Technically it’s always easier, because the equipment is getting friendlier for a musician. You don’t have to be a qualified engineer anymore in order to produce an album, so in that sense it’s easier. But the writing process will never change – you write a good song or you don’t. If there’s lots of technology around, it doesn’t make any difference.
You have a full line-up for live shows but in the studio you are always alone, just by yourself. Why did you choose this way of studio work? Is it easier for you to play everything yourself than to explain other people what you want from them?
Yeah, exactly, if I have to explain the people what I want, I’d just rather do it myself. (laughs) That’s the way I’ve always worked in my life, and I’ve never seen a reason to change that. The music of Clan Of Xymox is exactly to my taste, and if there are many people in it, it becomes too much of a mixture of things. I experimented in the past, getting other people involved in some ways or getting producers’ hands on it, but I came to the conclusion a long time ago that I’d rather do everything myself. I’m recording all instruments, I’m producing the stuff and I’m mixing it. When you’ve got everything in your own hands, you can work whenever you want, you don’t have to call people up, and that makes my life easier. (laughs)
Do you pre-plan the sound of a record in advance? I mean, was it your original intention to make “Breaking Point” a bit more guitar-oriented than “Farewell”, or did it happen naturally in the studio?
It happens naturally, there’s never a plan behind any album. I just write music, and the music I make is what I feel like, it’s basically what comes out of my head. I’m not going into the studio saying, “OK, I want to have a dance song or a slow song or this or that.” The songs actually make themselves.
Do you need any special mood to write and record music? Or is it easier for you to work under pressure, for instance, when you have a deadline for finishing an album?
No, I never have a deadline. I’m just writing when I’m ready, and then I call up the label and say, “Well, I’ve finished all the songs.” Or when I know that it’s gonna take me another month to mix it, I can tell them when I’m ready to go. So there’s no deadline, no one tells me, “I need this” or “I need that”, it’s very simple in that way. Working on songs is a very relaxed process for me, I’m in no hurry. When it’s ready, it’s ready.
You have your own label Xymox Control, and you license your albums to other labels such as Pandaimonium in Europe or Metropolis in the U.S. Why did you decide to run your business matters by yourself? Was it because of negative experience you had with labels in the past?
No, not a little bit. I’ve had experience with many different labels, and I’ve never really had complaints. To me it’s just the format I prefer to put my work in. Technically it’s easier for me, but the reasons for it are mostly very boring for your readers, I think. (laughs) My label is just a vehicle to put things on, and I do my publishing and my recordings with the help of it. I don’t need labels for that, and they like it, too, because we are responsible for the whole album, for everything. When it’s finished, it’s finished, and then they come in to promote the record.
You once said you would not sign to a major label again. What do you dislike about major labels? And does the current success that Clan Of Xymox has make you happy?
I’m happy in the structure that I’m into now, and I would not
sign to a major label because they have different expectations of bands. They call the band a little successful if you sell under a million albums, and it would be a big success in the independent world. This is just a difficult prospective. Secondly, people working on major labels most of the time have nothing to do with the alternative scene, basically they don’t even know the music they’re working with. Since the 1980s there’s a good bunch of independent labels going, and that’s what I like the best, because there you’re working with people who have the love for the music and try to do the best to make things work for you, although it’s on a smaller scale. I would certainly not want to have the status of a major artist, because it’s not my thing.On the new album you have a song called “She’s Dangerous”, which starts with the words “I met her online”. How much do you personally use the Internet? What websites do you visit most often?
I usually use the Internet a lot for different reasons – for correspondence, for our own page, for MySpace.com, for keeping in touch with the fans and labels. The Internet has taken the place that letters had in the old days. Moreover, instead of talking by phone, you can now also meet people online. The things of life come unto lyrics if they apply or if it’s interesting to make a story. In this case I thought it was nice to intricate the Internet into the lyrics.
In your opinion, how does the development of Internet technologies change the music and the audience?
It’s the development, it’s not the change, and it helps a lot. In the beginning there was an acoustic guitar, then there came the electric guitar, and now we have a sampler. Progress is a good thing, because otherwise everything would have been very stagnant and there would have been nothing new. I think technology can also be used to help shape things up to your own taste and your own style and give you a broader choice of instruments and sounds. To me it’s always very helpful. Otherwise we would all be just repeating ourselves, and now we have the development in the sound of keyboards and everything. Whatever comes out, it’s just for your benefit.
Is it now easier for a band to survive than in the 1980s, or did you have a harder time bringing your music out to people in the first years of your career?
I think it’s very difficult for bands to survive nowadays, because people are downloading stuff, and labels don’t have too much interest or money anymore to invest in new bands. They are very selective, and you won’t know about many new bands anymore. They have to prove themselves for a long time first. It’s very hard for bands to get noticed and get through to mass media. At the same time, promotion tools get more diverse, and that’s a good thing. Take MySpace.com as an example, every band that’s on there has three or four songs available online, and they can promote themselves a bit better. They no longer have to be dependent on major structures like magazines. There are good things and bad things, too.
