This interview with Gerhard Hallstatt of the Austrian industrial folk project Allerseelen took place on 2 December 2007, on a bus journey from Edinburgh to Rosslyn Chapel and back again. Rosslyn Chapel was constructed over a 40-year period in the late 15th century, The building work was begun by William Sinclair, 3rd Earl of Orkney, Baron of Roslin and 1st Earl of Caithness, and completed by his son. The chapel is celebrated for its ornate stone carvings, which include over 100 images of the Green Man, and which also contain many coded messages and esoteric symbolism. Connections have been made between Rosslyn Chapel, the Knights Templar, and the Freemasons, and the sealed crypt of the chapel is also reputed to be the hiding place of the Holy Grail. The bestselling novel The Da Vinci Code makes use of these ideas. A visit to Rosslyn Chapel can therefore be considered one of the ‘magical mystery tours’ which have provided the inspiration for so much of Allerseelen’s recorded output over the past 13 years.

Part I – The Journey There

What do you expect Rosslyn to be like? What are you hoping to find there? The Holy Grail?

No, we won’t find it today! My impression is that Rosslyn Chapel will still be a very wonderful place, very popular in the last few years because of the famous book. Hopefully, there won’t be too many people around. We’re in a beautiful landscape now, with a lot of meadows and grey granite, and all the trees have the colour of rust. And the sky has the colour of iron. I like bad weather at mythological places. The tourists will disappear, and we will have the place to ourselves!

I seem to remember you said you were in Scotland before.

I was in Scotland some years ago, but my impressions of Edinburgh now are completely new, because last time I did not spend much time there. The first time, I was with the ex-singer of Allerseelen, Sabine, mainly in the countryside. We were on the Orkney Islands for several days, and we concentrated on stone circles, menhirs, dolmens, and we were sleeping in the car. It was great, I liked it very much.

Edinburgh is very different from that, though.

Yes, I’ve had three days in Edinburgh, and I like it very much. There’s something very gothic about it, with its dark grey buildings. A lot of them are very high.

What else did you see in Edinburgh? You went up King Arthur’s Seat, I think.

On the first day, we walked around close to Old Chapel and Arthur’s Seat, and I liked this landscape very much, its colours and volcanic origin. Close to this black, ruined chapel, there were a lot of white swans, so it was an impressive sight. I’ve done a lot of walking around in Edinburgh, to get an impression of the architecture, the harmony of the city.

Everything’s made in the same local stone, so it all goes together.

It’s part of the landscape, because the granite on the outside is now granite inside, given shape. I’m also curious about the name ‘Edinburgh’, and whether it’s connected to Odin, I don’t know [sadly, it isn’t! – SC].

I don’t know either, but there’s a small town to the north of Birmingham called Wednesbury, which means ‘Woden’s Burg’, and they have a statue of Sleipnir, Odin’s eight-legged horse.

Oh yes? This Sleipnir, it’s in marble or black stone?

No, it’s a modern statue in stainless steel. You know the Jaguar car mascot? It’s like that, but 15 metres high.

OK, so ‘Edin’ could have been Odin, but we do not know. Maybe it’s romantic, but we don’t know, it’s possible.

We went to Arthur’s Seat yesterday, and we climbed right up to the top. It was very windy and cold, but we got a great view of the city, and I was thinking how amazing it was that you can go fell-walking from the city centre, without driving or getting a bus, you can just walk out there. We walked from the Christmas fair on Princes Street, right in the centre of Edinburgh, out to Arthur’s Seat.

Yes, it’s unique. We had intended to do it, but it was raining too much.

Also this morning, we went down to the seashore. This weekend, we’ve been to the mountains, we’ve been to the sea…

It’s good, because usually I like those countries where there are mountains and lakes, or mountains and the sea. It’s exactly like my childhood. I feel at home. On the first day, seeing Arthur’s Seat, I was so surprised. We walked through a small door in the street, and then suddenly, there was this beautiful landscape!

So you wanted to say something about Edinburgh castle?

We already played in Edinburgh Castle, but not in Edinburgh. Three years ago, we played in a Scottish pub in San Francisco called The Edinburgh Castle! We played with Wendy Van Dusen and her group, Neither Neither World, and Allerseelen played with members of Blood Axis and Waldteufel. Markus Wolff was drumming, and Aaron Garland was playing bass guitar. I have good memories of that evening. It was a similar situation to the show here – 80 or 90 people, in a Scottish pub, in another part of the world.

So how did you enjoy the show here on Friday? I thought the venue was amazing, it was like playing in a castle.

The venue was wonderful, but I have a problem if people are sitting. In future, we will prohibit people from sitting – it’s very difficult for the artists. We need some feedback, some spark to jump over from the audience. It’s easier if people stand and move. If people are sitting, suddenly I start questioning myself – ‘Hmm! Is anyone listening at all?’ Allerseelen’s music is rhythmical. People should not sit! So, I thought the concert was OK, but I was a little bit disappointed because people were sitting.

When you play concerts like that, and you have a live rhythm section, but you’re using a lot of backing music, is it frustrating that you can’t be spontaneous, that you have to do the songs in a fixed order, and you can’t take a request or something?

Actually, we could change the order, but requests would be more difficult, because all of us live in different cities, so we never really rehearse. And electronics is still a certain part of Allerseelen, so I would say there’s a need for this backing rhythm. Though it should only be, say, 15% of the concert. With some other groups, their backing music is 60% of the sound – I don’t like this. But it’s the only way to do concerts now, because we don’t have the time to rehearse all the songs without backing. One day, it would be a wonderful challenge, but at the moment it’s not possible.

Ideally, would you like to be fully live and be able to be flexible?

I think what’s more realistic is that in the future, we could have a mixture – some songs without backing music, and some with. Of course, I envy those bands who don’t need anything. Those bands who don’t even need electricity, I envy even more. I’m fascinated by musicians like, say, In Gowan Ring – he can play anywhere. He could play a concert on Arthur’s Seat! I should learn an instrument to play unplugged.

I was going to ask you about recent Allerseelen albums, because this year you released Hallstatt, but when we talked last year, you were telling me that you were planning an album about warfare in the mountains and in caves, and Hallstatt’s not that album, is it?

No, it’s a different album. I’m still collecting information for the mountain warfare album, it’s still a theme I’m very interested in, because I’ve spent a lot of time in the Dolomite mountains, where war is omnipresent. The infrastructure, all the mountain huts and paths, are 80% relics of World War One, when the Italians were fighting against the Germans and Austrians. So it’s still a project I like very much, but this year, I did much more mountaineering in Bulgaria and Greece. The working title is Towers Of Silence, because of the high rocks, and the idea of soldiers hiding somewhere among these towers of silence, trying not to be killed by avalanches or the enemy.

The other project you were talking about last year was a collection of your Aorta and Ahnstern essays. Is that still progressing?

Yes, I hope that will finally come out in 2008. It has been postponed, postponed, postponed, and now I’ve decided that I don’t like all the texts, because the publisher said it should be a documentary book, it should be a full collection of all the texts, but I re-read most of the texts, and there are six or seven that I don’t like so much. And the first one who should be happy should be me, the second one should be the publisher, and then the readers! So I suggested that we don’t use all the texts, but I hope it will come out.

These are early texts where you no longer agree with what you said, or you’re no longer interested in that material now?

Well, let’s say that the Catholic texts about Konnersreuth or Calanda, we don’t need them in the book. Also, the Wiligut text I wrote, it’s not very good, not well researched, so we will omit this. But luckily, there are a lot of texts left which I still like very much, on Codreanu, Mithras, Montségur…

The Burzum interview?

How did you hear this will be in the book?

You told me about it. You said that the Varg Vikernes interview would be a big selling point.

Sure, it would make sense, and I also like what he says. I think it was his first interview in prison, I’m not certain. The first or one of the first. Because I was interested in the reality, not the second-hand or third-hand facts, and I wanted to hear from the source. I think it’s a very good interview. Varg gave good, long answers, and he took his time. The things in the book should be timeless. All the people I interviewed are fascinating people with a real message. So of course Burzum will be in the book, Blood Axis will be interviewed, Fidus will be in the book, Z’EV, and Kenneth Anger, all of them.

Tell me about Kenneth Anger.

I published two issues of Aorta about Kenneth Anger. One was Lucifer Rising, it’s about the Kenneth Anger film. And then, somehow it often happened with Aorta, that I wrote the text and published it, but the really interesting information came to me afterwards, when people wrote to me saying, ‘I have this information, I have this photo.’ People would hear I was interested in, say, Fidus, and come forward with things. So at the end of the text, I should have started writing a new text with much more information! This happened with Lucifer Rising. I did a lot of research, and all this was before the time of the internet, at least I didn’t have internet, so it was very prehistoric, archaic research, with real libraries, real books, real photocopies, and the printed texts and testimonies of ancient times! It’s strange now, when I think about the time before the internet, before mobile phones, but everything was still possible. In the past, my letters were much longer. Michael Moynihan and I were friends, and we corresponded for many years, and sent each other really long letters. But now it doesn’t happen. The only long letters I write now are love letters. Everything else is three lines!

I was talking to Boyd Rice in London on Halloween, and I was complaining to him that he was very hard to get hold of, and that he doesn’t answer emails, and he told me that he doesn’t have a computer. He’s not on the internet. The last of a dying breed! If you want to speak to Boyd, you have to ring him up.

Or write a letter. Which makes sense, because recently someone told me that he contacted Douglas P. in Australia, and he sent a real letter, because people who write a letter have to pay 50 cents or something like that, and email costs basically nothing. If you write a letter, it’s a special effort. It’s something special now, a letter, it’s anachronistic. In the past, I was overwhelmed with letters. Anyway, for Aorta, I had written a text about Lucifer Rising, it was finished, I had photocopied everything, the most archaic possible way, and then Kenneth Anger came to Vienna and showed stills of his movies. So I interviewed him, and it was great. I also went with him to two exhibitions of Spanish surrealism, so we spent some hours together. I liked him. When I finished the Aorta issue about Anger, I sent some copies to him. But you know, one of my favourite directors is Alejandro Jodorowsky. I also like Kenneth Anger, but I like Jodorowsky more. So I asked Kenneth Anger whether he liked Jodorowsky, and he said, ‘No, he’s too extrovert for my taste.’

I also find his films too extrovert, I don’t like them. His films make me feel sick!

Fando and Lis by Jodorowsky is a very strong movie. It’s about a guy who has a girlfriend, and she’s paralysed, so he’s always carrying her around through a desert landscape, and in the end he has to kill her. It’s a very strong movie, very poetical and mythological, and it’s very cruel. I knew what would happen to the girl eventually, so I didn’t watch all the film. I don’t watch many films now – this year, I saw maybe two movies. When I'm at home, I'm not even thinking about watching a movie, because I always prefer reading or concentrating on music.

I was going to ask you a bit more about Hallstatt, the last album, because a lot of your albums are based on magical mystery tours, travelling and so on, and Hallstatt is actually your home town, so what does it mean that you’ve done all these different albums about the Mediterranean and so on, and now you’ve done an album coming home?

It’s not exactly my home town, but I grew up 50 km away, so I already knew this place from childhood. I went there with school, with my parents, with all kinds of friends, so it’s back to my roots. Because at a certain point, I thought, and I still think, that Allerseelen’s already too multicultural, with all these influences from western Europe, Spain Italy, eastern Europe… So I thought it’s time to come home! The first idea was to make everything in my upper Austrian dialect, but I found out that it would be much too difficult. Because in this dialect, many words which the Germans use do not exist, it’s a very reduced language, maybe only a thousand words or so.

And there are a lot of Italian words in it as well, aren’t there?

There are a lot of words from the time of the Roman occupation.

‘Biacha’ – ‘book’.

It’s from the song for Sturmpercht, yes? When I finished that text in Upper Austrian, I sent it to some friends. I sent one to Michael Moynihan, I sent it to Markus Wolff, and also to Willi of Ernte. And Michael Moynihan made the best translation.

I showed that text to some native German speakers, and they were puzzled by it.

There’s always in an artwork a dynamics of its own. So my first idea for Hallstatt was to make a lot of Austrian polka music with Upper Austrian texts, but the way it turned out was with no polka music, only one song in Upper Austrian, and there’s even an song in English with the American Robert Taylor [of Changes], which in some ways fits very well, but of course it’s a contradiction of my roots. I always think that in art, the artist can only decide to a certain extent. I can’t decide if I like this instrument, or this rhythm, or something else.

Can you say something about bass and bassists? Because I know that having a live bassist is very important to you. What is it about bass that particularly interests you?

The bass guitar? I like it because it has something very earthy, very chthonic. It’s something quite deep. Like, for the live performance, Arioch, the guitarist from Svarrogh, is a very good black metal guitarist, so I thought maybe we could play some songs with his metal guitar, but then the bass was too much in the background. I like rhythms very much, and the bass guitar is like a second rhythm. Dimo [Dimov, of Svarrogh] is a very melodic drummer, making melodies with the drums almost like a marimba player, and the bass is playing another melodical rhythm. I like it.

