ATARAXIA, an all-time favourite band of ours from the neoclassical/ethereal spectrum of the dark alternative scene, released a beautiful album towards the end of 2022. This album featured in our playlist of favourite albums of September 2023, as we loved everything about it. The visuals and the video press release intrigued us further at a deeper spiritual level so, naturally, we wanted to catch up with the band and learn more about how they are and what inspired them this time. In this interview we talk about their inspiration, their collaboration with Insetti Xilografi, the role of nature and of memory in triggering moments of inspiration and much more. This interview is published in two parts.
Posts Tagged ‘music interview’
ATARAXIA-Interview Pt.1
Posted: 27th February 2023 by blaue-rosen in Live reviews,InterviewsTags: ATARAXIA interview 2023, ATARAXIA-Pomegranate, ethereal music, interviews 2023, music interview, neoclassical band interview, The Chant of the Elementals 2023
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Interview-Katy and Nick
Posted: 30th July 2020 by blaue-rosen in Live reviews,InterviewsTags: Gob Nation releases 2020, Katy and Nick interview, Katy and Nick What I Did For You, music interview, music interviews, new bands interviews, new music
Katy and Nick, a.k.a Katy Cotterell and Nick Carlisle have mesmerised us with their debut album made up of psychedelic sonic stories entitled ‘What I Did For You‘; and when we feel that way about an album, we want to learn more about the people behind its sound. While each of them is involved in at least 3 projects, they have joined their creative forces in order to write a mind-altering sonic recipe for us, which comes from a place of misophonia where a fascination with the work of E.A Poe and H.P Lovecraft meet ASMR and This Mortal Coil. We have talked with them about art in the time of a pandemic, about self determination and the sonic stories that inspire them. Have a listen to their album and support it.
Interview-New Model Army
Posted: 2nd October 2019 by blaue-rosen in Live reviews,InterviewsTags: Justin Sullivan interview 2019, music interview, New Model Army From Here tour, New Model Army interview 2019
New Model Army has been a favourite band of ours for many years but it has also been a band whose worldview, as it has been reflected through their music, we
respect and feel connected to throughout the years. We listened to their great latest album ‘From Here‘ , we shared our thoughts about it but we also had the pleasure of discussing this album and many more things with Justin Sullivan over the phone, a few days before the band’s Autumn tour begins. This interview almost closes the circle that the process of listening to an album opens up. There is nothing on the planet, that this interview does not talk about and we sure hope that you enjoy reading it.
Blauerosen: Hi Justin, thank you for joining me in this interview and congratulations on the release of another great album. You are about to start your Autumn tour from Southampton in a few days and you have spent your summer doing festival appearances. What was the best moment of these festivals so far?
Justin: We did quite a lot of festivals but the last one was in 
the North of Germany in the bit that you think is Denmark but it isn’t. It was on a farm, in the middle of nowhere and some of the buildings on this farm were medieval. People had just put together this festival where chickens and ducks were running around and it was everything that a festival should be.
Blauerosen: One of these festivals was the 28th WGT in Leipzig. I don’t think you have ever performed at this festival before. This is one of the very few in the world that has a very strong character. What did you think of it? How was your experience there? Did you have the time to see any other bands while you were there?
Justin: I really liked the vibe of the festival. The venue we were playing was a bit out of town so we didn’t see that much.
Blauerosen: The new album ‘From Here‘ was recorded at a studio in a Norwegian island and its sound was inspired by the setting there. I wonder, what came first, the choice of the place or the desire to create a new album? Why did you pick that studio? Was there something specific you wanted to explore in this last album sonically?
Justin: We decided to do a new album with the same team that we did ‘Winter‘ with, Jamie and Lee. We thought about the new album quite a lot. In terms of sonics, we decided that we wanted to go for the 
New Model Army big pounding sound but we also wanted the album to sound quite open and big. We decided to take the guitars away from the rhythm section so that their sound was ‘clean’ and this created this big ‘space’. Obviously the album was made in the context of everything that was happening in the world, but when I was writing the lyrics for it, I just wanted to take a step back from this whole thing of everybody screaming at each other and look at the bigger picture. We’ve written a lot of songs about ‘us and them‘ and I didn’t want this album to be full of ‘us and them’, I wanted this album to be full of ‘us’. With both these things in our heads, Jamie and Lee had this little studio where we recorded ‘Winter’ and this made that album sound like a very loud band in a very small room. This time we wanted the album to sound very big and we looked at various studios in Britain and it was Lee and Jamie who discovered this place in Norway so when we looked at pictures we said ‘we have got to do it, it has to be there‘. It is in a spectacular place but it also a brilliant studio in itself.
Chris Connelly Interview
Posted: 4th December 2018 by blaue-rosen in Live reviews,InterviewsTags: Armalyte Industries albums 2019, Chris Connelly Bloodhounds, Chris Connelly interview, Chris Connelly new album 2019, music interview
“…there is never a destination, destinations are boring!”
Chris Connelly, the man with a thousand (and more) musical faces, released his latest album entitled ‘Bloodhounds‘ through Armalyte Industries. As has always been the case with Chris Connelly’s work, the songs are much more than great music with great melodies and a beautiful performance. They give an attractive, soul/blues/rock form, to many sources of inspiration, ranging from paintings to books and landscapes. Inspiration is a malleable concept and it can mean different things to different people. It is evident, if one takes a deep look into the details of the albums (artwork, music, song titles) that Chris has created that, what motivates him is a great personal and spiritual ‘calling’ that transforms even every day experiences into dreamy, poetic and disquieting melodies. Whether you love more his industrial/dark side as has been revealed through his work with Cocksure and Revolting Cocks or his more lyrical Sylvian/Bowie inspired side more evident in his solo work, you must admit that, since the 90s Chris has created an artistically rich sonic universe.There have always been visual artists who were inspired by music but rarely have we encountered musicians being inspired by visual art. To us, translating a static image and its emotional impact into sound, is one of the most challenging tasks an artist can undertake. And yet, here we are, with an album and a musician that does exactly that.
We were delighted to be given a glimpse into the artistic mind of Chris Connelly and talk with him about the new album, his future plans, his previous work, Cocksure,Ministry, Revolting Cocks and anything in between. We would like to shout out to promoters in London in particular, to arrange for us to enjoy him perform live next year.
Siglo XX-Interview
Posted: 24th May 2018 by blaue-rosen in Live reviews,InterviewsTags: belgian coldwave band, music interview, Siglo XX 2018, Siglo XX interview 2018
“We liked to provoke at the time and we still like to do so now…“
Just a few hours before Siglo XX were about to perform live for the first time since 1991, exclusively for the audience of WGT, Blaue Rosen had the enormous pleasure to talk with Klaas (Hoogerwaard) and Antonio (Palermo) about what Siglo XX used to be, what inspired them then, what inspires them now, what matters and what does not. The band gave a memorable headlining show at Felsenkeller that evening, to which the audience responded warmly by dancing from the moment the first note of ‘ Until A Day‘ was heard until the last note of ‘Dreams Of Pleasure ‘ resonated in the space.This is a band with a humble yet very powerful stage presence, a quality which is difficult to describe and replicate and which derives from the whole philosophy that traverses its existence. Siglo XX has always had an almost noble worldview, which informed the way they composed music and the way they approached art in general.It is extremely rare to meet a band with such a level of self awareness and even though they would probably not accept this, the only thing that can explain the impact their music has had, is talent. We must understand, that not every musician that experiments can produce a result of quality and not every person who is involved in art, is simultaneously concerned to that degree, with the things that happen around the world.
Dark Door-Interview
Posted: 23rd May 2018 by blaue-rosen in Live reviews,InterviewsTags: Dark Door Interview, darkwave bands, darkwave music, Dead&Buried club London April 2018, Italia darkwave scene, Italian darkwave music, music interview
Dark Door a.k.a Mario D’Aniello and Federica Velenia, is a band that was formed in Naples and a band that you should know about, because their music is beautiful and their performances are emotionally and visually very strong! They have self-released 4 albums so far, whose music is more an outlet of their feelings than a desire to create music of a certain style.Inspired by the damned poets, darkness in aesthetics and the darkness in the world, Dark Door give to these elements an attractive musical and visual form. We had the great chance to see them perform live as part of a special Dead&Buried event last month, which was carried out in a suitable venue which does not pose any health and safety risks to an audience and can accommodate the sound requirements for a gig.Everyone had a lot of fun during that gig, everyone was dancing all the time and Blaue Rosen loved this band so much, that we had to talk with them about their influences, the symbolism in their visuals and their sources of inspiration.
Hector Gannet-Interview
Posted: 17th May 2018 by blaue-rosen in Live reviews,InterviewsTags: folk music, Hector Gannet interview 2018, music interview
Hector Gannet, is a band with a fascinating story but it is also a band with a name and surname, whose songs will definitely make your mind navigate, with the calmness required before making important acknowledgments, not only to the places the lyrics refer to but also to the places close to your heart.Moreover, it is not often that music and film are combined with such harmony as Hector Gannet achieved it in the project ‘Moving North:Coastal’ for which they composed the music. Blauerosen was excited to be able to learn more about the reference points and the influences of this band, ahead of their live performance at BAD PUNK’s event ‘The Devil Has A Hold On The Land’ on May 27th 2018.
