ROCK N ROLL REVENGE
XiREN TALKS TO ROCKWiRED
ABOUT HiS LATEST CD 'TRiP-R'
A CHAOTiC TOUR OF iNDiA AND THE STATES
AND GROWiNG FROM THE EXPERiENCE

iNTERViEWED BY BRiAN LUSH

Back in 2005, XIREN was one of the first people I interviewed for ROCKWIRED and time has certainly changed a lot of things. I no longer nervously cling to that list of questions when interviewing people over the phone, and well, XIREN's hair is considerably longer. If anything, I had him to thank for my now cavalier attitude with regard to interviewing folks. Four years ago, XIREN released the immaculately produced E.P. 'THERAPY FOR HEROES' issuing such ENO-styled elegies such as 'INVISIBLE HERO' (at one time, a contender for a placement on an abandoned SUPERMAN soundtrack) and the stunning 'I NEED YOU TONIGHT'. Now, he is back with a full length L.P. 'TRIP-R' and this time, XIREN truly get's his BONO on with top grade stadium rockers (the title track and ‘BURN YOUR LOVE DOWN'), 'ZOOROPA'-styled pop tunes ( 'JESUS WAS AN ALIEN' and 'SOMETHING MORE') and  unavoidable singer-songwriter sensitivity ('I'M HERE' and 'JUST LIKE RAIN'). One standout track - 'GRACE' - opens with a haunting vocal arrangement that will definitely have one thinking they are listening to some lost QUEEN recording. In speaking with XIREN again, the road to completing his latest opus was indeed rocky. Worked on and recorded during a hellacious tour of India and during a U.S. tour that ended abruptly following a tour bus accident, the resulting album, according to XIREN, seems to have been molded by the experiences; as was he. "It's got the retribution." says XIREN of 'TRIP-R' " It's got the retribution. It's got the upset. It's got the complexity and then it turns around at the end and becomes introspective, mellow and graceful. I put it together as a “record”. People don't do records anymore. All they do is write a bunch of songs - this was meant to be a record. It wasn't meant to be a concept record but the songs have a sincere and coherent flow. People that are still listening to records these days are really appreciating it and that's huge. That is all I ever wanted."

ROCKWIRED got in the phone with XIREN, which for him, was a surprise interview. Here is how it went.

It sounds as if 'TRIP-R' was conceived in chaos. Would you like to talk about that a little bit?
Well, I suppose on one hand that it wasn't so much that it was anymore chaos than normal life - except that it was. It was a rocky road. I didn't stop life the way a lot of my favorite acts do when they make music. When some people make music, they hibernate. Just like that U2 record that is coming out where they have photographs of themselves in this immaculate studio. I'm sure interns had set every element of that studio up. I'm sure that BONO never once had to adjust his music stand. I'm sure the whole making of that record was like this big retreat in Morocco. I, on the other hand made this record as I was going through life. I brought the album with me on the tour I did in India. I was tracking things in the hotel room as I was on the road. This record lived with me. That's what happened. I had most of it done. Most of the album was written at the beginning of 2008 and then I went to India where it got refined and then we went on the road in the U.S when the bus crashed and I brought it on the road with me. It was getting worked on, polished, and completed through life. You know what I mean? I didn't sit down and pause. That was all I meant about it being in the midst of chaos. It was really a work that was done on a transcontinental basis.

Why the name?
'TRIP-R' is the name of the first track and I had a conversation with my musical partner BEN JANSEN who does a lot of last minute tweaking and turning of the bolts so that the music has more of a clean and professional element to it. I was thinking about naming the album 'THE MACHINERY OF HOPE' which obviously harkened a little too closely to the OBAMA book. It really isn't a political record. Then one day, BEN called me up and said 'Hey, asshole! This is actually a revenge record! Why don't you name it appropriately?' The 'TRIP-R' stands for 'triple “R”' as in 'rock n roll revenge'. This is a record of the transition from animosity to peace. So I named it after what most of the record is about. There was a line from the biographical note that BONO put in 'U2 BY U2' book that came out a few years ago where he said that no one in Ireland encouraged him to do music when he grew up, so he figured the best revenge for him would be to do it really, really well. And that’s what this is. This is peaceful, creative revenge.

Describe that tour of India?
In a word?

Let's start with a word or two and if I want to pursue it anymore, I will.
In two words, I would say 'unconscionable hell'. It was a flop and a disaster. It was basically a con artist who continues to try and recruit bands to go to India on the premise of doing a 20 city tour through. Basically what happened was there was no tour. He even pretended to be multiple people so as to garnish the illusion of credibility. There was no tour. We all arrived in India, and when I say 'we', I mean me, my backing band from New Zealand and ten other musicians from around the planet. All of us arrived under the false pretense that there was an organized tour that we had signed on to where we would go to 20 cities on a tour bus playing all of these great shows. He did a snow job on us by giving us a little bit of the glory upfront; In the first week, he had us doing a couple of press conferences. It is exactly how you would picture it, where we are in a room with a bunch of journalists and photographers and we're sitting behind a table with a big banner for the tour behind us with our pictures on it. This guy that was on the tour named OLIVER SEAN was the mastermind con artist that pretended to be all of these different people in the entity. After the press conference, we would get daily updates from our hotel room that were basically pieces of paper that were shoved under the door telling us “tomorrow's show was cancelled”. We would keep getting messages like that every day. I was there for almost an entire month and I played one fucking show!

My God!
My backing band paid $15K to get there. It was a huge scam. We were told that if we paid the travel expenses that everything else would be covered when we hit the ground. He's continued to expand his reach to try to recruit musicians so I'm very happy to put this out in print somewhere whether it's published or on the web. He's just a son of a bitch! I've never met anyone who actually deserved that name. There is also word on the street that he might move to L.A. at some point.

With the rest of the sharks and this place is full of them.
And it would be the perfect place. It would be a very interesting day if I ever met him on American soil. I'd say I'm a very peaceful and forgiving person, but that would be an interesting day. Anyway, he's continued his reach to try to recruit musicians so much so that he has contacted the band that I toured with over the summer when we had the bus crash. He’s also contacted two of the bands that my lawyer works with in Denver and has even contacted some of the artists that he's accusing of having left the tour. He's actually re-contacted them and has said 'Hey, we think you'd be a big hit over here!' He's trying get people to pay twenty bucks to sign up to be considered. He's got international reach. If he's contacted five or six bands that I know just in the U.S., then who knows how many bands totaled that this guy is scamming? Just two weeks ago, when I was flying back from L.A. to Denver, I got an e-mail from a friend of mine that had found a web posting that OLIVER SEAN had put on YOUTUBE where he is trying to retaliate and discredit all of the bands. He's accusing us of being frauds and says that we are con artists posing as musicians. He launched a fake lawsuit against us because bands contacted us as referrals that he had listed and when they would ask, we would be like 'We are happy to tell ya! Here is how it went!' So he's retaliating because they are telling him that 'Hey, I just heard from XIREN that this thing is big joke and that it's a waste of time'. He basically scammed all of these artists for six weeks of their time, thousands of dollars in travel and logistics and it all benefitted him in the form of great local Indian PR. He got to say that he was this great guy bringing bands from all over the world to India. So anyhow, he has started launching YOUTUBE videos saying that he's trying to locate us and that if anyone has information on our whereabouts he intends to sue us. None of it is true. There is no lawsuit and none of us have changed our information in attempt to hide from him. As a matter of fact, some of the members of these bands have posted back saying 'Hey, we're still here in New Zealand! Come get us motherfucker!'

I've got a title for the interview now!
So when you said 'conceived in chaos', you're starting to see a little bit of it now, aren't you?

Yes, yes I am.
You know there is a special place in hell for people who fuck with artists. It's not like we came into this world prepared to make a great living or be the elite. So anyhow, we've had him shut down from SONICBIDS and we're working on getting him shutdown from PAYPAL and we're trying to find other ways of making sure that he doesn't do this to other artists. It's not that any of us are particularly mean-spirited or even looking for a lot of retribution. None of us want to waste any more time with this. It is just that he has continued to scam artists and we want to make sure that it never happens again to another artist. I left India in the middle of the night sleep deprived, hallucinating on malaria drugs, malnourished and with no money. All of my credit cards had disappeared. This guy didn't coordinate any of our transportation or pickups from the airport or any of that. We had to make our own way in a third world country that I remind you has the plague. It's not like we're going into friendly Western Europe. We're going into a country where there are language barriers