Yes, the throbbing beat, that’s what I like.  Often, when I listen to records, I think the bass should be louder. I like dark deep instruments a lot – cello, contrabass, bass. Maybe it’s the connection to the heartbeat.

I wanted to ask you about your use of a couple of different terms. There are a couple of words that you use to describe things in English, where I understand what you’re saying, but I think your use of the word is different from the way that someone would usually use the word in English, and I’m interested in understanding what those words mean to you. One of these words is ‘psychoactive’. What does that mean when you use it?

I use ‘psychoactive’, in a sense, like other people use it for drugs.

People talk about psychoactive ingredients or psychoactive agents, being the chemicals which get you stoned, but you talk about psychoactive bassists or psychoactive Alpinism.

[laughs] ‘Psychoactive Alpinism!’ I invented it last week, because I saw Sturmpercht in a castle in Switzerland, and their accordion had a very hypnotising effect. Of course, we all know that music has strong psychological effects, and I think it’s a psychoactive substance. That’s the reason why our kind of music has some enemies, because of its psychoactive effects. Music is always a field of force. Maybe you know this from your own experience – if you’re in a bad mood or you’re tired, you know that if you listen to this song or that song, it will change your mood, and you will have much more energy!

So when you say psychoactive, you literally mean something that will have an intoxicating effect on the mind?

Ja, but intoxicating in a positive way. I think that to be active is something very positive, and yes, of course, it’s wordplay, but I think it makes sense. Music is used in therapy. You know the Tarantella cult in southern Italy, around Naples? In the Naples area, they had a lot of Tarantella dances, with which they could heal people. And people have told me that if they were in a bad mood or they were sick, they used special songs of Allerseelen. Nick of Lady Morphia told me that he was sick one day, and he needed a song to heal himself. So he took some herbal medicine, and he listened to my song ‘Mit Fester Hand’, which talks about a disease being torn out, and he felt much better!

To be continued…

This is the concluding part of an interview with Gerhard Hallstatt of the Austrian industrial folk project Allerseelen, which took place on 2 December 2007, on a bus journey from Rosslyn Chapel back to Edinburgh.

Part II– The Journey Back

What did you make of Rosslyn Chapel, Gerhard?

I was very impressed. It was like a symphony of stones, a secretorium of symbols. It would be great to spend a week there exploring and thinking about all the symbols. I liked the musicians carved into the stone, with all their instruments, the bagpipes and the flutes. It’s a wonderful place.

Sangre Cavallum would enjoy the angels with the bagpipes!

Ja, they would love it very much. It was not too touristic as well. Going there was a very good idea.

There was a real feeling of mystery about the place, I thought. I really felt there was something very strange about it. I’ve never seen a place quite like that.

To be open to those kinds of feelings, I need to travel alone. If I go with other people, I’m too distracted. So I can’t say I had any special feelings like that. I think it could be different if I went there some time alone.

Well, I didn’t have a mystical experience. I just felt there were a lot of secrets about the place. All the coded symbolism, the flowers and the secret musical notation and so on. It’s been set up as a puzzle box.

Yes, it’s fantastic. The flowers and the stars on the barrel vaulting, it’s fascinating, impressive. It’s like a book which you can enter, a book of sacred science.

OK, let’s talk about the other word which I’m interested in your use of. A word which I’ve heard you use to talk about things you approve of is ‘spartan’ or ‘spartanic’. What do you mean by that?

‘Spartanic’ means that you only have the things you need, the things that are really important to you. It’s like the ancient Greek city of Sparta, where the people had just what they needed, but no more. It’s also monastic. I use ‘spartanic’ because I lead a very simple way of life. I’m surrounded by luxury, of course – a digital camera, electronic equipment, perfect clothes for mountaineering – but you could use another word, like ‘martial’, but not ‘military’. ‘Spartanic’ means that you don’t care about walking ten kilometres through the wood to see something. It’s the opposite of luxury, but of course I also like luxury!

The reason I find your word ‘spartanic’ interesting is that in English, when people use the word ‘spartan’, they mean that something is bare or uncomfortable. They use the word negatively, but you seem to see ‘spartanic’ as a virtue, as something to be aspired to.

I see it as a virtue, but I’m not the only one. There are a lot of people who are dreaming of the simple life, and of course, it’s also something kitschy and full of romanticism.

But you also have this contradictory thread in some of your work, which is very sensual, very concerned with pleasures of the senses, songs like ‘Dolce Vita’ and ‘Rioja’. You like wine, you like women, and you celebrate luxury.

