interviews

2013-10 Ponto Alternativo

Later this month, you will return to Portugal to play at Amplifest, having previously played in Out.Fest in 2008 and Porto in 2010. Do you have any particular recollections from those shows?

Yes, Out.Fest in 2008 was one of our first show abroad, and we shared the bill with David Maranha and it was it was a great experience.  Porto in 2010 was the best show of that tour.

We always had great experience playing in Portugal, good conditions, great feedback. It's good to come back.

For those who haven't seen the band live yet, how would you describe one of your concerts?

A sonic deflagration, a lightening that torn the darkness of the night, a painful trance, a reversed nightmare... well I don't know, I always lived it from inside...

It has been announced that you will play “Occult Rock” in its entirely with a ten minute break in between. This is an album which you've elsewhere mentioned that was written with the live setting in mind. What is it about this record which you feel that faithfully captures what the band is on stage?

Occult Rock was composed for our live performances and experimented during our concerts.  We recorded live in studio and what we played during our shows sound closely like it. The album is a crystallisation of our compositions and each concert is a reinterpretation.

It will be the first time at the Amplifest that we will perform the full album in front of a crowd.

The single light-bulb of varying intensity in the middle of the stage as the only source of illumination has become a trademark of your shows. How did this come about?

When we started aluk todolo in 2004, we used to practice very early in the morning for hours in total darkness. Using only the small red lights on our amps to see a little something. After a while we found a light in that darkness, and it followed it forever. For our first show we bring along with us that light cause we didn't want traditional colored lighting . We never made a show without that light. 

Assuming you will have time for that, is there any band in this year's line-up that you are particularly interested in seeing?

For sure we won't miss Pharmakon. We met Margaret two years ago when we organised her first French show along in Paris, opening for Burial Hex. She is a great artist and we are curious to see how her music and performance have evolved until now.

In 2011, you released a collaboration with Der Blutharsch And The Infinite Church Of The Leading Hand. How was it to write music with people from outside the band, specially with Albin Julius, someone who is usually associated with a very different style than yours?

Like fucking with someone else wife's. And we made that little bastard....

Is this kind of experience (doing a proper collaboration instead of a split, not necessarily with Der Blutharsch) something that you would like to repeat in the future?

We make that album, we played also a show together in Brussels. We have no plan for now with Der Blutharsch.

You've mentioned elsewhere that some of the material of “Occult Rock” is as old as the band itself. If our ears don't deceive us, the base of “Occult Rock IV” is the same as the second track in the aforementioned collaboration. Why did you decide to have both versions of the song released?

This track became a part of our live set and  keep evolving. We naturally added to the track-list of Occult Rock. The album version is, in our eyes, very different from the collaboration recording. The same harmonic basis used for a different goal. But Occult Rock other reinterpretation of our old composition.

The last record has a more bass-driven sound than “Descension” or “Finsternis”, where there were noisier atmospheres and an almost dirge-like pace. Considering the features of “Occult Rock” that we talked about before, will the future be oriented towards this unification of what the band is in concert and studio or will there be other records not particularly intended to be played live?

The next album is intended to be played live, fully. We begin to work on new concepts and new sounds. We hear voices that tell us what to do.

Within the same context and given that you've kept a pretty steady pace of releases, is there anything new coming up in the near future?

Right now we only focus on the next shows and composing our new album.

Finally, can you describe to us something about the creative process of Aluk Todolo, about how you approach the writing and recording of your music ?

It's hard to describe because it's a never-ending continuum. We compose, record, throw away, replay all the time. What I can tell is that every composition come from the three of us and we have no typical method. A track can rise from a word, a sound, a drum pattern, a concept... We have no rules and no boundaries in our creative process. Only the need to experiment.