Orchis
Some words about the group members, how do you meet, what did you do before? Can you tell me, how and under what conditions, was recorded the first album of Orchis, was there a second edition of this CD or exists only the first with 600 copy’s?
Orchis has three members, Alan, Amanda & Tracy. We all play all the various instruments (dulcimers, guitars, harp, recorders, whistles guitars, bodhrans, bow psaltery etc etc) & Tracy & Amanda do 99% of the vocals. Alan & Tracy started recording on a 4 track for their own amusement in 1991, and when they heard a performance by Amanda at a Saturnalia party they asked her to join. The resultant tracks became the album The Dancing Sun (1995), which again we mastered purely for our own amusement, and subsequently released as a limited edition when various people whose opinions we valued said it deserved a wider audience. We did in fact only do 600x as we felt it was a bit ramshackle, but it may well be reissued at some point. The album had loosely based Gnostic & Pagan themes, but was essentially a collection of pieces rather than a cohesive album. It was received very positively, and we thought : Well, we'll have to do another one, and make it better than the first. We knew exactly what we wanted to do - a concept album about the death of paganism in Europe and the rise of Christianity, seen as a journey both through time as measured by countries and time as measured by the individual, as a mystical/historical journey from which you can never go back. We started recording the material, but abandoned it due to frustration with the limitations of our equipment. Three of the abandoned tracks we released as a 7", He Walks In Winter (1996). With new equipment, A Thousand Winters (1997) was recorded & mixed in just over a week, and again the reviews were excellent. The third album took much longer, as we wanted to make it in a completely different way. It was originally to be titled The Birth Of Aphrodite, and to start with the track Anodiomene, which was actually recorded not long after the A Thousand Winters sessions, but as the concept grew it became Mandragora (1999). We have also contributed quite a few tracks to compilations, such as The Dark Ages, ON, & Terra Serpentes; there are actually a few coming out around now - one on Arborlon is out this week (Myths & Legends); a Ramses compilation in aid of the peoples of Irian Jaya (Mask of the People) came out a few eeks ago, and one onInflux Communications is also in the pipeline.
What kind of literature likes the group members and what kind of music do you listen in your spare time?
We all listen to many different things at any given time. Broadly speaking, Amanda listens to club/ambient & opera; Tracy to opera & mediaeval & baroque art music & Alan to more folk based stuff. Common interests include: Art/Graphics: Titian, El Greco, The Pre-Raphaelites, Arthur Rackham, Gay Corran, Kay Nielsen, Edmund Dulac. Poetry/Words: Simon Raven, Lawrence Durrell, John Masefield, W.B. Yeats, Francis Thompson, Alfred Turner, T.H.White, Capt. W.E. Johns, Guy De Maupassant - this list is pretty endless. Music: Poulenc, Byrd, Tallis, Verdi, The Dubliners, Tommy Makem & the Clancy Brothers, Led Zeppelin, Roxy Music, Julian Bream, & again - this would go on forever. Other people to mention - Eric Gill, Stanley Spencer, T.E. Lawrence, Mulla Nasrudin, Aubrey Beardsley, Eric Newby, Idries Shah, Patrick Campbell, Ronald Searle, Charles Addams - we know what we like, and we agree 95% with each others tastes. We suppose that there is some common thread linking everything, but what it might be we do not know!
In your music is a lot of magically, how serious is your relation to magic, is someone of you engaged in practical magic?
Yes, that would be true, we are a synthesis of a triumvirate of wide esoteric knowledge & experience! Everybody, conciously or unconciously, uses Magickal techniques all the time. We utilise Magick to a greater or lesser extent on a daily basis without really thinking about it, which is as it should be.
As an extension of the previous question – in my opinion your music is based on druid traditions, have you connections to followers of druids and also to wizard traditions known as Wicca? May be you having contacts to some one from this scene?
The music is based on, and filtered through, a lot of traditions. Our publisher is involved in Wicca & was recently featyred in a national newspaper for that reason - the successful woman who is also into the occult. The nearest we have come to the 'Druid Tradition' was having a slendidly drunken weekend at a Druid retreat for one Yule a few years ago. Mostly the Wiccan & Druid traditions can be traced back only a few years - to people like Gerald Gardner & Doreen Valiente (it was her Witches Rune that we adapted for Blood of Bone on A Thousand Winters). Of course, they would say that they were simply drawing on, and codifying, ancient practices, but we have our doubts! I think everyone has nostalgia for an imagined past. The truth is, that for most people life in the past was pretty horrible on a day to day basis. People, though, have a yearning to believe that the past was better. But I am talking of physical life, which we can understand; the certainties of death & disease, bereavement, squalor. What we cannot understand is the certainties which people had; that if they did not do a certain thing the sun would die at the end of the year; that sympathetic magic was logical and infallible; that when they died valiantly they would live in splendour forever; that their gods walked amongst them; that words, spoken and carved, had power. It is these sort of certainties that people are nostalgic about. What Orchis is saying, is that what once was true is true now, if you can only find that truth. Everything that has lived lives still. Specifically on contacts, Amanda has the most as she is the most gregarious. Tracy & Alan have pretty much dropped out of the occult social scene.
Who of the musicians on World Serpent is most close to you by spirit? Why have you leave the label World Serpent?
Never really thought about it, to be honest ... there is probably a similarity of outlook with most of the people who work with WS. We left because Alan works there, and always felt uncomfortable about Orchis material going through the company. Nothing more sinister than that!
To Allan Trench: Tell me please a little bit about your cooperation with The Moon lay hidden beneath a Cloud. Was this band significant to your music? What do you think about them?
We knew Albin & Elizabeth, and after Amara Tanta Tyri had come out Albin was staying with us; heard me playing some lute guitar & asked him to contribute to the next album. I did 3 or 4 tunes for them, one of which Elizabeth worked up into the finished version. They were playing there debut concert at around the same time, in Nevers in France, and aske me to help out live, which I was glad to do. The Moon was not significant to Orchis; I liked what they did both musically and thematically, and we got on well as people & that is pretty much all there was to it. I don't know what Elizabeth is doing these days, but I quite like some of Albin's new stuff. They will always be interesting, and as The Moon they made some great albums.
The only live things we have done have been for recording purposes - that's where the early version of Jennet came from on the He Walks In Winter 7", as well as waiting For The Moon on the first album. Because we are individually busy, we find it very difficult to put together any group time over & above the recording time. We would like to do some live work, but to be honest it is unlikely. We are not against it, though, so it is a question of the right offer at the right time. there is also as you say the question of trying to recreate the music live - there are some tracks that we simply could not do, or at any rate not in the same way as the albums, and we would not try. Because everything is thematically linked, we have planned shows in the past that are more like one continuous piece of music, but haven't performed them for one reason or another. Live stuff per se is not our first priority, though!
Have you ever met In Gowan Ring, and if yes, what do you think about them (in the first place about the bandleader B’eirth). I find some parallels in the poetic conceptions of both bands.
Yes, we met B'eirth in New York about three years ago, and got on very well. There are some similarities between us, but there are probably more differences - In Gowan Ring we do like a lot, though.
Tell me please a little bit about the making of your compositions. What is created first – the poetry or the music?