Yes, but I can drink red wine in a very simple wooden house!

And your taste in artwork tends towards very elaborate, ornate art.

Yes, you can say that Pre-Raphaelite art is never spartan, it verges on decadence.

Are you interested in decadence?

Not really. Decadence would be to be always awake in the night and sleeping all day, but I’m the other way around. I don’t know, though. In Edinburgh, when we played the concert, we were awake until seven in the morning. In Vienna, we also have the same contradictions. There’s a disciplined way of life, like our concerts are quite disciplined, but there’s also this sub-current of decadence. It’s not my character, but it depends on the definition of decadence.

It seems to me that there are a lot of people in the industrial and neo-folk scenes who have a complicated and contradictory attitude to decadence, people like Boyd Rice or Josef K., for instance. On the one hand, they have this very strong, martial, disciplined agenda. On the other hand, they love getting drunk and listening to kitsch pop music.

Yes, it’s true, I don’t know any serious musicians! But I was thinking about something else, because at the moment, I’m reading Don Quixote, and in our music scene, there are a lot of Don Quixotes, dreaming of a golden age.

Another example would be Michael Moynihan, who does very strong martial music with Blood Axis, but then he also did a whole album about absinthe. What could be more decadent?

Exactly. The real right-wing traditionalists say that absinthe and syphilis are the same thing, they both destroy society. Michael would consider absinthe more from the martial point of view, that of course it’s toxic, but if you’re strong enough, you can withstand it. Of course it’s a contradiction, but I think it’s there in each person. In artists, you can see it more easily, because they express their interests. It’s confusing for me, being on the one hand very interested in Julius Evola, but on the other, being also interested in nightlife, or gay writers and musicians. There are a lot of contradictions. Maybe that’s what makes our kind of music, which is so connected to literature and paintings and architecture, so interesting and complex.

Have you ever drunk absinthe?

Yes, I like it very much. I can recommend the Marilyn Manson absinthe, it’s a very good one. Markus Lion, a friend of mine in Germany, distributes and fabricates absinthe, and we always exchange – my new Allerseelen releases for his new absinthe releases! I met him last week in Switzerland, and we talked about absinthe. I told him I liked the Marilyn Manson absinthe very much. Now I’m making advertising! Many people, when I mention this Marilyn Manson absinthe, think it must be mass-marketed, it can’t be any good, but it’s really a good Swiss absinthe. I asked Markus how he worked out the recipe for this, and he told me that he’d really collaborated with Marilyn Manson, sending him a lot of samples. And on the label, there’s a beautiful drawing by Manson, it’s almost like Egon Schiele.

He does a lot of different bottles with labels by different musicians, doesn’t he? He did one with Sleazy from Coil as well, I think, and David Tibet, and Steve Stapleton from Nurse With Wound.

I don’t know about those, but of course I love absinthe. The first bottle I got was in Portugal, because there it was legal. I still have some at home, and some French and some Swiss. Absinthe, I like it a lot, but I don’t want to drink it each day, one should not drink it too often!

I brought a lot of absinthe back from Barcelona when I went there, because it’s so cheap there. I got some black absinthe, which is 80% alcohol.

Actually, we drank some absinthe yesterday after the concert, but it was the red one, and I didn’t like it. The good ones have not much artificial colour. The Swiss ones are white or bluish-white.

Like the Czech ones?

No, those have the artificial colours in them. If you have hallucinations, it’s because of all the chemicals!

You’re really more interested in wine, though, aren’t you?

At one time, I was very disciplined, always writing notes on the tastes of different wines.

I remember on your website, there’s an aspirational wine-list, of wines that you’d like to try.

Yes, some real and some imaginary! At the moment, I have some really good Bulgarian wines, I was in Bulgaria a lot this year. I should make a new list. At the time we recorded Barco do Vinho, I was making lots of wine-tasting notes. But now, I drink without taking notes.

What about beer? Are you interested in beer?

I like dark, stout beers. In America, in Oregon, they have Rasputin stout, which I like very much. It’s a beautiful name. I like lots of drinks. I also like bitter herbal liquors.

Like Jägermeister and Berenburg?

Jägermeister is too sweet. Berenburg is good.

I had a bottle of Berenburg, and I didn’t like it. I was too bitter for me. I bought it because it had a great label, with the guy with his Alpine hiking gear on, a strong woodcut-like image.

Oh well, bring it for the next interview!