A couple of years ago you released a compilation called “Past And Present”. When you decided to re-record old tracks for it, what were your main reasons? And what do you now think about the original recordings of those songs?
It was very simple – people voted for those tracks. We had an online poll, where people voted for their favorite tracks. When I summed up the results, I had a feeling that I need to make a re-recording of old tracks, so that would not be just a simple compilation, but rather something more exciting. I just thought it was a nice idea.
Another retrospective question – what do you now think of the music you created when the band was called simply Xymox, in the late 1980s and early 1990s? You
very seldom play this material live, and those albums, at least in Russia, are very hard to obtain…I think those records represent their time, the late 1980s and early 1990s. All the records I’ve made so far represent pretty much what the lifestyle of the scene is, and how we stand in the scene. I think we just grow with it or try to push it forward in all kinds of ways. That’s what I’ve done so far, I have no complaints.
When you were recording the album “Hidden Faces” (1997), you used the services of such famous producers as David Allen and John Rivers. How did you like this experience? What did they add to the music of Clan Of Xymox?
John Rivers was the engineer, and David Allen produced some songs. What did David contribute? He just asked me maybe we needed a guitar here and a guitar there, and maybe we should work on rhythms a bit. His strong point is that he tries to get the best out of the artist and tries to push you further when you think, “Well, I’ve done it.” As to John Rivers, he’s a great engineer, he makes great mixes and takes very good care of things. That was a good team, but, like I said, when you have the present-day technology, you don’t have to go to an expensive studio. You can learn how to do things yourself, and as a result, you can spend more time on developing your own studio, because there’s no time limit there.
For the next album “Creatures” (1999) you worked with Adrian Hates from Diary Of Dreams as a sound engineer. When and how did you get to know him? Do you think the two of you had any influence on each other musically-wise?
I got to know Adrian Hates when he was a fan of Clan Of Xymox, and he came to Amsterdam a few times to see him. The first time I met him he was working with some magazine to do an interview with me, and he told me about his band. We got to know each other, and I invited Diary Of Dreams to support us at gigs. He told me he had a studio, and at that time I didn’t have ADAT tapes, so I said, “OK, let’s go to your studio and transfer my material from my computer to ADAT tapes.” Basically it was more like transferring the material than actually recording there. Nowadays it sounds like a very old-fashioned technology. (laughs)
By the way, “Creatures” is your darkest album, in our opinion. What made this album the way it turned out to be? Was this an especially dark period of your life or were there any other reasons?
Not really. Indeed, music reflects my life, and as everyone has a dark side, my dark side comes out when I make music. I don’t stand in life as a very gloomy person. But when people start writing their thoughts on paper, most likely they are different thoughts than when they have a conversation with people in a bar. In my case that goes for writing music - other things come out of me. Maybe at that time I had other things to write about, and they were darker than normally.
In many songs you have quite a pessimistic view on the mankind in general, for instance, in “This World” or the new song “We Never Learn”. Do you think the mankind is hopeless, and there is no way to help people improve themselves or become better persons?
I don’t think people will ever be able to improve themselves, because they are always stuck to their own frame of mind and that kind of predetermines their wishes. Generally I’m very nihilistic in that sense, I’ve been disappointed lots of times by friends. It doesn’t mean you can’t make friends anymore, but you know you’re gonna be very disappointed with people most of the time in the end. There are people who write songs believing things could be better one day, but I seriously doubt it, because there will always be conflicts of interests. Be it my personal life or life in general, I come to the same conclusion.
We wonder if you believe in destiny. Do you think a person’s actions are pre-determined from his birth, or is the man himself the master of his own fate?
I’d like to think the man is the master of his own fate, but there are always people who try to be masters of their fate, and they think destiny is against them. (laughs) It’s hard to tell, I do believe that if you want to do things that you try really hard, then you will succeed with that, it’s pre-destined. But usually pre-destination means there’s a master plan, and I certainly don’t believe there’s a master plan for all this. You make your own destiny, your choices, you decide what’s the meaning of your life, what you’re gonna get out of your life. These are the decisions you make yourself, and some people are braver than others, and that’s where the difference lies sometimes.
In your opinion, what is the share of your audience that is really interested in what your songs are about? Is it comfortable for you when you sing a serious song with a deep meaning, and people just dance to it and don’t really listen?
That’s all fine to me. People should do whatever they think applies to this song. There are people who have sex alongside with listening to my records, and that’s fine by me, too. I don’t think that people should do this or don’t do that. The beauty about music is that people can interpret it in different ways and that they can use it any way they want it. If people dance to it, it’s great, if people sleep to it, that’s also great. For me it’s like letting the music loose – the moment you release something, it’s totally out of your hands.
