1. Salutations to Vacuum Era Gelid Atmosphere! I´ll start with a very unoriginal question about the band’s history. There is no need to transcribe the whole biography. So could you outline the important milestones in band’s existence and put a light on the events that caused the major gap between the Cocaine albums and the new one, “Far from you”?
The band started in late 90’s as an extreme metal project. We were into norwegian black metal back then, and wanted to make an album reflecting that kind of music. Our first attempt, totally homemade, was “Cocaine - A Sick Mind’s Hologram”. I don’t know how we managed to compose such a piece of weird extreme music, but it was spontaneous and pure, we liked it a lot. But since the original idea was to actually do something in the vein of bands such as Emperor, Mysticum, Dodheimsgard and Dark Funeral our debut was far too experimental so we thought we could keep the blackmetal tracks and get rid of the rest. This led to the album “Cocaine” in 2002, on LP limited edition only. Since then we basically evolved musically diving into all sorts of genres, and i really mean all. We’ve been composing sporadically, each member on his own cause we don’t live in the same country, we move elsewhere very often.
“Far From You” is simply a collection of 5 tracks, the first 2 composed during the recording sessions of “Cocaine - A Sick Mind’s Hologram”, but never published cause they were basically even more experimental than our debut album, basically we put them aside waiting for the right moment to publish them. The third track is a remix by Kekoz (our bass player, no more part of the band today), where he collected and remixed tracks from myself (Ravèz, guitars, synth, vocals) and Janos (drums, synth, vocals) creating this out of the world 23 minutes long suite. The last 2 songs were composed by me and Janos in 2008, and they were meant to be a pure electronic experiment. We decided to publish these 5 tracks as a whole album cause all 5 tracks were originally conceived as experiments and they are to be considered “Far From You”, with “You” meaning our fans, who for the most part were blackmetal fans. I don’t want this to be misinterpreted. We don’t neglect our blackmetal origins, we simply wanted to make a clear step into a more experimental approach to music.
2. Yours new album is out and the first thing that listener probably notices is the internet-only release through i-tunes. What is the reason for you to release it in such way? Have you had problems with finding a proper label? Or you find this method more comfortable than a expensive release on the physical medium?
We don’t expect a wide range of people to be interested in this album, especially people who was probably expecting another blackmetal album. I wouldn’t even know where to start to find a label interested in releasing this kind of music on cd, since it’s not a well established trend as blackmetal. I hate thinking about music in relation to money and the market music. Cause you need to make music that sells in order to be released by a label. Well, fuck that... we only care about composing music, whatever genre we want whenever we want. iTunes is the answer to this kind of problem. We pay 20€ per year per album to get them on iTunes and we can publish everything we want whenever we want. If the album doesn’t sell is not our interest, cause what we want is to compose and make our albums official, everything else is marketing, and we never showed interest for that. Anyway Debemur Morti Productions (our label for the “Cocaine” albums) already offered its unconditioned support (once again) accepting to distribute the release of “Far From You” on cd. This will only happen if the album is actually something that fans want, otherwise there won’t be any cd release of course.
3. “Far from you” could be easily described as far from everything. Music is very varied and hard to apprehend, but still surprisingly compact. Did the composition lasting for almost 10 years influenced the music strongly? Have you actually had period when you enjoyed listening to psychedelic music, so you composed psychedelic stuff and during different period you felt like composing industrial music?
If i had to list all the genres i’m into i’d never finish this interview... We’re influenced by all genres and we usually end up composing music which is dramatic anyway. That’s the only thing that i can be sure of about our future releases, while the genre is subject to change continuously. I don’t divide music in genres, rather in bands. I simply listen to everything i like and compose everything comes natural to me without asking myself why and what it sounds like, i think it’s pointless...
4. The atmosphere of the album could be described as the bad trip. The enjoyable strain of first tracks slowly melts into nightmare. So, should the album evoke hallucinogenic trip or lucid nightmare? I wonder if experiments with drugs or mind had a impact on actual composing.
We’ve always been associated to drug related music, maybe because of the album name “Cocaine”. Let me make this clear once and for all: we never used drugs to compose music. As i said many other times “Cocaine” title was given because of the addictive effect of our music to the listeners and especially because we experience music composition as an addiction, kind of a drug then.
We definitely don’t need to be mind-altered in order to compose schizoid allucinating music, we just need to be ourselves and that’s the result. I guess it’s our natural essence. “Far From You” can be considered as a bad trip as you correctly interpreted...it’s kind of a concept album. Basically the listeners are brought by hand in a nice way by an unknown entity who will in the end leave the listener alone nowhere, alone, and with nothing to grip to. It’s a metaphore where we (the composers), unknown to the listener, bring him by hand showing him unknown places that in the beginning might look safe while in the end will mute to something so claustrophobic and “new” that he will feel eventually lost. We want our fans to abandon schemes and enjoy an unexplored path that leads to the unknown, which is actually our musical future as a band. Actually this is also our way of composing, se sit down and compose without even knowing where we’ll end up with it.
5. It hasn’t been so long when your “Cocaine: A sick mind’s hologram” got re-released as the “Alienforest: A sick mind’s hologram”. Re-edition has a fairly improved sound and also one bonus track. Nevertheless I’ll ask you: What made you to improve and re-release this album? Considering the release of consequent “Cocaine” it may look as a bit pointless idea. By the way, how you got in contact with the “Debemur Morti”?
I’m very picky about what is to be considered official and what is not. We never published an album by the name “Cocaine - A Sick Mind’s Hologram”, that’s it. We just composed it. So in 2008 we wanted it to be released officially and that’s what we did. In order to avoid confusion we changed its name to “Alienforest - A Sick Mind’s Hologram”, and this should be enough to make things clear. Whoever can publish something unofficial by other’s name. People should only care about official releases, the rest doesn’t exist. Actually Debemur Morti was the one to contact us. We were already quite far from the blackmetal world when he wrote me in 2006. He had a copy of our vinyl “Cocaine” and asked the permission to release it on cd 4 years after the first release on vinyl. We never had nothing against seeing our albums released by whoever offers to do it, so we accepted. Since then there’s always been a mutual respect for each other’s work and this led to a collaboration which never ended. Debemur Morti is definitely the only label that will publish our blackmetal albums on cd.
6. I’ll follow up to a previous question. Not so long after the debut, you released another album called simply “Cocaine”. This one has included quite significant amount of ideas from the debut, but now everything has been finalized into great shape. I don’t want to flatter you, but this albums is truly an exceptional piece. Please tell us something about its making, intention of its creation etc.
“Cocaine” was a stripped down version of our back then unreleased debut “Cocaine - A Sick Mind’s Hologram”. As i said before, it was meant to be a pure blackmetal album with the influences aforementioned. What it eventually evolved into is our own twisted vision of blackmetal, which made it quite an original album actually. I remember Janos recorded the drums trying to make the same job he did on the debut, so that we could simply record the whole thing with a better sound at my friend’s studio (Ettore from Disarmonia Mundi). But as soon as i had to record guitars i started enjoying varying the composition adding guitar layers and eventually using 8 guitar lines per track. This transformed the old album into something new and fresher, it took me 8 months of composition to end the guitar job until i was finally satisfied. It was nice but really stressing period. And there’s a great need of free time to dedicate to such an effort. Something we never had anymore since 2002, because of our jobs.
7. The change between “Cocaine” and “Far from you” is very significant. I guess that wish to compose other music than black metal was an evident reason of doing so. But are you still interested in continuation of Cocaine albums? I’m pointing on the slow creation of “Klinik” album. In which stadium is the composition, now? Can we expect the album in next few months/years?
That’s something i asked my self too. I always hope i can have again the time to sit down, pick up the guitar and compose, but then i never find time unfortunately. We managed to start something in 2008. Since we live in different countries the only way to compose these days is through a digital approach. So Janos is composing the drums on his laptop while i record my ideas on top of his job. We tried this just once last year and in 2 days we composed a first demo of a track for “Klinik” which you can actually listen to on our myspace. But it’s just a first try to define what “Klinik” could sound like. The original idea was to do something metal related, even if it will probably be the last time cause i find really annoying to play instruments, i just like to compose music, not to perform it through instruments. I’ll have some time this summer, let’s see what i manage to do with this project. It’s a big effort to come back composing a metal album, especially since i’d like to move on to other genres instead of going back to old ones. Fact is that we still have some good ideas that people might enjoy and would be nice to make a final contribution of the band to the blackmetal world, and then close this period of our life to concentrate on other kinds of music. Only time will tell.
8. I know, that you’ve never played live and I guess it won’t change. But could you at least imagine (V.E.G.A.) on stage? Under special circumstances, with great sound, visual projection etc. Which label you find more fitting? The band or musical project? Do you rehearse often, or you’re just exchanging ideas between members?
There are many reasons why you’ll never see us live: we don’t like playing instruments, we don’t make music as a mean of entertainment,we are not professional musicians, we rehearsed together like 5 times in our life as a band 10 years ago, and so on... If i had to imagine it, it would probably be like watching a Lynch movie, but you would definitely leave the concert thinking you’ve just lost some neurons..and to answer your question the band IS the musical project. (v.e.g.a.) is a band that plays music, dramatic and sick, whatever genre we end up with on each album.
9. We’re almost at the end. There are plenty of influences heard on “Far from you”, but not only there. For example I hear Throbbing gristle on some occasions of “Far from you”. I don’t want say that you’re copying somebody, but could you interpret some artists that had a deep impact on you and your music?
For the few things i heard i don’t like Throbbling Gristle, but i’ve seen their name many times beside Kaspel musical projects, who i’m actually a great fan of. For the tracks on “Far From You” our biggest influences were Katatonia, Opeth, The Doors, Carbon Based Lifeforms and don’t know what else, but all of them influenced like just the 10% of the music on the album, everything else i guess is pure (v.e.g.a.)’s world. And that’s where i want this band to go in the future... i won’t be composing again an album trying to sound like someone else as i did with “Cocaine”, and “Far From You” is the turning page of our approach to music. Even with “Klinik” if we’ll ever compose it, it won’t sound anything near you might have already listened to, even if we’ll keep the use of guitars and drums on it, everything else will turn it into something that only (v.e.g.a.) can compose. Sick, extreme and unique. I’m quite sure in the future we’ll be using classic piano, orchestra, drone and ambient think carpets. And the albums will sound like soundtracks more than normal albums, i doubt we’ll be using vocals, while there might be some samples here and there.
10. I think that the questions were enough and I hope I haven’t forgotten anything important. Thank you very much for your time and effort. If you have something on mind, don’t hesitate to write it now. Live your life as best as you can.
I always did and will. Thanks for the interest and enjoy your trip to the Vacuum Era Gelid Atmosphere
