OXFORD DRAMA

Oxford Drama started as a more or less as an electro-pop band, because that's what we could afford in terms of instrumentation and playing concerts. At the very beginning we only played as a duo driving from city to city in our packed up and small car. But to be completely honest, our love for guitars was always the strongest and it was only a matter of time to have this instrument as the leading part of the composition. We started playing with a larger band and the genre transformed to a more guitar driven kind of vibe.

your greatest inspirations or influences?

I'm a sucker for pop melodies, catchy words and, when listening to music, I look for this feeling that transports you from the real world to a completely different place. The list of my music heroes is long but probably the most important ones are Paul McCartney, David Byrne, Kate Bush, St. Vincent. When I feel I need some inspiration in my life, I can always find it in The Beatles, Fleetwood Mac, Radiohead, Brian Eno and the records he contributed to. It's a great feeling of still discovering my favorite records because they are so complex that it's a real journey, a never-ending inspiration journey.

Tell us a bit about your creative process?

We've very proud of our third record What's The Deal With Time? coming out on the 26th of March. It's a concept album, and it was extremely important for us to feel that every song on the album truly belongs. The album has a narrative, so we're excited to present it as a fully formed organism.
The process of working on the album was very complex, but the track list was completed very quickly. We had a lot of demos, some music sketches with and without vocals and then an idea emerged that maybe we should write a concept album. We bounced ideas off each other, wrote down some themes we wanted to include and suddenly we had a collection of songs we felt that are the best for this record.
When the production phase started, the honeymoon ended. The process of finishing the songs was longer but Marcin was bravely fighting for the right treatment of the songs. We just felt that they deserved it and that was different from our previous records. Before, we had never spent that much time on the finishing touches.

How has this year changed your creativity or how you see the world changing moving forward?

We've been so busy finishing our new album that while the world was going crazy, in the background we kind of decided to use the extra time to work. It's really hard to say whether this period was as creative as previous years, because we worked on the compositions that were written before the pandemic. You use different creative forces when writing songs than when you work on it production-wise. In the COVID-19 era, we tried to be as creative as possible, simply because music helped us cope with all the craziness happening. When we felt that the creative juices were flowing, we did everything possible to let them flow and work. But we also used that time to play on our instruments and listen to music.

Who is iconic in your opinion.

Paul McCartney and David Byrne are artists that are iconic for me. When looking at Paul McCartney I see a person who stayed himself and followed his heart in his music. Apart from being in love with his sensitivity and ease in writing the most beautiful songs I have ever heard, I also love his sense of humor. David Byrne is also full of sense of humor and has a lovely way of showing absurdity, which I love, and his drive towards finding joy in life and in music is very inspiring.

Anything else you'd like to share with us, a favorite quote, or special place. something personal. etc.

Apart from being influenced by the mass media, fast pace of life and relationships, the blessings and curses of technology, What's The Deal With Time? was influenced by our trips to Berlin, a city where some of our favorite albums (like Bowie's Low or U2's Achtung Baby) were made and a city only a four-hour drive away from Wrocław (Poland) where we live.

We're very happy that Berlin plays a very important role in the video for our first single Not My Friend. The architecture, the history and the frivolity of this city played a crucial factor in our decision of making a concept album. What can seem odd, also humor and absurdity became inspirations for our third album. The title comes from a very frequent question „what's the deal with...?” that is being asked in the TV series Seinfeld, and as we are both big fans of storytelling in lyrics, we wanted to juxtapose important themes of time, technology and ambition with humor, sarcasm and irony.