The lyrics are important in themselves, and we take a lot of time over them. They are intended to be read on several different levels, and to paint internal pictures and scenes, while informing each other to create a coherent whole. We deliberately use symbolic language so that meaning can be inferred, symbols from the folk conciousness. Musically, we will all write stuff individually, then take it apart & arrange it. Quite often a lesser harmony will become the lead, minor melodies imposed, that sort of thing, and we will then fit the lyrics. We are all writing stuff all the time, so there will usually be a lyrical motif that will fit, and we will then decide how to present the song - what the main instrument is to be etc. It is the over all end result that is the most important - if the song is not working, we tend to start again from scratch with a different approach. We try to connect things with resonance - what we don't say is buried 3 levels below the surface, but the meaning permeates through the whole track. In a way, you don't have to hear the lyrics to understand the song. This is why we will often use fragments of poetry, folk song,or charms. If we could actually say outright what we are trying to, the sense would be lost. There is an underlying philosophy, but it is something understood, not something we preach about. The themes remain fairly constant - that we cannot live in the present without understanding the past & planning for the future, in the most general sense, and that we mourn something we have lost, but we do not know what it is. We are all 'visual' people, so we tend to have a composite overview of tracks - we can 'see' them before they are recorded, which is probably what lies behind the atmospherics of Orchis - we tend to keep tracks not because they are technically perfect, but because they evoke in us what we are trying to evoke in others. Probably the majority of the songs start as lyrics, although some present themselves fully formed - we have just finished a track called Gloria Melancholia, the title track of the new album which simply existed, waiting only for us to discover it. Orchis has always been harmony in dischord - everything is very slightly out of tune, which gives unexpected resonances, which is why the more industrial sounds do not clash - they are all part of a spectrum. We tend to layer stuff quite deeply anyway, but our overall sound is pretty consistent no matter what we are doing - the important thing is the tunes, and the best way of presenting them. Tracy thinks it is lazy to stick to a verse/chorus/verse arrangement, so the arrangements tend to be quite intricate, but different in each case. We want to explore and push as far as we can within the limits of our abilities & equipment. There isn't a typical song recording session, but this is how we did Anadiomene on Mandragora: Amanda & Tracy first recorded timed breathings & bells; we knew the piece of poetry we wanted to use, but the vocals were not completed until nearly a year after this backing track. Amanda & Tracy did the vocals in one take, with Alan playing a strangely scaled whistle we found in the garden when we moved house, and then Alan put guitar over the top. There are actually no other overdubs at all. This is almost exactly the opposite of the way you are supposed to record, but Orchis has never been that interested in the technical side of things. When we first heard it played back, we were amazed - it didn't really require any mixing at all.
What assist you in making of your music, what inspires you?
Nature, music, books, poetry .... Often a phrase or even a word will be enough to trigger something off - we actually write stuff all the time, then winnow out what will work for a particular song & what won't. Driving fast at night through a tunnel of trees in a thunderstorm in an open topped sportscar. Visting the temples of Aphrodite & Dionysus & being the only people for miles. Drinking far too much wine with friends; mindless hedonism. Seeing the world as it really is.
Have you some video clips, and if you have, how can people from Russia get it?
No, it is something we have never got round to - a lot of people have said our music is very filmic, very visual, so we should really do something. There are a couple of pieces that are up to be used in films, but we don't suppose much will come of it.
Your attitude to the gothic club culture, what do you think about that people who make up and dress like vampires and other dark children of the darkness?
I like that - dark children of the darkness! Listen to my children, the children of the night ... how they howl ... Anyone who slavishly follows anything, no matter what it is, is being a bit on the sheep side, and would be well advised to start thinking for themselves at the earliest opportunity. Any uniform is still a uniform. Having said that, wearing plum lipstick & gelling your hair is fairly harmless as far as these things go, but it isn't a cure for alienation, and moaning on about how depressed you are & how the world is hell is interesting only to fellow sufferers, and then only peripipherally. The girl who did our last photos had just bowed out of the vampire society because it had become just too plain silly.
How is your relation to the Catholic Church, how much exhaust in your opinion Christianity in the present world?
Ambivalent. None of us are Christian, but there is a lot of beauty in the Pauline church. And let us not forget that in the church/pagan struggle, the church has by & large won. People require a creed, a certainty, and in the West this no longer comes from the church ... it would be nice to think that after 2000 years the church will just turn it's back on the world & let it get on with it, but this is not going to happen - there are too many monied vested intersts for one thing. The christian message is not the problem, it is the church, and the churches' interpretation of fragmentary & mistranslated scriptures. The Holy Fathers seem almost blind in thier ignorance of the peoples and spiritual history of Europe; we are of the fens and forests, the autumnal leaves and snows of winter, of the moon and dappled glades, the quick step of the stag and the silver chains of the Great Wild Hunt. Yet could this exist any more without the opposition of the Church? For now we are our own masters. With a new orthodoxy come new masters. Take from everything, the Catholic Church included, that which nourishes you and quickens within you.
