Interview with 'DarkCity' (Russia)

Magazine: DarkCity (Russia)
Language: English
Date: 01.06.2008
Lead by: Stefan Hertrich

After Darkseed disbanded you decided to continue with Shiva in Exile only. Why did you decide to work on Shiva In Exile rather than on any of your other bands/projects (Betray My Secrets, Spi-Ritual)?

The main problem is that in our days it is very difficult to generate income by making music (however this is not so important because the main reason for doing arts or other creative things should always be fun and self-fulfillment), so besides writing CDs I built up a small translation company which takes much time. In 2006 I had three different projects (Darkseed, SpiRitual and Shiva In Exile) and it was simply too much. For years I wrote CDs but couldn´t concentrate on any further activities apart from songwriting (like promotion or touring etc.) and instead of that I rushed onwards to the next songwriting process of another project and “forgot” the previous albums. So I had to draw a decision, and I decided to continue the project which offers me the biggest new and fresh „territory“ to discover – and it is definitely ethno/world/new age music, combined with my typical touch of gothic and melancholy ? The target audience offers more variety (gothic fans, dance schools, authors, natural healers and many other different and interesting kinds of people). The Darkseed case is definitely closed for me, but I don´t want to claim that for SpiRitual. However, there are no concrete plans at the moment for a second album after “Pulse”. But it could be an interesting challenge to “metalize” the Shiva In Exile songs and release them as second SpiRitual album ?

Who took part in the recording process of “Nour” album?

Even if “Nour” offers dozens of different instruments, the only two persons who were involved in the songwriting process were Yana Veva and me. However, I want to mention the great efforts of Tommy (Darkseed guitarist and producer at the Helion Studios in Munich) and Fedor/his friends (Theodor Bastard and Theo Studios in St. Petersburg). They all were responsible for recording Yana´s vocals and mixing the album, and definitely had an important role during the creation of “Nour”! Big thanks also go to Tristman from Beirut/Lebanon who recorded the vocals of my friend Hanin Hannouch who is featured on the bonus track “Bullet”. So as you can see, even if Shiva In Exile only consists of two persons, we were lucky to get the help and support of many wonderful friends!

Why did you work with Yana Veva from Theodor Bastard again? Isn’t it a real problem to work on an album when you live in different countries?

I would even say that it was a big advantage to work over the distance and even without speaking the same language (we only communicated with the help of a translator). Why? Because we both could concentrate on the album itself without leading huge discussions about our personal music or songwriting taste and other things which waste much time and create a bad energy and work atmosphere. One decisive factor was that both Yana and I are professional enough to understand that the result is the most important thing after all. It´s such a big pain in the ass to write an album for Shiva In Exile, and we both knew that. I think our biggest success was that we really were able to finish it, and not only finish it, but finish it with the best possible result. “Nour” delivers a HUGE amount of emotions and depths and I consider it my best album so far. I still listen to it often, which is a good sign ? Yana did a great job and is an amazing person, and we don´t need words to understand eachother well in our creative work.

I think this time Yana expanded collaboration with you by writing lyrics for an album, am I right?
I hear some parts in Russian (and it’s very pleasing to say the truth, he-he), but some parts are indecipherable. What languages did she use writing the lyrics?

Hehe, yes, you are right, indeed Yana sings Russian here and then. I also was surprised about that, and I really like it, because of one reason: I didn´t expect it. I sent her the playback of the song, and I received it with Russian vocals without her mentioning anything about it. However, I must admit that I have no idea what those Russian lyrics are about, haha. Yana has one special skill, and this is doing “crazy things” (which is the case when using modern Russian language on an ethnic album) but still they sound good and convincing. If you want to find out wether a musician is good, take special note of this skill ? She sings many different styles on the album, and I think that if most other vocalists sung it (including me) it would sound completely like shit or it would sound funny. But Yana doing it simply sounds good! You can compare her voice to a set of colors for creating a fantastic painting. She offers every possible color you can imagine. 
Back to your question: Yes, Yana cared about the lyrics alone, and most of her vocals were sung in fantasy language. Maybe even this fantasy language has a special meaning. Ask her to find it out, because I don´t know, haha. For me it´s more important to hear her “words” behind the “words”, I mean, to hear the feeling and imagination she had while she wrote her lyrics or vocal lines. Even if we cannot talk much because of our language differences, I simply know that her inside has much to offer, just from what I hear when listen to the “color” of her voice.