ATARAXIA-Interview
Posted: 14th May 2018 by blaue-rosen in Live reviews,InterviewsTags: ATARAXIA interview, ATARAXIA new album 2018, ATARAXIA Synchronicity Embraced 2018, ATARAXIA Wave Gotik Treffen 2018, music interview, neoclassical music
“Nature is a temple in which living columns sometimes emit confused words. Man approaches it through forests of symbols, which observe him with familiar glances”. Charles Baudelaire
There is something about musicians that approach their art with thoroughness and give some form to a multitude of influences, that Blaue Rosen absolutely loves.This does not necessarily have to do with the genre or the quantity of influences, but with the way they have been approached by the artists, in a tireless quest for essence. ATARAXIA is a beloved band because it embodies all this and more. They describe themselves as ‘craftsmen of sound‘ and the word ‘ritual’ is often used to describe their performances.The music the band has composed, could be generally categorized as neoclassical and ethereal but is never just rhythm and melodies; it is paintings, it is poetry, it reflects the sound and the ‘aura’ of places (both ancient and contemporary), it is symbolic, it is conceptually and spiritually inspiring and it is music that, when it stops, it makes you breathe in, a little differently…more consciously, more aware and less aware at the same time, it has emotional and conceptual gravity…
Word Made Flesh-Album review and interview
Posted: 23rd January 2018 by blaue-rosen in Album reviews, Live reviews,InterviewsTags: Gabriel Edvy video The Forest, Gabriel Edvy video Word Made Flesh, music interview, Phil Barry interview, Word Made Flesh debut album 2017, Word Made Flesh interview
As Bacon said, ‘The ideas in the Unconscious mind are far more interesting than from the Conscious mind.’
There is something fascinating about a ritualistic atmosphere and I think that people who do not engage in rituals, experience it differently and dare I say, perhaps more intensely. In short, just approach this album cautiously unaware of the fact that at the end, it will have such a strong grip on your mind that you will have to invoke all of your different types of strength in order to set it free!
The debut album of Word Made Flesh a.k.a Phil Barry and Keith Baker, that was released in October 2017 and is entitled ‘Word Made Flesh’, was included in our soundtrack for 2017 because we loved the conceptual and emotional weight its rhythms have placed on our psyche.Both musicians are involved in other projects, Phil Barry in Cubanate and Be My Enemy and Keith Baker in Nimon, Displacer, Be My Enemy. The sound of the album ‘Word Made Flesh’ is very different from all the other projects of Phil and Keith. With its 10 soundscapes, this album feels as if it is creating a musical wormhole that pulls us in, at times with the chaotic energy of power noise, borrowing from the aesthetics of psych trance (i.e. first half of ‘The Clock Stops‘, ‘Death Posture‘), other times with the mind-numbing energy of a slow moving wave (i.e.’The Process‘) or even by creating a powerful vortex made of repetitive sounds (i.e. first half of ‘Black Mirror‘). There are noise industrial parts throughout the album that increase the tempo momentarily and add a rusty, flaky, metallic texture to the grave sounding, strategically placed, vocals (i.e. ‘Heretic‘) that talk ceremoniously about cryptic things. Each song is like a many headed hydra, constantly reinventing itself throughout its duration. This is in short, how the energy of this album is structured and these are the elements with which Word Made Flesh, create a highly ritualistic album, ‘borrowing’ equally from the aesthetics of religious ceremonies and psychedelic ones in order to talk about an approach to life.
The Frozen Autumn-Interview
Posted: 6th January 2018 by blaue-rosen in Live reviews,InterviewsTags: Diego Merletto interview, Froxeanne interview, music interview, The Frozen Autumn interview 2017, The Frozen Autumn The Fellow Traveller, The Frozen Autumn The Fellow Traveller 2017
After listening to their latest beautiful album entitled ‘The Fellow Traveller‘ a few times, I just wanted to, theoretically, pick up the phone and congratulate The Frozen Autumn in person. It is precious to come across such inspired work.With this album, it is as if the band created an area of ‘light’ in this dystopian world. This is not an album that makes a critique to the conditions that envelope all of us, it is an album that makes us look ‘up’ and ‘over’ what is here now.It glorifies the synthesizers, it talks about voyages, it talks about space and most importantly it has humour, not dark humour but this gentle and kind humour that lifts the spirit up and soothes the heart.Because we liked this album so much that we included it in our soundtrack for 2017, we wanted to speak with The Frozen Autumn about their work and show them through our questions how much we appreciate what they have created.
It is not a given that a band replies sincerely to questions, it is not a given that a band will find an interview interesting and it is definitely not a given that positive feedback will be provided. All these great things happened and created the 
impression that the new year will be very exciting. The Frozen Autumn offered us their time in order to discuss about the new album, their new explorations as musical ‘travellers’, the visuals of the new album, the merits and complexities of the distribution of music on the web and their previous gig in London. If there is one extremely important conclusion to be drawn then it is this: unless ‘we’ (and by ‘we’, i mean organizers, venues, promoters, technicians etc) here in London get ‘our’ act together, we will not get to see this amazing band perform live again!This is what Diego and Froxeanne told us: