|
By
chance I got the CD of CANAAN. And I found that I like it. Like? No,
"Like" isn't the right word. Walk into My Open Womb isn't the
album to enjoy or to spin it day by day. But you will never put it in
the distant and dark corner of your home. You will return. You will return
and grab this piece of plastic when everything goes wrong and life sucks.
This music is perfect soundtrack for those moments when the world is
against you. When Well, do you care about emotions I feel when I listen
to this music? Of course no! So I finish this stupid introduction and
go to the business. I talked to Mauro, one among CANAAN and the owner
of Eibon Recs. CANAAN plays a mixture of doom, gothic, ambient, and even
industrial. Eibon releases CDs with all these genres. CDs are very beautiful
and stylish. They totally different from a typical CD on the market and
not many labels these days keep releasing such fancy stuff. But do people
buy CDs because of fancy Digipacks? No. Eibon's releases musically are
as original as their boxes and sleeves. Find out for yourselves. The
only thing I can promise is that you will see more interviews with bands
from Eibon on this site.
I know that you used to play in Ras Algethi. I can't say I know much
about this band so maybe you tell to our readers about the band and the
reasons you left it.
RAS ALGETHI
was formed back in 1992, and released a very successful demotape ("Oblita
divinitas" - 1993) and a full leght cd ("Oneiricon - the white
hypnotic" - 1995). The band made itself notice for a pretty particular
approach to doom music, and reached a satisfying following thanks to
a good underground spreading of both the demo and the cd. As for the
split, nobody actually left the band. Quite simply, RAS ALGETHI died
after the release of the cd because of some troubles between the 5 of
us. We needed to follow a new path in our evolution, and RAS ALGETHI
was too limiting and self-confining. Thus I, Luca and Matteo started
playing together (around may 1995) and gave birth to CANAAN.
Shall
we perceive CANAAN as a successor of Ras Algethi or these both projects
have nothing in common?
RAS ALGETHI
had a somehow great importance on our artistical development, yet I don't
think the two projects have anything in common. CANAAN is definitely
on another level, and allows us a much larger freedom in composing, arranging
and playing our music. Think at RAS ALGETHI like at the chrysalis the
butterfly called CANAAN was succesfully born from.
Lets
talk about CANAAN. As far as I know you've released 2 albums already.
Tell to our readers about these albums and your opinion about every one
of them.
Our first
album was recorded in middle '96 and released shortly after. It contained
14 songs composed between 1995 and the recording date, and considering
the low budget we had, the final result is satisfying enough. It marked
the starting point of the CANAAN experience, and got enthusiastic praises
from virtually everywhere, reaching different audien-ces at once. In
may 1997 we decided to strenghten our line up by recruiting Anthony Duman
(former member of MONUMENTUM and main member behind the WELTSCHMERZ project)
as bass player. With this new line-up, we started composing new tracks,
and in may 1998 we again entered the studio to record "Blue fire"
follow-up. The result comes under the form of the double cd "Walk
into my open womb" (september 1998). As far as my opinion is concerned,
I can't notice any major differences between our two cds. "Walk
into my open womb" probably has a stronger rythmic session and benefits
from a more careful mixing (due to the lightly higher budget at our disposal),
but both discs disclose our personal mixture of dark, gothic and experimental.
Please
tell me about the members of CANAAN. A couple of facts from biography,
musical experience, other musical projects.
Well, the
band now consists of Tony (28 years old, actually the only member playing
in another band - namely WELTSCHMERZ), Luca (25), Matteo (29) and myself
(28 years old). None of us is a lucky rich man, so we all have to work
in order to survive. Only Luca is still studying, but will graduate soon.
You added
Tony to your line up. Did he bring new elements and new sound to the
band? Do you satisfied by his work so far?
Tony brought
a new way of arranging the songs, and we are of course satisfied with
how he fits the band. More than anything else, he is a kindred spirit,
and this is much more important than his technical skill. CANAAN is not
just a band, but a kind of "closed" circle driven by a precise
and demanding philosophical approach. As such, all of us have a somehow
similar point of view about the meaning of the band - we would never
accept a human insect soiling it.
Does
CANAAN project any kind of ideology to its listeners through the music?
Ideology
? Failure, submission, self-deception, isolation. We don't play for "fun"
nor to reach commercial success. We play because we NEED to, and because
we feel it helps us in a way or another. This said, I can safely say
we have no particular theories we'd like to convince our listeners of.
Quite simply, we purvey into our music the negative feelings that poison
our hearts, getting back a temporary relief from the pain and boredom.
That's why our music is so dark - it contains the unwritten codes of
our own suffering; does this sound like a kind of ideology ? Don't think
so, as we have no RULES, CODES or ARCHE-TYPES to offer. Only a sheer
representation of negativity. Which could eventually be taken like a
form of extreme ideology, who knows?
What
is your relation towards religion?
Religions
are a dangerous mental cancer. By weakening strenght of will, they tend
to depersonalize you by entrapping your psiche into a more or less strict
behaviour. Only the weaks, the cowards and the hypocrites need somebody
else to tell them what to believe and how to act. And take notice that
EVERY religion (including the so-called satanic cults) have rules for
you to obey, with the promise of a "gift" (peace, war, eternal
life, power, money, whatever). A weak mass is considerably easier to
control than a bunch of free and self-thinking humans who follow personal
ways with powerful desire for freedom and knowledge. Yet humanity is
generally stupid, thus easily controllable - hence the fortune of millenary
cults. As far as I am concerned, I accept rules nor impositions from
anybody, and I'm trying to find my way through the webs of life. With
such an atheistic and strongly personalistic point of view, religions
and their misleadings have no space nor strenght on me.
Walk...
was released not long ago. How are the sales? Got any feedback from fans
and press?
Considering
we never did any kind of promotion, we are satisfied with the 1500 copies
sold so far. Thanks to a strong word of mouth, the album got enthusiastic
praises, though only a very little press gave space to the band for obvious
reasons. We don't have money to throw away in order to "buy"
good reviews (as you surely know all the "major" magazines
give good reviews only when receiving cash together with promos), and
we sincerely don't care about the "major" scene. We feel CANAAN's
music is destined to a smaller but surely more honest audience than the
"regular" one, and this is the way is it meant to be..
Does
criticism from press and media bother you when you make music?
Absolutely
not. We really don't care about how people react when approaching our
music, right because we don't play to reach commercial success, but rather
to satisfy our own needs. We therefore accept both positive and negative
criticism with serene (and a little apathic) heart. As long as WE are
satisfied with what we did, nobody else is allowed to influence CANAAN.
The shell surrounding and protecting the band is not crackable by external
influences.
You write
music. You do it mainly for yourself or for people who buy the albums?
I've partially
answered this question before. Once again, all I can say is that the
band has a deeper meaning than you can imagine, and that we all play
in first instance just for OURSELVES. We have never followed any "trend",
and we do not conform to the rules of music business.
This
is totally standard question. But very important, When do you plan to
release your new album and what do you want to achieve with this new
album?
Well, we
have already composed 6 new songs, and the next album will probably be
titled "Brand new Babylon". Recordings should start around
the middle of 2000, but it's a question of raising enough cash to make
it sound exactly like we want it to. We will probably record 9 songs
(remaining 3 ones are in the making right now); newer ones are progressing
further on into our peculiar style, though they're generally more complex
and elaborated.
You are
musician, but also you are the seller of the music cuz you run the label.
So have you changed your views on making music and on musical business
in general when you became one of those "big" guys who run
the show and own labels?
EIBON RECORDS
is not the usual label looking for easy money. I judge my label and music
in general like the purest and highest form of art, and as such I doubt
it could have a merely commercial appeal. The more I live into this "business",
the more I am SEVERELY disgusted. Nobody works for passion, but just
to SELL, no matter what. I'm tired of working with large distributors
who wait for my own comments describing an album because they don't even
give my cds a spin. This is not passion, but bitch-like commerce. Selling
music or shoes would be the very same for them. All the "major"
distributors act like this, and my disgust grows stronger and stronger.
EIBON is not a label for the self-betraying idiots who look for commercial
and easily expendable stuff. I do have a much stronger concept of music.