Can you tell us more about the song which was recorded in Lebanon? I know this is kind of special song on the album.

Yes, you are right, this song is very special for me, because it´s a sort of “diary” reminding me of summer 2006 which was a very “inspiring” time for “Nour”. However, the word “inspiring” is a bad word in this context: Since years I know a family (daughter, parents, even grandparents) and other people in Beirut/Lebanon (small country surrounded by Israel and Syria), and after 15 years of civil war and some following years of peace, again a war started in this region, in which Lebanon was heavily bombed by naval, air and ground forces. I used to phone them here and then to check the situation, and during one phone call Beirut was attacked once more. I heard the explosions, and my stupid and completely unimportant question in this moment was: “What strange sound can I hear in the background?”. They answered “Oh, it´s the alarm system of cars on the streets, caused by the pressure of the explosions”. It all sounded really creepy, and you can exactly hear this kind of explosion (including the car alarm) in this song you mentioned (it´s name is “Bullet”, by the way). But most important in this song is the voice of Hanin (one member of the aforementioned family). She wrote a poem named “Bullet” during this war and spoke it in both English and Arabic for this song. By the way, it´s the only sort of “political” song on this album, however, it doesn´t adopt party by cursing one religion or group of people while praising another one.

What was (were) the most challenging part(s) for you in the work on this album?

To have patience ? 2,5 years passed after having decided to start this album and actually finishing it. After that, the next “patience phase” came by having to negotiate with record companies but not finding a satisfying compromise after having spent a lot of time on that. Luckily, this was not the case with IronD who will care about the release on Russian and Baltic territory (thumbs up for you guys, everything was really easy and without any bureaucratic trouble!).

Four years passed since the release of the debut album “Ethnic” – quite an amount of time! What have changed in music of Shiva In Exile during this period of time?

After this long period of time I am more surprised about the fact how many things changed in my life (job, personal surroundings, attitude towards certain things etc.) rather than musically seen. It´s amazing how much life can change between such a short period of time and it encourages me to say the following words: “If you want to achieve something or have the vision of something, just give this vision some time and it might or even will happen! It´s just a matter of patience (yes, here we have again the horrible word “patience”, haha) and willpower. But back to music: One major change is the cultural component of “Nour”. It´s mainly focused on Middle Eastern harmonies and instruments, while “Ethnic” didn´t follow any ethnical rules but simply combines everything I could find during the songwriting process. This time, the lyrics were especially sung by Yana, while on “Ethnic” I used vocals from commercial studio libraries (that´s why it might happen that you can also hear a phrase from “Ethnic” in a TV spot here and then, haha). A long time passed until I found a good vocalist fitting well to the music of Shiva In Exile (Yana), that´s why it took 4-5 years to see another Shiva In Exile album. Apart from that, the album is more gothic and more “powerful” than “Ethnic”, mainly because of the good percussion quality and usage of dark wave synths. I simply got more experienced in expressing “dark” music without having to use normal drums or guitars but just ethnic instruments, vocals and synths.

One day you mentioned that Shiva In Exile more and more is used for “gothic bellydancing”. Can you tell more about this, what this “gothic bellydancing” is?

Gothic belly dancing is a very fascinating scene mainly spread in USA (as far as I know – I am also still discovering this genre). I´d say gothic belly dancing is mainly performed by people being interested in Middle Eastern culture but also in gothic esthetics or other modern western music and styles. It seems to mix up a bit with the trend of people liking to take part in medieval events, dancing, doing fire spitting etc. In general there seems to be a movement to give our modern synthetic music more life and “natural aspects” (as also can be seen in folk metal, medieval bands – we have many of them here in Germany). It´s amazing to see people organizing themselves in dance groups, planning their own dance choreographies and performing them live or putting them on YouTube and other platforms. Seeing how dancers breathe new life into my music is simply great. You can see some of those videos on the MySpace site of Shiva In Exile (www.myspace.com/ethnogothic) – I am sure many more videos will be made once “Nour” can be found in the stores all over the world. By this, simply everybody can take part in the creative process of Shiva In Exile, even if the album was already written – and give the audience a completely new listening AND viewing experience, and in addition to that even provoke different emotions in the listener, depending on how the dancer looks like and interprets the song!