The Latvian national final, known as ‘Supernova’ commences this weekend. We caught up with one of the 22 acts competing to represent Latvia, Crime Sea, to ask how their preparations were going. They will be appearing in Sunday’s first heat with their song ‘Escape’

Crime Sea are a new collaboration, featuring Elza Ozolina, Ralfs Brieze, Alberts Jansons and Marija Mickevica. Marija is better known as MNTHA, and you may well remember her song from Supernova 2015 ‘Nefilibata’ with which she finished second behind Aminata’s ‘Love Injected’

Hello Crime Sea!, thank you for taking the time out to speak to us. Can you tell us a little about how the ‘Crime Sea’ project came about and your plans for the future? – will there be an album as a follow up to the ‘Escape’ EP?

Crime Sea is a group of young people who are trying to evolve a new concept of popular music. We all have different influences, Alberts (also known as Lessfucc) for example knows a lot about electronic music, Elza plays bass guitar but studies jazz piano, Ralfs also studies jazz music and electric guitar. Marija(MNTHA) studies arts and visual design. So we all come from different places in music and life experiences in general and we think that you can hear that in our music. About the future, you will soon hear about our EP coming out and other surprises about to be announced. Also play concerts and have fun.

How are your preparations for Supernova going? Have you made any decisions yet on the staging, and what might we expect to see happening on stage?

Supernova is a really big challenge for us because there is really serious preparation needed. This kind of opportunity you get only once so you need to show your best. At the competition we kind of want to represent our style – with dressing, attitude etc. We want to show everyone what really is Crime Sea.

Great!, your promotional pictures show a great use of colour and costume so we are looking forward to seeing that. Our readers will already be familiar with one member of the band, as Marija entered as MNTHA in 2015 with “Nefilibata”.  Has Marija offered any advice to the rest of the band ahead of Supernova, and will you be able to use some of that experience to help you make the most of your opportunity?

Yes, she has gone through this already once before, so if we are in doubt about something, how everything happens or which things work and don’t work on stage, we can ask her.

Marija’s experience definitely is a big help, because often she explains how everything happened to her 2 years ago, and , of course this year is going to be different, but it’s also going to have some similarities with last years competitions.

How would you describe your song in a sentence?, is there a message within it?

The song says that there’s no escape, but actually it’s a paradox – there is and isn’t escape at the same time.

What would it mean to you to win Supernova and represent Latvia at Eurovision in 2017?

Of course it is a really big chance to introduce our group to music lovers all over the world. And we are also not afraid to represnt our country’s name at Eurovision. But it is also challenging us to make our music at its best.

It’s been a long time since Latvia’s only victory at Eurovision.  What do you think of the other songs that have represented Latvia over recent years? what would it take to get Eurovision back to Latvia in 2018?

Of course, recent participants from Latvia for example Justs and Aminata killed it. So we think with that kind of passion, and in our case with originality you can get it.

What sort of music would you generally listen to?, are there any artists that have particularly inspired you and influenced your sound?

As we mentioned we are all coming from different styles of music. But there are no specific artists we want to be compared to. When we are writing songs we are living just for the moment. There is nobody with us then.

Thank you so much for your time. We wish you the best of luck in Supernova!

If Crime Sea are one of your favorites in the first heat of Supernova, make sure you cast your vote for them, and for three other acts in our poll here:

Give a listen to “Escape” by Crime Sea here: