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A FOREST OF STARS An Ethanol Soaked Ghost-Train Ride Story online since: 07.11.2009 / 11:03:32 .........................................................................................................................................................  "We are a collection of vaudeville, classical and burlesque musicians, inspired by the teachings of our ages' greatest writers, composers, artists and mediums. Essentially, we are hoping to appoint a fusion of romanticism, the occult, psychedelia, folk and the improprieties of madness into one unsightly whole, much against the wishes of both Her Majesties' Government and indeed fashionable society at large. I think that just about sums up a) our intentions and b) just how delusional we all are.” (interview quotation by The Gentleman / A Forest Of Stars) When reading a declaration like the one above, experience teaches me to tend to scepticism concerning what hides behind the flowery language: just another example of metal music lacking individual ideas and thus being extravagantly conceptualized? For sure that is not the case with British A FOREST OF STARS, a relatively new group playing an idiosyncratic style of doomy psychedelic avant-garde metal whose mighty debut album in fact woke remembrances of a time in me when I started discovering bands like My Dying Bride and Cathedral. In these days of metal music overkill on countless underground media channels, it would seem quite useless to throw around me with superlatives and for specific reasons it wouldn’t make sense at all since the "songs” by A FOREST OF STARS aren’t of a character you could easily describe as "the most (dark / mysterious / philosophical / …) on earth, but the mixture of strong ideas, manifold influences and the liability to the obscure definitely make the music stand out of common schemes. With other words: this band deserves a personal presentation on our platform and if you don’t fear voyages through time and space, you’re invited to travel with me back to England in the year 1889, to walk through the dirty streets of a downtown crowded with all kinds of people you would by all means avoid meeting in the night, and to finally knock at the back door of an at first sight inconspicuous decrepit house. Besides the decayed door you can decipher a small label: The Gentleman’s Club Of A Forest Of Stars. Please pardon my familiarity, but after listening "The Corpse Of Rebirth” for more than one time, I feel the strong wish to look behind the curtains and to find out what kind of psychotonic substances you add to your five o’ clock tea and if Mister Curse is already swearing at breakfast time. Would it be impudent to beg you to roughly illustrate the gatherings of the Gentleman’s club? The Gentleman: Hmm, well, I’m not really up until early afternoon, and rarely, if ever, see the morning, save for when it blends into the previous evening, so I’m probably not the best to say what goes on during those hours, except to note it’s usually too bloody noisy and intrusive. In the afternoon there are appointments to keep, correspondence to sort through and answer where necessary, before dinner, ritual undertakings (if we can be bothered), games in the drawing room and then out and about into the various dens of our locality. At weekends it gets a bit messier, but we’ll leave that for another time. Curse: I must say that my dubious substance intake tends to vary; these days I'm more a man of the grain than the powder. As for the pre-fast breaking profanity, absolutely! It seems to me as if with A FOREST OF STARS you found a vehicle for deeply personal ideas that needed to materialize in some form of art. Would you agree to that impression and what does it mean to you that you obviously found soul mates that encourage the individual visions of the others – or is that a bit too romantic? Curse: I feel that it wouldn't have all been possible without the band getting on as well as we do. There is also more than a fair chance that as a musical vehicle it presents us with the opportunity to release plenty of caged demons. As I never seek to publish my writings anywhere other than in a musical accompanying form, it goes without saying that if there were no band there would be none of my cheery missives polluting the airwaves, or the printed page for that matter! The Gentleman: Truth be told, there was no great plan behind what we did – or indeed are doing, seem as we’ve got away with it so far. That said, we do all tend to think and proceed in a common direction for the most part, so perhaps that’s where the answer lies? If there’s any piece of music I experience to be somehow close to your own compositions slightly escalating out common schemes, I would name Cathedral’s "The Voyage Of The Homeless Sapien”, undoubtedly a masterpiece of psychedelic metal. Is this a song which you consider as groundbreaking for A FOREST OF STARS – which other artists established a basis for your endeavours? Curse: Without wishing to say too much on the subject of influences, lyrically folks like Gylve Nagell, Michael Gira, Edward Ka Spel, Boyd Rice and David Bunting could be blamed for helping to de-cork my creative juices... The Gentleman: Any song that concludes with the protagonists exiting a water closet gets my vote. From what I heard and read so far, you seem to be surprised that your compositions wake enthusiasm within other people; nevertheless you already have more than 1.800 so-called "friends” on this particular network you consider as "necessary evil” these days. Why are you so reserved when it comes to the quality of your music – didn’t you invest enough energy and passion so far? Curse: I would say that as a band we were never particularly concerned about what others may or may not have thought about us. The desire was simply