A little bit about politics. Tony Wakeford, well known to you, express in his famous album “Death of the West” his disapprove of the enslavement of West Europe by American mass culture – I’m very interested in your opinion.
Tony is exactly right. American corporate culture is conquering the world; the enslavement of mass media continues apace. The great smarmy lardarsed army of the stupid & ignorant is on the march; & there is no resistance - indeed, the conquerors are welcomed with open arms by those already corrupted by the Disneyfication of their culture. If you sup with the Devil, you have need of a long spoon, and the consumer society is just the boy to sell you one. It wouldn't be so bad - we are already ruled by cretins; but cretins who don't even know that there is anywhere outside the USA? Who think that Europe is some place out in the boondocks past Ol' Alabammy? And the sickly sentimental half digested regurgitated shit called music/film/TV etc? Resist!
Have you personal experience of pressing by mass culture or don’t you have such problems?
No, we don't really. Personally we've always gone our own way. Its all pretty fatalistic, I suppose - theres nothing you can do for anyone else - just save yourself.
For certain your music don’t bring you great profits – what are doing your group members in free of rehearsal time?
Amanda is a freelance designer, Tracy is studying Classical Civilisation & bringing up a child, and Alan works at World Serpent.
Some critics refer your music to neo (apocalyptic, dark) folk, in your opinion, what is this and can you give a definition to this musical style? How important for such a music politic or mystic views of musicians?
Categorisation is both laziness & a necessity - laziness in that it is much easier critically to say that a band is 'like' another band rather than appraise the music from first principles, and aa neccessity in that this is process which quickly and easily points readers in the direction of things they might be expected to like so that they may then make thier own minds up. The main problem for us lies in that we do not seek to be part of any 'scene' or to be allied to any musical style. Neo, apocalyptic, dark folk may be part of what we do and it may not; these are only words & you may as well say that our music is blue with silver flashes for all the meaning it has. Also, this particular area attracts people for many reasons; and, as with anything, they then, as with a mirror, see only what they believe to be there. It is amazing how many misconceptions can then arise! The only importance therefore is to explain as far as possible when questions are asked and not be upset when your views are misinterpreted. But because there is perhaps a unity of purpose, then the musical style can be perhaps summarised as: a general belief that things are not as they should be, a melancholic yearning for some mystical pagan past when things were better; a musical purity of intention characterised by the use of traditional instruments, although seldom utilised in a traditional way. The views of the musicians, mystical, political or otherwise should of course be the raison d'etre of such a music! Still, this of course is only our view, and there are probably as many views as there are people in the scene...
Have you a feedback with your audience? Can you make a portrait of your average listener – age, social status etc. What percent of them are Gothic?
People who contact us tend to be the more thoughtful types, who understand what we are trying to do and say. There doesn't seem to be any real average, though there are more female than male. Of those who send photos, about half are Gothic, though they tend to be less extreme and usually creative. So far, everyone who has ever written to us seems to be really nice, so we must be doing something right.
A traditional question – what do you know about Russia, what Russian music did you hear?
A large country to the North where the people boil thier children in vodka & then eat them with cabbage soup. Difficult, really - there are some things that spring to mind - the Tungus Shaman, Chernobyl, Red Square, Stalin, the Lubiyanka, the KGB, NKVD, Russian Orthodoxy, Rasputin, the Storming of the Winter Palace, Stalingrad & the retreat from Moscow, the Gulag, Doestyvsky, Snegorotchka, Baba Yaga. Received images only. We really know nothing. Musically; classical stuff, really, such as Mussorgsky. Pardon our ignorance!
What can you wish musicians from Russia, who makes non-commercial music?
To make it from the heart with the soul.