My favourite beer is Aechte Schlenkerla Rauchbier, which is a smoked beer from Bamberg.

I shall have to try it, I don’t know it.

They smoke the malt, it gives a very strong taste. It’s a dark beer, but with a smoky taste like a sausage. I need to make a pilgrimage to Bamburg. They have a big Gasthöf there, which is the home of Rauchbier.

Do you know this monument, the Bamburger Rider? It’s a knight riding on a horse, very aristocratic, but no-one knows exactly who it is.

How old?

The Middle Ages, I think, 800 years or so. It’s very beautiful – heroic and romantic, and also dandyesque. And mysterious, because of not knowing who it is. Some emperor, perhaps, or some king. Nick of Lady Morphia knows it well, because he studied in Bamburg.

So are you working on new Allerseelen material at the moment? Is there going to be a new album? We were talking about Towers of Silence earlier, but are you working on more than one project?

The next thing will come out in February. I already finished the recordings. It will be a Russian release on Ewers Tonkunst. Umnachtung is a collaboration with Otzepenevshiye and Neutral, and it’s all based on poems by the Austrian Symbolist poet Georg Trakl. Very decadent! Full of decadence, full of sadness. All the songs have my vocals. I recorded all the texts during Walpurgisnacht last year, when I was in Moscow, and the Russians like these poems very much. I was surprised, but many of the people I met in Russia knew of Georg Trakl, there are very good Russian translations. But obviously, the people I meet at the concerts aren’t average people, they are open-minded and intelligent! Anyway, each group has three songs, and two songs which I did have this strange, apocalyptic, demonic chatter music. There’s one song about a murderer.

It’s unusual for Allerseelen releases not to come out on Aorta or Ahnstern.

Yes, those are my labels, but when we play in Russia, it always costs a lot of money, with the flight and the visa, the hotel and so on. So we record the songs, we release the CD, and all the bands get a lot of free copies. It’s the easiest way to finance the whole thing.

One of the Allerseelen singles, ‘Knospe’, was on Carpe Noctem.

It was the same conception – he sent me some money, and I agreed to make a 7”. Also the Pedra MCD, on the Portuguese label Terra Fria, it was the same idea. But I cannot do it with every concert, because if we have 20 concerts, I can’t make 20 7” singles!

Tell me about the song you did with Svarrogh.

It’s called ‘Der Honig Der Grauen Stadt’ – ‘The Honey of the Grey City’. It’s a text which Dimo wrote, he sent it to me, and I changed it a little bit, then recorded it in Vienna, outside on the famous Heldenplatz. If you listen, you’ll hear some cars. Heldenplatz is in the centre of Vienna, and it has a temple of Theseus, a rebuilt one. It was there that I recorded the vocals, but I forgot to mention it in the CD notes.

After the Russian split release, what are you doing then?

I’m reissuing Neuschwabenland as a double LP. It will be the CD plus four completely new songs. One of the songs we played at the concert – it’s a new version of ‘Sturmlied’. And I also recorded a new version of ‘Edelweiss’, from the Infernal Proteus compilation. It’s very different. These days, I think more about how songs will work live than I did in the past, so they usually turn out quite rhythmical.

Has it been interesting for you, over the last few years, doing the new vinyl editions of the old albums, and listening to your old material again? Have you had new thoughts about what you were doing then? Like Neuschwabenland – it’s very different from what you’re doing now, isn’t it?

I’m still interested, but I don’t listen to the music now. I listened again to Neuschwabenland, and ja, I would do some things differently now, but it’s OK. I prefer not to listen to it, though.

What was the concept behind the Edelweiss compilation?

That came out of an idea of Max [Presch, head of Steinklang / Ahnstern] and me, because the musical style of Allerseelen had changed. So we put together some rare tracks in different languages. There’s also a contradiction with the flamenco songs with Josef K., which don’t really fit on Edelweiss, I noticed later! We wanted to make a fair-priced compilation.

Personally, no, but my musicians keep trying to persuade me. I think what we will finally do is record songs in the studio with real drums, and the bass guitar of Marcel, which will be a new step. Our favourite songs, we will record like a real group.

You could do a live-in-the-studio kind of thing, like Throbbing Gristle’s Heathen Earth.

With invited guests, yes, it’s a possibility. Usually, I think we are playing live a lot, so people can come to the concerts. But then, people say that live it sounds so different from the studio recordings, so they try to convince me to make a live recording. Maybe they will be successful. I’m not so interested, but people frequently ask about this.

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photos and text - Simon Collins