We know that you sometimes appear in clubs as a DJ. What does DJ-ing mean for you personally? Do you do it just for fun, or is it some alternative way of self-expression for you?
I think it’s both. I’ve always DJ-ed for fun, I did it as a kid, and I still do it. It doesn’t really change because I have a band, there are always other things to do for me. I like to play other people’s music as well and being able to say, “These are the tracks I like.” What I’m playing depends on the club, but this is definitely the way of self-expression and a kind of liberty as well. You stand on your own in the DJ booth, and you decide what music you want to play. It’s also good, because you listen to different music when you play it as a DJ, you have a different angle to look at music.
What kind of music do you personally listen to nowadays? How have your musical tastes changed over the past 10 years or something?
They have changed absolutely, and it would have been a very bad thing if they had been the same. I listen a lot to new releases, and it’s very interesting to me what comes out, what bands have done, what makes other people’s day, and I hope other people like to do the same thing with me.
You recently remixed a song for your labelmates Frozen Autumn on their latest album “Is Anybody There?” Do you like the music they are playing? And how do you personally approach remixing – do you always like the songs that you remix, or is it more like a job or a favor to friends?
It’s definitely not a job, because no one has ever paid me anything for remixes. (laughs) When I have the time for it, I do it, but talking about our remixes, I’ve really started to hate them. I don’t think I’ll do many of them in the future, because it starts to get boring.
What do you think about the current state of the gothic and electronic scenes in Europe? Do you think there is a development, or maybe you feel that this subculture has already passed its peak?
I think there’s always a development as long as people try to do their own thing or go into certain directions. I don’t think the style is ignored, not in recent years, bands are very stable in Europe, and people like the scene, even though it’s still on the underground level. How this development goes further, I don’t know. If you mean drastic style changes, I haven’t heard such bands so far. I listen to records of other bands, maybe they change a little bit or try to experiment one or the way, but they are still the same bands. If people like it or not, there’s no other thing. So far so good, I think.
You started in Holland, and later moved to England, but returned to your home country in the mid-1990s. How did you like living in England? What are the main differences between these two countries and the two mentalities?
And I live in Germany now! (laughs) The idea to live in England was always exciting for me, and when I went to England, this was for me a logical choice, because all my labels were there, all the people I worked with at the moment were there, and it was easier for me to be there. I found London much more exciting than Amsterdam was at that time, but later I changed my mind, and I wanted to return home. However, I got really bored with Amsterdam two years ago and moved to Germany. I’m very happy in Germany at the moment, so far I like Germany the best.
It seems that Clan Of Xymox is the only Dutch gothic band that has gained international recognition. In your opinion, what is the reason? Why did you succeed, and all others fail?
There are a lot of Dutch bands that have succeeded internationally, but they belong to other styles. I think we were just the lucky ones, we got directly noticed by a foreign label in the early 1980s, we gained a kind of international edge, and it has basically never gone away since then. We didn’t start as a local band with a local label, and that was the difference. A lot of people in Holland didn’t know we were actually Dutch. (laughs)
How much does success and the public opinion in general mean to you? How do you react when you read a review of your album, and the journalist says that this album is crap?
Wow, then I’ll crush his face, not mine! (everybody laughs) I just wish in this case he would give our CD to someone else who would appreciate this kind of music. Actually I rarely read reviews like that.
Have you ever had a “breaking point” in your musical career? Have you ever felt like, “to hell with it, I wanna quit and get a regular dayjob”?
Not many times. (laughs) Maybe that was in the 1990s, when I had no idea anymore what style I wanted to do or what I wanted in life. I think that reflected in my music as well - I didn’t have a wish to belong to anything like a scene or whatever, I wanted to do something different in life. This period lasted for about three years, until I realized that this was the only kind of music I really liked in the underground scene. I started buying records again and making music just for myself, and I eventually made the next Clan Of Xymox album.
We have heard that you are working on the first Clan Of Xymox DVD, and that it will come out later this year. Can you tell us a bit about it? What will this DVD contain?
Live footage and videos - it’s traditionally what you expect from a music DVD release. People want to see clips and live performances – that’s all a band can show basically. That’s what the music is meant to be.
And in general, how does the future look like for Clan Of Xymox? What are your plans for the next couple of years?
This year we will still be touring, we’ll release the DVD we’ve been talking about, but I don’t plan further than that. I have no idea, and it’s a good thing not to have any idea, because it’s just an additional weight on your shoulders if you have all these plans in mind.
And what are the chances of seeing you live in Russia?
(laughs) Chances are good if there’s a promoter who invites us. So far we’ve never had any serious offers from any Russian promoters, unfortunately.
Special thanks to Maxim “MadMax2” Mikhalev (Gravitator Records) for arranging this interview.
Roman “Maniac” Patrashov, Ksenia “Wolfin” Khorina
July 4, 2006
5 ñåí 2006
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