by dalia "gryphon_spirit" di giacomo___February 2008

organized by Mr. Sergej Weber (ARCHETYPE PROMOTION)  and dalia di giacomo 

obskuria          

Promoted by Archetype Promotion

METALLICA CODE AND MANTRA "COME TOGETHER"

Hallo Winnie! First off thank you  for granting us some of your time for this interview. You are the keyboardist of  this particular band/project called Obskuria, this is to say you play an important   instrumental role  in the contest of this group. Could you  briefly present Obskuria to our readers  who are interested to know more, beyond our review? It is a very international group, isn`t it?

Obskuria is a collaboration between 8 musicians, from three different continents, generations, and musical backgrounds.

When we all played with our regular bands at the Trip In Time Festival in Mannheim, Germany, 2006, we got to know each other. We then discovered that we had something going on beyond all the differences, and thus we decided to have some jam sessions in a local record studio. World In Sound, the record label that hosted the festival, made that possible.

Briefly, Obskuria is the result of a few days of euphoric jamming, you hear what happens when all the borders between different people, cultures and generations fall apart, leaving room for absolute freedom and creativity,  painted in colors of  psychedelic and metal.

Besides that, we gave the name Obskuria to the Planet PSR B1620-26c, where, in the story to our album “Discovery Of Obskuria”, mankind might find a new home after the big catastrophe happening in 2012, according to some Maja prophecies.

Keyboards (Hammond) are, in my opinion,  the very eclectic key instrument in the sonorities of the recently released album “Discovery of Obskuria”.  What is your personal story and development as keyboardist and how happened that Karmic Society gave  contribution to the project Obskuria?

I started playing classical Piano at age 10, and at age 14 I co-foundet my first rock-band, that was experimenting with 70s-style hardrock. I constantly looked around for new influences that included having church-organ and fusion/jazz lessons, and working with blues and coverbands, working with singer/songwriters etc. At age 16 I even toured through  Irish pubs in Germany with an American guitarist and his band. In 2000 we canceled a major deal for idealistic reasons :) Those were the days... :)

2003 I started working with World In Sound, and 2005 I was asked to join the Karmic Society (www.karmicsociety.com), a jam-band consisting of ultra-experienced musicians from Heidelberg, Germany, where I am the youngest by almost 20 years. There I learned how to really listen, and how to instant-compose rather than to recreate. Abilities that proved themselves to be crucial to the work on Obskuria.

Briefly, I always try to surround myself with people that fascinate me musically, as I think if you want to improve, you can read books or have lessons. But to really be in a band with someone and breath the air surrounding creative people gets you there much faster and with much more fun!

Karmic Society played at the Trip In Time-Festival as well, and there we met the guys from Peru (La Ira De Dios, that are half of Obskuria). Plus, Tom Brehm, the guitarist from the USA, had joined forces with the Karmic Society earlier to re-form his original band Dragonwyck for some gigs in Europe 2006.

Why did Obskuria  feel the need to recreate those particular psychedelic atmospheres of the 70`s combined in a rock/metal frame ? Is it  kind of a call to mysticism

The key to understanding Obskuria is that we didn't actually feel needs at that time :)

We discovered that we had that strong and recognizable band sound going on at the very moment we started playing.

Obskuria is bigger than the sum of it's parts. And being part of such an euphoric process of course has a very mystic feel to it... The psychedelic // metal crossover is just the result of combining our musical backgrounds.

Is it possible to compose  something  psychedelic  without the use of keyboards?

Well... It's possible of course, but certain key structures and sounds can hardly be created without them. These sounds include the very psychedelic idea of organs-notes that last forever with only subtle movement, clusters of sounds that are very dissonant when played long or very percussive when stroke quickly.

Also using organs and electric pianos you are able to hop in to fill the gaps when rhythm-guitars or basses or even drums set off for solos.

I just think that the presence of a versatile instrument like keyboards makes creating psychedelia easier. But it's possible of course to do that without. Stoner-Rock bands like Kyuss always have a good part of psychedelic in them without using keyboards.

“To fathom or soar angelic, you need a pinch of psychedelic” . What  do you think about this phrase by Humphrey Osmon, (a close friend of Aldous Huxley) ?

