1. Hi Oranssi Pazuzu. Not a long time ago I’ve reviewed your debut “Muukalainen Puhuu” which got very high ratings. However you’re a band that’s very little known in the Czech Republic. Could you then tell us some interesting things about the circumstances of the start of your band?
I think the work of the band is propably more interesting than the starting point. All the members are long time friends and we had been playing music together occasionally. Me and Jun-His had been into black metal for some time, and when we started playing this stuff, we all found it instantly very inspiring. It felt natural for us to write this type of music.
2. The sentence “ORANSSI PAZUZU makes music that lures all the arsonists and smokers to hold each others hands” on your MySpace got me interested. Is than your music pointed towards the smokers? If then, smokers of what ?
That sentence is just something we put there to hint people that there are many different directions in our music, and we’re not aiming to please fans of only one particular genre. Arsonists refer to the 90’s norwegian black metal and smokers refer to psychedelic music of the 70’s and naturally smoking marihuana. But our music is not pointed only to smokers, it’s pointed to people that are open-minded and don’t care if we mix black metal influences with “wrong“ genres.
3. If it’s smokin’ of anything, i had an idea if you find your inspiration in psychotropic substances or what’s your point about them or what are your other inspirations? The similar question is asked to similar bands.
I personally find inspiration in everything that moves me. Some of us might have some experiences about psychedelics, but I don’t see it as the main point of this band. I think this whole capitalistic monster society is on the verge of collapse and it makes me want to make music that celebrates chaos and doom.
4. Finding the inspiration is sometimes hard. How’s that with you? Does the whole band contribute or is your music made of individual ideas? Are there any rituals or ways how you gain your inspiration?
This band is the ritual. We don’t have any problems with inspiration, we always have new ideas waiting to be put together. We just start playing and usually something new comes out. There’s no main songwriter, someone just writes a riff that we then play over and over, so that everyone can get into the right mood.
5. Your music managed to mix psychadelia of the 70’s or krautrock with black metal, which are at first sight diametral different. How do you consider the 70’s in a way of ideals and music? Could you name any bands that influenced you?
I don’t know whether the ideals of that era are valid in today’s society or not. But there’s lots of inspiring music that was made in the 70’s. Can, Faust, King Crimson and Pink Floyd to name a few. I think there’s also some similarities between krautrock and minimalistic black metal bands like Burzum and Darkthrone. The sound is of course different, but both depend heavily on repetition and aim for a certain mood in a song. That is what we are interested in.
6. Your debut “Muukalainen Puhuu” isn’t only absolutely original, but also very specific. We agreed to give it very high ratings at our redaction. What’s your opinion when you look back at the record? How do you care about the criticism generally? Do you read any of it, does it have a meaning for you?
The album is a good presentation of what the band sounded like when we started. We were putting all these different musical ideas together and figuring out what we could do with them. I’m very happy we recorded it live, since it gives the listener a realistic idea of our true sound. There’s no studio wankery or added guitar solos. Only the vocals and some extra percussions were done separately. I think it’s a fine record. Too bad we are still waiting for a vinyl release.
I read the criticism sometimes. It is interesting when the critic understands what we’re trying to do and is making some points about the music, but sometimes you can tell that the writer has no idea what this is all about. We don’t take them too seriously, since we have a pretty good idea what we want to do as a band right now.
7. Is it me, or some passages on the record were made by improvisation? That’s common in jazz or similar styles, but in the means of black metal it’s quite untypical. Was your goal to make the record sound this way and to create something “different”?
Yes, there are improvisation. Our songwriting has a lot to do with improvisation, so we wanted the album to have the same spontanious spirit. The title track for example is just one jam. We wanted to put even more jams on the album, but we ran out of time as we recorded it. But maybe we’ll record more jams in the future. Our aim was to make the album sound like it was made by us, not some Darkthrone cover band.
8. Listening to your record gives me feeling that I’m listening to the soundtrack of mental conditions which are result of the work of drugs and other substances that have influence on our mind. I believe, that the music is in the means of imagination the best aspect for human hearing. No other sense can stimulate our brain this way. That’s the point of my second question. Is the record meant to be listened if you’re high or just for clean mind.
In my opinion music can be interpreted freely by the listener, so I don’t care what drugs people use when they listen to our album. Some listeners may get into it more easily if they use something to boost their imagination. But I’m not saying people should be stoned to listen to our music. People with different state of mind will get different feelings from the music, and it’s up to them how they want to experience this.
9. And what about live performances? The concert would be good experience, that doesn’t have competition in the metal scene. Are you preparing to play live, if so would there be something special at your show?
We are doing live shows in Finland right now. We are looking forward to playing abroad, but for that we’ll need some contacts outside Finland. We have used some video material at shows but right now we just let the music get people in the right mood so to speak.
10. I don’t want to torture you with lots of questions, so I’d like to thank you for this interview and wish you good luck with your music in the future. The last words are only yours.
Thanks. I hope we are able to do some shows in Czech at some point.