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 Mara is made up of Barry Gilbey and his wife Sara Whittaker-Gilbey and some questions have come up about the future with Mara and some people wanted to know about the past as well. So i:Vibes.nu sat down with Barry and Sara to get you the truth about their past, their present and future.
Mara was created in the late 90's, by Barry Gilbey and Sara Whittaker-Gilbey and they enjoyed huge success with Sasha, Nick Warren, Deep Dish, John Digweed among others. They are most remembered by most for Mara's One, which was used on Nick Warren's GU011 - Budapest or their Desanitize single that was hammered by Sandra Collins, Nick Warren and others. They went on to form Choo Choo Records but their output as Mara nearly all but stopped and ivibes.nu wanted to ask them all about Mara, the past, the present and the future and Barry and Sara were more than happy to discuss it.
i:Vibes: How the idea for Mara come about?
A: The name comes from Buddhism. It means "all the evil in the world" but is normally used to signify someone overcoming their greatest fears or problems. So rather than it being a negative thing it is a really positive thing. One of the last act Buddha does before he attains enlightenment is to battle with mara to overcome his self doubt and fears. Plus its a cool 4 letter word
i:Vibes: Was Sara involved at the beginning?
A: Yeah right from the start. We wrote all the early mara stuff pretty much side by side
i:Vibes: Who came up with the lyrics, the melodies, how long did each track take?
A: Sara always comes up with the lyrics from the songs. Mine would just be so bad... Normally the way we would work is that i would get a rough
draft of the track running with beats and some simple riffs etc and then Sara would come in and start working around vocal ideas with it. We'd just build stuff up from there. The stuff for the album was maybe the 4th or 5th version of every track. We'd just keep going back over stuff and re-working it! Some of the tracks on the album took 6 months to finish...some took 2 weeks.
i:Vibes: What was the finest moment for Mara, was it Gu021, Gu011 or others?
A: Having Sasha play our second ever record on the radio live from Cream's birthday party. :) Playing on the beach in Romania while the sun set...
Visiting Australia for the first time...visiting America for the first time. Playing in the pouring rain in Croatia, Watching Sara perform live on the MTV stage of WMC (when it was still cool!) with Sam Mollison.Loads and loads of fantastic memories.
Sara: all of the above and jamming on stage with StereoMovers and NuBreed at an outdoor festival in the hills outside Kuala Lumpur just as the sun was starting to come up. Classic times
i:Vibes: You started out as almost progressive trance with Mara and then moved into deeper progressive, would you go back to progressive trance records, if you could?
A: No i don't think so. We've always just let the sound evolve. There has never been any hard and fast plan behind the music we've made. But I doubt we'd go back to a trancey sound. If anything it's gonna be more
stripped down and housier in the future.
Sara: Never look back, never regret, always move forward. In other words, hell no!
i:Vibes:What's the deal with Mara now?
A: We wanted to have a little break away from Mara after the album, we'd worked so hard on the project for almost 18 months and when the album was out and promoted we really felt like we needed to put a little space
between us and it! We are ready now to start working again on the project. After the Mara album was done i did a Chill out album almost straight away so between the 2 major projects it kinda took up all our time. But now we ready to get back in the studio and do some more stuff!!! We've been busy with other projects as well. Sara has been
working with Rennie Pilgrem & Carlos Fauvrelle. While I've been doing stuff under my own name as well as recording as London Squeak Motif & Phony MCs and collaborating with Chris Cargo & Lexicon Ave on new tracks.
Sara: It's been very difficult for Barry to make his mark as a dj (and let me say he's bloody good!) with people always going on about Mara, I think he deserved the space to do his own thing. I've always had the limelight, it's his turn now. Putting Mara on hold for a while gave him that opportunity to go and let people see him as a separate entity other than Mr. Mara.
i:Vibes: What's up with Sara, What's up with Barry?
A: I'm good...djing loads and keeping busy in the studio. Also my beloved Sheffield Wednesday keep winning so i'm happy!!!!!! I also got to see
Sampdoria play on a recent trip to Genoa, Italy. So i'm just "chuffed" at the moment!
Sara: I have a new job away from Choo Choo Records which is allowing me to start loving music again. So many crappy things happened in the past few years that I needed to get away from the label and put some distance between it and me. I still get to work with cool people (including Barry) but I've handed over the label to Barry. Oh yeah and I watch tons of football. Now you know why Barry likes me.
I:Vibes.nu thanks Barry and Sara for taking the time to talk about Mara and we wish Barry and Sara, all the best in the future, with or without Mara.
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