in early 2006, seeing frontman Eugene Hutz and violinist Sergey Ryabtsev on London, England's Wembley Stadium stage with Madonna for the Live Earth concert was surreal, to say the least. It turns out that Madonna is a pretty big fan of the group, so much so that she invited Hutz to star in her directorial debut — a film called Filth And Wisdom.

Of course, Hutz is now in full-on Gogol Bordello mode as the band make their way across the planet, inciting parties at every stop, to promote the bombastic Super Taranta! They'll play Toronto's Kool Haus on Oct. 9 and Montreal's Club Soda the next night to spread their trademark gypsy punk music.

ChartAttack caught up with Hutz early in the summer to discuss what's shaping up to be, by far, the band's biggest year.

ChartAttack: Underdog World Strike was about as definitive a political and musical statement that any band could make. Obviously musicians don't want to repeat themselves, so what steps did you take to make sure that Super Taranta! was a progression for the group?
Eugene Hutz: I think that the nature of the band takes care of those things. Nobody in the band is such a person that wants to step in one place. And if you were to look at the progression of our albums, Super Taranta! is already our fifth album. And every album has taken things to the next level. Like starting with Voi-La Intruder, which was very much focused on ballads actually, and pretty much the acoustic arrangement of things, where electric guitar was like a rarity on that album. And with Multi Kontra, it was more of a debaucherous kind of gypsy rock 'n' roll. And Gypsy Punks was more of a political record, where we actually came together to come to a classic sound.

But the thing is that this album was like — it was time for us to make the classic Gogol Bordello record, one that includes a more panoramic vision of what the band is about, you know? It's like, I love the Gypsy Punks record, but it does leave out heart-wrenching ballads that get into your head. And a lot of our fans, and ourselves, do crave that. That's a big part of us, you know? So it was like bringing all the elements of Gogol Bordello together, and making a record that's like Gogol Bordello times 100, you know?

What was it that you wanted Victor to bring to the sound of Gogol Bordello?
Well, Victor is, as I said — he knew our whole progression. He knew we were going to make it so it was going to be analogue and all live again. But we wanted to make much more advanced mixing. To me it sounds more — it's almost hard to describe because it's more direct, but it's more abstract. You know, it's more direct and it's even more live than the previous one. But it is more symphonic, you know? And that takes — I mean, Victor's intelligence and stamina, you know, working with Gogol Bordello, you're going to need that. It's the work of a fearless man. It was a heroic work because Gogol Bordello is... it's big not only in an idea of it, it's physically big, it's a lot of people. It's also kind of a band where everybody has a very strong ego. And it's a kind of a band where everybody gets a shot. Everybody's gonna have to come through in their full pride and power and shine. And to underlook anybody is just setting yourself up for a revenge, with a nasty twist.

That sounds complicated.
So, Bordello doesn't mind. We optimistically proceeded to making an epic album that is arranged out of instant classics.

You were pretty adamant about doing a lot of Underdog live off the floor, and Super Taranta! production-wise is a lot cleaner, but you're saying that a lot of it still was done live this time?
It's all done live. The way you hear the record is exactly how it's played. I don't know of any other way of recording for us, really. This stuff doesn't come through otherwise. For me, vocals is something I work separately on, even though I do keep a lot of the scratch vocals in at the end. But the takes where our energies are bouncing off each other? They're always superior to anything else, you know? So that's going to be our method, the way it's always going to stay. And we take a special pride in the fact. I mean, I know the people love the fact that when you put on a record you can actually hear that it's actually that band that's playing the songs. And when you go and see them live, it's going to be happening all live in that exact same intensity and quality. As opposed to bands that basically can't fucking do shit on stage, 'cause most of their shit is done on a laptop.

You toured almost non-stop for Underdog over the last couple of years. Was the new record done over a specific period of time, or just whenever you were home in New York?
Actually, it was a direct progression from Gypsy Punks. There was never any break. As soon as that record was done, I just kept writing new stuff, because that's just what I do, you know? And being on the road is where I actually get — even more so — psychotic about it. Sometimes for weeks I won't take the guitar off my neck. In the tour bus, in airports, everywhere. I write all my stuff with guitar. And when that's all ready, complete, I bring it to the band and the band takes it to another path. But for me, the primal level of work is "make it work on guitar." Being inseparable from it for days, it gets to this frame of mind where it's like, "OK, let's take a guitar and write a song about that, or try to write it." It's just writing all the time. You're rather collecting these things that are already happening on their own. It's flowing, just flowing all the time, and you kind of become listening to what you're writing, instead of trying to write it. And I really love that frame of mind when it's already so unstoppable. You're rather like a selector of this creative process rather than trying to squeeze it out of your finger, you know? And a lot of material on the new record, it very much comes from that frame of mind, times all the insane rehearsals that we had. Sometimes when it rolls off the tongue so easily, it's not so easy to perform. Just listen to "Forces Of Victory" on Super Taranta!. I literally almost fainted on the rehearsal of "Forces Of Victory." At one point my system went into shock and I had a metallic taste in my mouth. I started to faint from doing takes and takes and takes and takes of that song.

That's some pretty intense recording. Were you at all more comfortable doing the record in New York than you were maybe doing it in another city and state last time?
No, I think it's really not a big distraction for us. As long as we are together — as I said it's quite a big band, and everywhere we come it's like we turn that into our habitat. It's like everywhere we go, it'll still be our band, man. Cruising around, checking out girls. It's like you go to some floor of a building and everywhere you go, it's all your band members.

Unrelated, you did a short film with Madonna?
Yeah! We just finished.

Did you do it in New York, or was it in London?
No, it was in London.

How did you get hooked up with that? What's it all about?
We just had some mutual friends. And I've heard for a while that she was a big fan of Gogol Bordello and of my acting efforts. At one point we were talking, she just called me, and we're talking more and more and eventually arriving to an idea that she was arriving to her perfectly super-fun offer to do a lead role in her directing debut. It was really fun. It was very much of a collaboration, and eventually the whole band was in the movie — playing Gogol Bordello playing itself. And when she asked me, "So how do you feel about dressing up as a woman?" I knew it was going to be fun. Still, I didn't know it was going to be that much fun.

How was she as a director?
You know, I think she's really good. For directors, you can always tell. You can always define the power of a director by how specific they get. And she was incredibly specific. Not necessarily with me, because I basically operate by doing my own thing. By inviting me, it's pretty much—

You get what you pay for.
Yeah and, I mean, of course there was things that she needed from me as a director. We just had a perfect communication about that. And I think it's going to be a pretty fun — a pretty fucking fun bonanza — when you see it.

It's like a 30-minute thing, and it'll be out at the end of next year.
Yeah, I think it's going to be much sooner than that. She's a real, real dynamo. It was amazing to see how she works. She is actually that girl that makes it all go around. You know what I mean? So as much of her worldwide-known show business enterprise that goes along with her name, you know, the person who's actually in the centre of it all, that's making it all happening, is her. I was super-impressed with that.