This quote was printed on the Trip In Time Vol. 2 Sampler, where Die Die My Darling by Obskuria was on as an instrumental mix, released in July 2007. Coincidence? Or did you really find that sampler? :)

Well.. I think psychedelic is a great genre. You get all emotions and all the “angelic” features of life without strict boundaries and structures -  sometimes even without vocals.

I wouldn't say you NEED psychedelic to get there, since all music can express all emotions. But psychedelic might be the most child-like and “unprocessed” way of musical expression.

Which was the most intense moment during  the work  around “Discovery of Obskuria”?

We were putting a lot of work into the cover versions, and the jams were meant to be fun and relaxing in between the phases of focused work. So I think the most intense moment would be after listening to the recorded jams, when we all where shouting: Holy crap! Did we just play that? Where did that just come from? :)

Breakfast Suite is the Obskuria original track I prefer. How was it ideated?

When you have a bunch of people that do not know each other, and you want to set up a jam session, the first thing you'd normally do is you'd select a set of cover-songs to jam on. As that worked really well, we went on to jam on spontaneous musical ideas each one of us had. “Breakfast Suite” was I believe that last jam that we did, on day four.

Chino asked me to start with a melody, and I played that electric-piano-theme you hear in the beginning.

The name itself was a tribute to a situation on the day before that. Wolf Reuther came to the studio's kitchen where we all were sitting and chatting, and Tom asked him if he cared for some breakfast. Wolf said he'd eaten already but he could get us something if we wanted to. Tom said he was more talking about the “Breakfast for the Champions”, miming smoking a joint! ... we just had to pick that up as a song title.

Although I personally disagree with covers, I find that Obskuria`s For whom the Bell tolls is actually fine. Kind of variation from 70`s to 80`s ,  a psychedelic tainted – old school Thrash.  Why, among other covers, did Obskuria choose this Metallica song (Burton , Hetfield , Ulrich)? And why did Obskuria cover The Misfits` Die Die My Darling, already covered by the above mentioned Metallica on their 1998 Garage Inc. album ? After  the Da Vinci Code, could we speak about an existing Metallica Code?

All the peruvian guys and Tom Brehm slept at Wolf Reuthers place at that time. Wolf does not only run a record lable, he also has a very impressive collection of records. So the guys started looking through his archive to search possible candidate songs for the sessions. The songs that we found were all liked by all of us, they had not been covered to death. Also, the covers that made it to the record were the ones that worked best in our sound. We kind of wanted to arrange the covers in a way that they work without you definitely needing to know the originals.

Metallica is a great band, and they are great songwriters. They have written timeless songs that will be listened to and be inspiring for generations ... Shining through their work there's always love to musical details. So the Metallica code, that's worked into all their music, could be: How to write intelligent arrangements with great lyrics and unheared sounds, and to really rock at the same time.

Without mentioning The Beatles ` code. In  “Discovery of Obskuria” there is a sort of homage  to The Beatles.  Come together is no complete cover, only a hint. Like just  a mention to the Gods. Actually without  “Come together” the album would have changed minimally, ….or maybe not?…How much are  The Beatles actually close to Psychedelic?

There's this story that the Beatles and Pink Floyd were recording at their albums at the same time in the same studio, so they all would walk over to the other band, listen to them, and get inspired by their different approach.

At that time the psychedelic music was constantly creating new colors, and the Beatles were, as I believe, the first ones to paint pictures with these new colors – meaning they used new psychedelic sounds as elements in “classically” structured songs.

Our “come together” is a mantra rather than a song. It's about having different people joining forces, and, for a short period of time, having different people act AS ONE to reach a specific goal. The last breakfast on earth is the get-together party in the Obskuria-Myth, and the Trip In Time-Festival was the get-together party in real life, that made the following events possible – be them the discovery of another planet or the creation of an album.

So “come together” is the point where the Obskuria-spaceship-crew and the real Obskuria as a band are in the absolute same situation. Maybe it doesn't really change the record that much, but it symbolizes the very things that made it possible.

Which  is the question that  you, Winnie, would ask now to Pink Floyd?

If I were to be beamed back to the London of the Pink-Floyd area, I'd do almost anything to be able to participate in one the of the undergound-jam-sessions that Pink Floyd had at that time.  I think that opportunity would answer all the questions I could possibly have :)

Which are the next projects of Obskuria? Will you team up again  for a new album?

We will. We are singed up for the Burg Herzberg Festival, www.burgherzberg-festival.de , one of the best music festivals I've been to so far. We'll use that opportunity to record a second album as well.

It's difficult to plan for a band that is that much wide-spread throughout the world. We try to set up a tour through Europe, as single gigs in clubs are almost impossible to do if you have to pay for intercontinental flights for 5 of  8 band members every time. If you want to, you can sign into the newsletter at www.obskuria.com to be the first to know about further developments.

And now the first  of two questions I have deep in my mind since I received the album from Archetype promotions (by the way, thanks!).  The first  concerns the album cover-art, the second the year 2012. I take the occasion now to ask more about this cover-art, that is really cool: dynamic design, a bit classic Greek , a bit ancient Egyptian, a bit modern… Who designed it? Is it possible to order it as a poster? (maybe signed  by the band ;)? )

When Wolf and I had set up the outlines of the story, we gave those and the raw mixes of the album to Harry Seifert, www.artfatale.com I know him since highschool , and he's an arts and design student now. He instantly liked the project and put his own interpretation of the story into the artwork. The outlines are printed on the bookled in mirror-vision.

We wanted everyone to be able to fantasize their own details to our story. It's kinda like the Tarkus-album by Emerson Lake & Palmer, “imagination-enhancing” images,  starting points for you to create your very own interpretation.

If anybody wants to share their ideas of a story with more details (like a movie script or so), we'd really appreciate that !

You can get a poster, of course, but to have it singed you'll have to wait to July, when we're all at the same site again.

So, please now: what does it happen on December 2012 ;)? What is this idea of a virtual ticket?

Hehe... nobody can say for sure. 

Some things are confirmed though, like that the sun will rise exactly in the middle of the milky way if I recall correctly. What might look really pretty. Also some scientist claim that the sun-winds might reach an all time high that might even destroy several satellites...

But there's some more obscure and radical theories, too, that I don't want to get in too deeply right now :) You'll find them all if you look for them, maybe at http://2012wiki.com

And these stories inspired us to put our own version back into the pool.

The ticket is an invitation to a huge party that we are going to throw on that date, if the world DOES still exist for us to do so :)

The world is gone: why this very particular  unusual conclusion for the album?

After the Karmic Society had made a Krautrock/Psychedelic version of the main-theme of Raumpartouille Orion, the classic 60s retro-scifi TV-series, we got to know its great composer Peter Thomas, who has written soundtracks to several movie classics.

We showed him what we had on Obskuria so far, and he offered this previously unreleased track as a bonus track for the album, as it does share a similar storyline and idea, and was written about 40 years earlier. He adds a fourth country (Switzerland), a fourth generation, and yet another point of view to the album. Plus it's a great song!

Please this next space is  now  reserved for you only: you can tell what  you like, you can leave a message to our readers.

I don't have a big all-time motto or quotes by heros as I think that could also limit you and put borders onto your creativity.

But what's on my mind right now is this:

I've just returned from a mini-Switzerland tour with the Karmic Society, featuring the exciting young jam-band Ginger. (www.gingerspace.com).

I have to express how much I liked the people there, it's been totally aweseome and we'll come back as soon as possible!

“ Merci vielmals - die Schweiz ist gross! “

Almost unavoidable is the last typical gryphonmetal question: The Game. The bands we are interviewing  for the first time are (almost always) awaited in ambush  by the Game of the Tower. On the top  of a very high bloody tower 3 bands have to submit to  your judgement: you can kick down 2 of them saving only one. The bands for you are:

DIMMU BORGIR – RAMMSTEIN – THE CURE

Hehe... nice one!

It'd save Rammstein. They are great. Yet another band that knows how to rock really hard with great intelligent arrangements and exciting new sounds at the same time (using the Metallica code if you like).

Plus, in the video to “keine Lust” the cars have license-plates of the city of Mainz, that's just around the corner from where I live and where I have a lot of friends. So there might even be a friendship-route from me to Rammstein that I don't know of yet.

Might look like a weak reason to kick two great bands down from a very high bloody tower – but friendship throughout the world can lead to all sorts of awesome results. We've definitely learned that from working as Obskuria.

dalia f. c.  di giacomo   08.02.2008

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