 |
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
First of all, I want to ask you something concerning the bandname. You have to know, that I’m kind of a word-fetishist – Hahaha. It’s possible to read it ANGEL-SPIT or ANGELS-PIT. Was this intended, when you came up with the name? Maybe as a first hint to the contradictions in your work, like the mixture between noisy elements and beauty in music and artwork? The main mood of your work, that I would describe as harsh hedonism? Destroyx: The band name is inspired by one of my favourite Sonic Youth songs ‘Orange Rolls Angel’s Spit’. Sonic Youth are my favourite band… in many ways they have inspired us, as they have many harsh aggressive guitar elements which are contrasted with their beautiful dreamlike soundscapes. This type of contradiction typifies much of Angelspit, with the battle between rough and polished musical elements being always present. Harsh hedonism is a great description of our music, as we’re aiming for a psychotic yet pleasurable and cathartic musical and visual experience. Zoog: It’s not meant to be read as Angels Pit, but that would make for an interesting interpretation of the name, considering that hell could be considered as a pit of fallen angels.
You are running a fashion label, too. Is that right? Was this the place, where you met first? And how did you come up with the idea of starting a band? Zoog: We meet through an interest in zines (independent fan zines). Destroyx ran a zine distro which I helped out with. We both made zines and were involved in many DIY creative projects, such as screen printing T-shirts and running punk market stalls. Ultimately our relationship was based on creativity. We meet in late 2002 and started Angelspit in 2004. Music seemed like an extension of our pre-existing creative relationship. Destroyx: Both of us juggle a variety of projects, with our fashion label being just one outlet for our creativity. I would consider ourselves to be multidisciplinary artists, not confined to a particular medium. I am the more visually oriented of Angelspit, so I design the clothes and merchandise. We hand make everything that we sell in our webstore (www.surgeon-x.com). I’m definitely going to be working on more fashion in the future (especially for Angelspit merchandise), but at the moment I’m burying myself in designing graphics and video.
This brings me to the aesthetics of your work. Design is very important for you. Was there a visual concept, before you started writing songs? Zoog: Basically we thought of the concepts which would underlie the whole album. These concepts and stories we came up with equally spawned the music and the images. Many of the song ideas get written first, with the visuals giving direction to the music throughout the process. Since we are very involved with both spheres of creation, visual and musical, they are inextricably linked. However the music and visuals can be appreciated separately. Destroyx: I believe that music is very visual and whenever I hear music, images are always connoted. That’s why we always are working on both at the same time. Design is extremely important in Angelspit, as we are very visually oriented people. I am probably obsessed with aesthetics, which is why I pay a lot of attention to the presentation of the band and its visual identity. I think it’s really important for bands today to understand the importance of image in our overly image saturated world. Although it may be annoying for many to acknowledge, understanding how to market your music to your audience is increasingly becoming more and more important as music becomes more specialised into particular categories… indie, industrial, goth etc…
Pictures like the one of this kind of operation theatre and titles like “Nurse Grenade” or “Krankhaus”… (why the German title?)you seem to be rather fascinated by hospital-surroundings and medical methods that are a bit besides common habits;-) Is this calculated shocking? Or at least an attempt to alienate people a bit? Zoog: The medical imagery is not really meant to alienate viewers or shock them… rather it’s a way for us to make a statement that has an intense and instantly recognisable connotation. It’s a play on an established horror archetype in a way. Destroyx: The medical theme also has a mixed negative and positive association as it’s both alluring and perverse at the same time, for example the naughty nurse stereotype which is replayed over and over in the fetish world, contrasted to the nightmarish image of medical experimentation and vivisection. We’re treading the fine line between pleasure and pain. Zoog: Many of our lyrics talk about the idea of society being medicated, as people take more medicines, are being fed drivel on television and are being taught to be paranoid, with the only cure for it being consumerism.
Don’t you think, that it has become pretty hard to alienate anyone in a world, where people meet online to make a date for being eaten alive (maybe you heard of the German case of the so called “Cannibal Of Rothenburg”)?
Destroyx: I don’t think we’re trying to alienate anyone, but trying to include people by allowing them to recognise a bit of themselves in our lyrics or visuals. We have heard of the “Cannibal of Rothenburg”, which is a very interesting case. Maybe it shows that people have to go to more extremes now to connect with people, as I think people are getting more and more alienated in today’s society. Zoog: I think that there is more alienation in society because of the internet. Everyone is reading everyone else’s thoughts and journals there is less proper communication and more constructed realities. There is less individuality and more formula, especially in the goth scene as everyone is trying to conform to standards by wearing the same clothes, getting the same tattoos, fake hair…. whatever. The same goes with music, as people keep repeating the same musical ideas over and over again in order to be accepted. People are becoming alienated from each other by trying to be the same, as they lose their own creative voices.
On the other hand the public interest in cases like this might give an hint to a dark desire for the forbidden darker elements within ourselves… Would you agree, that you love to play with the fine line between fascination and disgust from time to time? Destroyx: We most certainly play with the fine line between fascination and disgust and between the beautiful and the grotesque. We’re trying to show that all such values are relative, which are largely dependant on social norms. We’re trying to make people see that they have to determine what’s valuable to them. What makes something beautiful? What makes something horrible? That’s for you to decide, not the media, not your friends… only you can figure that out. Zoog: The morbid fascination that people have for the darker elements within ourselves is definitely a natural human impulse. Through using more controversial imagery, people can in a sense live vicariously through the characters we have created. People often enjoy crazy, terrifying art because it emphasises the ordinary and makes them feel safe. We teeter on the edge of the unspeakable which is intended to challenge our audience to think about their own limitations of acceptability and those imposed by society.
Taking about hidden parts of our inner
self: The crest that shows up in your artwork produces the impression,
that you are inviting the listener to become part of some kind of
secret society. Was this your intention? Zoog: It’s an extremely hedonistic society in which guests indulge in acts of the perverse and macabre. We are attempting to pose the question, if one had the means to do whatever one wanted, what would you do? What extremes would you go to in order to uphold your status or affirm your pleasures? It’s about asking how far people would go in order to entertain their darker natures. Destroyx: Essentially the album is attempting to reflect many social trends prevalent in society, such as the emphasis on the selfishness at the expense of others, as well as the disposability of human life.
Are you seriously interested in spiritism,
in magic and secret knowledge? Zoog: We’re both interested with the notion of illusion and how people can create and believe in empty promises. Dangerous cults such as Scientology are a good example of this. Although we’re interested in the occult and alternate religions, we aren’t practioners in any sense, as we are more interested the history and mythology surrounding such groups. Destroyx: I guess we also believe that in modern day life consumerism is today’s religion, which reveals much of the darker side of the human spirit.
For the music: It is without any doubt industrial-related, but its far beyond the cliché. You seem to have Pop-ed up the genre so to say and given it a very sexy and danceable, yet harsh new face. Does this roughly describe your artistic focus? Zoog: With our music we’ve gone back to the old school industrial approach to things by generating sounds by scratch, which is a reason why we don’t sound clichéd. People seem to have stuck to a formula, and forgotten how to write good songs, which is why we’re probably more interested in writing good pop songs than aimless drivel. One of the hardest things you can do is write a simple pop song. It’s also one as the most offensive things you can do, because catchy pop songs stick into people’s heads, even the ones they hate. Destroyx: I think one of the reasons that we sound different to many other bands is because we have a real and sincere passion and anger behind the music which is reflected in our harsh sound. I think we are more rock industrial oriented than akin to dance music. We’re trying to make the usually clean synthesizers sound destructive and have personality, by crafting all of the sounds carefully. Zoog: Too many songs are written about love and superficial issues in a really insincere way which we think is mostly bullshit. We’re trying to write about the reality of our horrible world, how we’re fooled into thinking life is going to be easy and how most of it is a lie. We’re making angry music for a fucked up world. Destroyx: I guess the appealing side of the music in much of its dance focus was partly unintentional, because I think Zoog listens to too much 80’s music!
How important is experimenting with different sounds for you? I heard, you did some percussion sound by destroying an Ironing Board for example… is that true? And do you tend to working with such unconventional instruments? Zoog: Experimentation is the core of our music. It’s the most important element in our writing process. Using presets and the same drum sounds is like the microwave meals of the food world....and bland as all fuck. It’s easy and everyone does it, making everything sound the same. This is why we try to make all of our sounds original by tediously building sounds from scratch. It’s much more fun this way. We’re very inspired by Einsturzende Neubauten in that way. Destroyx: It is true that we destroyed an ironing board to make some good percussive sounds. We will pretty much annihilate anything that is metal and has a good resonant property to sample. We’re always making new instruments and picking up stuff off the street to use as percussion. Our backyard is littered with metal stuff we picked up from back alleys. Zoog: Our drum kit is basically a white trash backyard with a sampler. I also like to use modular synthesizer to screw up the sounds, because it’s an organic way to approach sound generation.