As far as my subjective point of view is concerned, I am 1000 times happier
with EIBON cds selling 1500 copies to the RIGHT people (to those who
can at least partially understand the concept behind the band), rather
than selling 20.000 to unknown and crap children who buy the album just
because they see an advertisement on every fucking magazine out there.
And believe me, the cathartic aim of CANAAN is better reached through
a smaller spreading of our music. I would N.O.T. like seeing a moronic
13-years old metalhead with a CRADLE OF FILTH t-shirt approaching our
music. Under this point of view, you can understand my hate for advertisments
in general: publishing ads means spending lots of money to approach the
WRONG side of music and the WRONG kind of people. Which is unacceptable,
after all the efforts I put into each and every EIBON release. Would
I decide to make easy money out of the label, I'd never spend so much
cash on packagings, but rather start producing identical and poor jewel
boxes. Yet this would be a severe betrayal of my moral principles - respect
for the artist and respect for the eventual listener and buyer.
When
Roger Karmanik began Cold Meat he wanted just to release his own music
and maybe music of some friends. Have you supposed that you will release
other bands then CANAAN when you began Eibon?
Not really.
EIBON was born mainly to release CANAAN "Blue fire". In but
a few weeks I then realized I could have tried to turn it into a full-time
job, and started publishing other bands' records. After almost a year,
I quitted my previous job and started focusing on the label exclusively.
I know
that it took lots of nerves and sweat for you to start Eibon. Do you
still think that running the label is a good idea?
Definitely
yes. Though the working load is frightening (I'm doing everything by
myself alone), passion is the flame keeping EIBON alive. As long as I
will feel passion and love for this work, I will keep on producing music.
Should this flame be quenched by anything else, I will abandon the whole
thing. You won't ever see EIBON turned into one more crap label - the
actual music scene is already infested by thousands hypocrite labels
only looking for easy earnings.
I see
that your label releases a lot of very different music: classical doom,
slowwwww metal like Esoteric, ambient, etc. What are your criteria for
choosing bands for Eibon?
I sign bands
I do like, no matter what they play. A criterium that's stricter than
you think, as my tastes are very refined..
Do you
have any favorites among your signings? And who is your best selling
act so far?
As far as
my best-selling act, no doubts. THE FROZEN AUTUMN album "Fragments
of memories" reached 4.000 copies, and is by far the best seller
out of my catalogue. Regarding my own personal tastes, I love each and
every cd I've done so far. Should I choose only one, I would probably
say AMON "El khela"..
What
are your plans for next... let's say until upcoming Armageddon ;-)
Mmm, don't
know. Next EIBON cds will be the cd re-pressing of the monumental 1991
THERGOTHON demotape "Fhtaghn-nagh Yog-Sothoth", the new ESOTERIC
album and the debut cd "The creatures of the wind" by the new
dark ambient masters WHERE. Other releases such as NOTHING, WELTSCHMERZ,
SIGILLUM S and CAZZODIO are also planned for 2000.
Every
your release is very special and very beautiful. I mean that every CD
comes in totally original Digipack and stuff like that. Some people and
musicians believe that "the package" or all those Digipacks,
fullcolor booklets and so on are not necessary and even bad things. Because
they represent someone's (mostly artists) views on the music inside the
box and when the listener begins to listen to the CD he already has image
of the music but he haven't even heard the music! The views of the man
who designed the layout may be even wrong. The music is the only important
thing so labels don't have to use good package. Black CD, black booklet
with the list of songs and that's all. What is your opinion about such
views?
Pure idiocy.
Would be like pretending to play a Beethoven symphony without orchestra,
but with samplers alone, because "it's the music that counts".
Pure idiocy. A cd is a form of art, and both the visual and the acoustical
aspects have extreme importance.
Your
message to the readers of this interview...
Thanks Igor
for the space you're granting us with. Love under the power of will.
Contact addresses:
CANAAN / EIBON RECORDS
c/o Berchi Mauro
Via Folli 5, 20134 Milano, Italy
Fax: +39-02-2158523
http://www.eibonrecords.com
|