to create music for ourselves. Having said this, it is no bad thing that others can find something to like in amongst our warblings. The Gentleman: We all greatly love the music we produce, but of course that is only natural as we composed and performed it ourselves. A mother believes her offspring is the greatest of all, yet others around will see no more than a woman with a baby. Neither is wrong, it is a just a different perspective, and in that spirit it is most certainly not our place to pronounce what others should think about what we do. Kettleburner: Again, it has to be said that there were no expectations on us when we produced our introductory work in the Autumn of 1887, "The Corpse of Rebirth”. Following the completion, we, the members of the Club were not brought together again for quite a few months. In which time, we had gained much attention from various sources. This attention has brought us funding to gain new technical instruments and allow us to continue the kind of creative somnambulance that brought us to the public’s consciousness in the first place and can only be achieved through a well stocked cupboard of spirits and wines. Mostly of all, it has paid for the extension of our bathing facilities, which makes for a more comfortable experience all around. For all of this, one can only be thankful and humble. You announced – again with reservation in regard to your own performance – two concerts in the next weeks. Please imagine that afterwards you meet paperboy waving an issue of "The Times” and you can only catch a glimpse of the name of your band on the cover sheet – now imagine: what headline would be ultimately nice and which one would make you burn down the rehearsal room? By the way: what are you plans for live performances? Curse: I am ambivalent either way. If folk like it then fine, if not, there's plenty of other musical abuse out there they can flay themselves with. The Gentleman: Well, for starters I wouldn’t caught dead reading that particular publication, but that’s beside the point. What would be nice? That people received their money’s worth and went away not too disappointed. What would be awful? Pffft, in the end I’ll just be grateful if people turn up. Kettleburner: I would say we officially steer away from any kind of controversy, or at least remain shadowy enough to prevent too many loud knocks at the Club's door and night time visits from the local constabulary. I would certainly not wish for the Gentleman's brief visit to Newgate Gaol to be dwelled upon though (although I have to say that it is incredible what comfort wealth brings in such establishments) and for the record, the woman tied herself to that train track. I don’t want to confuse you with my concrete vision of the future, but in the middle of the next century a new form of music, the so-called "rock music” will become heavily popular among young people in the Western world. The maybe most remarkable rock group of the British Empire will be named "The Kinks” and a certain Ray Davies will do his very best to make the Norman Normal type of British adult subject of his fine irony. He’ll also play a riff said to be one of the first ones of "hard rock” and record concept albums – is that a frightening idea in 1889 or something you find inspiring? What do you hope will the future bring moreover, for England as well as for you personally? Curse: Total annihilation. The Gentleman: Ooh, good answer, if a touch nihilistic. The British Empire will fall, no doubt; all great civilisations do. Another one will rise in its place and so on and so on. As in, with that in mind, the future does not concern me. In terms of music, everything changes, fuses, progresses, so as long as this stays true (and there’s no reason to say it will or it won’t) I’ll be happy. Certainly there is little I find truly frightening when it comes to the future. Whatever happens I cannot prevent it, so why worry? While I heard rumours about separate bathing facilities being still in construction, I can well imagine that your bookcases and alcohol supplies are filled with noble spirits. In case I wouldn’t be such a presumptuous wannabe-journalist trying to uncertain the occult dealings of the Gentleman’s club, what would you offer me to "philosophize” about A FOREST OF STARS on a long autumn evening? Curse: An ethanol soaked ghost-train ride through the sewage-ridden streets of a not particularly fair city and the crumbling foundations of the minds that inhabit it. The Gentleman: I’d be three sheets to the wind by that time, so anything’s game as long as I don’t have to join in. Lately I read a breathtaking book of the great contemporary German author Walter Moers. He wrote a novel mainly inspired by the wood engravings and illustrations of Gustave Doré and it was fascinating to realize how the art of Doré inspired him more than hundred years later. Have you made similar experiences and can you imagine to build a song or even a whole album upon the work of another artist and so to say to renew its frames? Curse: I can't honestly say that I would, no. The Gentleman: Ah, good old Gustave! Still popular, I take it? As to your question, it’s an intriguing thought, but that’s not really how we work, to be honest. Kettleburner: We have, as so far, only reworked fairly contemporary artists, notably the fine gentleman Max Brucht and his very famous work "Violin Concerto No 1 in G Minor, Opus 26” of which the track Microcosm is partly based upon. As I know you want to keep a mysterious aura around A FOREST OF STARS, I wish you all the best and abstain from the typical last questions concerning the band’s future plans. Maybe you want to close this small conversation with a riddle? Curse: Not feeling very riddley this afternoon. Sorry. The Gentleman: The Owls, by all accounts, Are Not What They Seem. Thor Wanzek |