The Booklet says, That Music, Lyrics, Programming and Concepts were done by Destroyx & ZooG. Does that mean, you are doing everything together, without any defined responsibilities like one of you mainly writing the lyrics and the other contributing the beats or something? Zoog: We do all of the creative planning together. Overall we work together on the concept and art direction together, but we delegate tasks to each other according to our strengths. I do most of the music and Destroyx does the art, but it is definitely a collaborative process between us. The roles aren’t strictly defined. Destroyx: We write all of the lyrics together and arrange the music together. It takes forever, but it make for a much more artistically diverse album. Although we have our strengths, I’m learning a lot about music from Zoog (who has studied music), and Zoog is learning much about design from me.
By the way: How important are the lyrics for you? To be honest, danceable beats and stylish artwork feed the suspicion of a certain shallowness first. Many artists build a dancefloor-fashion-wall around a big bubble without much meaning. Do you mainly try to find words, that feel good and fit to the concept and sound? Or are you trying to deliver something like a message, at list the message, that the world is sick (“dirty human gone insane…”)? Destroyx: We definitely angst over the lyrics and spend so much time on them. There are a lot of hidden meanings written into them. We mix the political, social and personal together with an overarching theme of horror. Our lyrics are quite disturbing, and we hope some of the more powerful lyrics found in the industrial scene. We think they are extremely important to the music, and shouldn’t be an afterthought, but are actually an integral element in the songs. Zoog: There is definitely a message to our lyrics. We’re so sick of people writing non sense lyrics that means absolutely nothing. Our music is a vehicle for our message, with our lyrics reflecting the complex, confused, horribly deluded fucked up world we live in. Destroyx: We just want people to wake up.
Back to the music: You worked with some guest-musicians on “Krankhaus”. Do you have an established live Line-Up? Or are you trying to perform as a duo as far as possible, with the help of samples? Destroyx: At the moment we’re just going to be performing as a duo as far as we can, in order to see how we are received. It has been going well so far. Zoog: We don’t really have an established line up, as it’s just us and our various electronic gadgets. In the future we will be interested in a large band, but at this stage we’re just trying to go ballistic on stage together.
Are your performances visually as fulminant as the album-artwork? Something like a grotesque Industrial-Revue? Destroyx: Hopefully the audience will think it’s just as exciting as the artwork. It is difficult to bring a huge visual production on the road, but hopefully our performance is just as exciting for our audiences. For some of our shows in Australia we managed to transform the venue into a huge surgery, we had installation art, fetish nurses and medical performers. Unfortunately, we can’t tour this kind of show but we’re working on some live visuals which should enhance the music. Zoog: Interestingly, our live performances are quite different in tone compared to our artwork because in the artwork we are very composed whereas in the live show we totally destroy ourselves.
You are going to perform here in Germany in May… What do you expect? What do you promise to your audience? Zoog: At the moment we can’t confirm any dates for Europe, but we definitely will be playing in Europe at some point in 2007. However we can’t reveal any tour plans until they are finalised. Destroyx: When we do finally get there, we can promise to our audiences anarchy, chaos and an in your face performance. Zoog: We will deliver all of the energy and sincerity that we have.
The last one: You are from Australia. There’s not to many Australian Goth-acts known over here. Is there a vivid scene down under? And if so, why does everyone still think of digeridoos and kangaroos first, when thinking about Australia? Zoog: There is quite a scene down here, though nothing as huge as in Europe or the USA obviously because of the population size. This means that many alternative subcultures get mixed in together, goth, fetish, indie, punk, metal… This has its advantages because it means that we get exposed to a variety of music and outlooks, not just any from goth culture for example. We have a lot of great bands in Australia, especially those in the Crash Frequency collective (http://www.crashfrequency.com) which is a collective that promotes Australian bands to the world. Unfortunately though, many local bands find it tough to get played at local clubs. It is rare that people will play any Angelspit tracks because there seems to be a contempt for locally made music. People here look to mirror the European goth scene, with most DJ’s playing the same music that you might find in Europe, 1 year late and for 10 years in duration. Destroyx: On the other hand, creatively there are some amazing designers in the goth scene, especially in fashion. There are many open minded people who are willing to try something new. It will definitely be interesting for us to visit Europe/USA next year because it will allow us to compare the Australian scene to the rest of the world! It is natural for people to think stereotypically about Australia, just in the same way that we might think about any country we haven’t visited. It is not a big scene but it is full of talented creative people.
Orkus Magazine, Feb
07, page 62. (Interview printed in German) |
