stories
..........................................................................................................................
|
ORANSSI PAZUZU Finnish Dub Meditations On Outer Black Story online since: 18.01.2010 / 21:50:27 ......................................................................................................................................................... * * Oranssi Pazuzu is Finnish for Orange Pazuzu. Vocalist Jun-His' real name is Juho Vanhanen. He is a former member of Finnish surrealistic rock band Kuolleet Intiaanit (2000 - 2007), and Oranssi Pazuzu is actually sometimes described as a black metal version of Kuolleet Intiaanit. The band's motto is: "Oranssi Pazuzu makes music that invites all the arsonists and smokers to hold hands". Source: Metal Archives * *  My greetings to you, Ô orange travelers from outer Finland of Pazuzu! What are you up to nowadays, if I may ask? Jun-His: Well, first of all, we've found ourselves looking at the first official Oranssi Pazuzu album, which we are very proud of by the way. We're also looking forward to the shows at the end of the summer and also during the autumn [2009 - ed.]. The days are getting longer here in Finland and we will gather together as many summer nights as possible to jam and compose new material. Ontto: Yeah, now that the album is out, we can start writing some new stuff. It's very interesting to see what direction we will take next. It certainly was, more than anything, very refreshing to hear your first and new album, "Muukalainen Puhuu", which has just been released. First off, what does the title translate to and what is the 'story' behind the making of this album? How would you qualify your quest? Jun-His: "Muukalainen puhuu" translates roughly into: "The Sranger Speaks". The bands history on the other hand dates back to the summer of 2007, when Ontto and I saw Emperor live at the Tuska festival in Finland. After the show we made plans to start writing songs and gather the right musicians to form a band that would concentrate on making dark and highly visual music. Since we didn't have any "metal background", it was very natural for us to mix in influences from other styles of music. For instance psychedelic rock and krautrock. The search for the other band members was quite easy. Me, Ontto, Korjak and EviL shared some musical background and Ontto had been playing together with Moit, who completed our lineup. After that we started writing material for our first album which was recorded in the fall of 2008 at Korjak`s cottage in the middle of nowhere. Violent Journey Records came along and released the album and here we are. Ontto: "Muukalainen" can also refer to aliens. The recording process was very exciting for us, since we played all the instruments live at the same time. Only vocals and some percussion & effects were overdubbed later. We wanted the album to have a raw "live" feel to it, so it sounds pretty much like what Oranssi Pazuzu actually sounds live. So you mean that prior to the Emperor live performance you saw in 2007, you had made no investigation of the Black metal scene whatsoever? What were the main black metal or extreme metal bands which opened your ears to this genre? Ontto: We were already into black metal, but I think that show convinced us of the possibilities that this kind of music has. I started listening to black metal with Emperor's Anthems, and soon discovered Darkthrone, Satyricon, Ulver, Burzum and others. Lately I have been listening to bands that have a somewhat different approach to black metal, such as Blut Aus Nord and Deathspell Omega. There seems to be a visual connection between your musical expression and outer space. The new albums cover obviously points in that direction, though I would say the music does too! Now is that something you can relate to? Jun-His: Ontto might be able to shed a bit more light about the lyrical content. As for the music, I would say you are right about outer space being one of the most inspiring topics for us. I think psychedelic music and sound has an obvious connection to space and for example into infinity. Ontto: Sure. There are also some space-influenced lyrics on the album, but mostly the space thematics are present in the music itself. Lyrics mainly deal with things like nihilism, religion criticism and, of course, death. Down to earthly, are you serious about your lyrics or is there also a pinch of humor thrown in? In either case, what do you think represents "religion" for the younger generations in Finland? Ontto: If I'd put humor into the lyrics, it would spoil the atmosphere of the song. Yes I'm serious about it, but the lyrics are quite abstract. It is difficult to take one song and tell what it's about, since usually it's two or three different things. I'm more interested in nightmares and feelings, and less interested in logic storytelling. I guess religion for many people is an escape route that gives them an opportunity to deny that their lives are meaningless in the end. People I know are usually agnostics, but many still belong to the state church. Maybe they're just too lazy to resign.  You come from a country which is internationally recognized as a land of strange and psychedelic music. I'm making an obvious reference here to for instance Ektro Records, Circle and friends, etc. Do you think it's been influential, for the band, to have such cultural-related contemporaries? And how did Black metal somehow fit in? Jun-His: Well, Circle for example is a huge influence for us. Glad you were able to pinpoint that out just by listening to the album. I think certain black metal artists and some krautrock bands have partially the same fundamental idea about music. They both are repeating riffs and rhythms to make the listener fall into a kind of hypnotic state. Black metal only gives you a bit more of a sinister mood. I think Circle's heavy influences are maybe more in hard rock, and our influences in black metal. To put it in a nutshell: the guys in Circle probably listen to Judas Priest. We listen to Burzum. Ontto: I think it's great to have all these Ektro and Fonal bands in this small country, although over here they are unknown to 99,9 % of the population. It's definitely been influential for us, but living here makes this country sometimes feel more like the promised land of conservative heavy rock. Is it me or there is a mushroom formed by your logo's design? Ontto: A friend of ours, Samuli Huttunen, designed that logo. He also did the cover for the album. I don't know what he was eating at the time, could be mushrooms... I've seen live snippets of the band on youtube. Do you enjoy playing live and do you think you easily translate the moods from the album into a more spontaneous environment? Ontto: It's fun to play live, but I personally get the best kicks out of writing new material. I think we are able to make the music sound pretty much the same live as on the album, since the album was recorded in a live manner. Do you guys have other projects going on at the moment which any Oranssi Pazuzu fan should know of? Jun-His: We have had other bands in the past and have other bands now, but we’ll rather not talk about them in this context. Ontto: I think we have never done anything like this before. This band is a whole new territory for us. You talked about jamming this summer [of 2009 – ed.]. You seem to be fast and productive at creating an album, if we take into consideration that the band was formed in 2007 and already has its first album released. How would you say the jams are structured to the point of being new songs? Ontto: We are productive when we get to it, but nowadays we don't get to play together too often. We usually jam a lot and wait for something interesting to come up. Then we take that interesting part and jam more if we feel the song needs other parts too. Sometimes we have written a riff that we complete with some jam parts. The song "Danjon nolla" for example was made like this. What is experimental, forward-looking or so-called avant-garde music by your standards? And do you think there is still much space left for Metal to evolve as a genre? Jun-His: I think metal has now reached its peak in aggressiveness and it will now expand and focus reaching to other areas in music. I wouldn't say we are some sort of pioneers in metal. In fact, I'm not even sure if people will call us a metal band at all. Then the question about our standards. I seriously doubt any of us have any standards about music and I myself haven't really been thinking about the whole "which music goes to which genre" in many years. I guess music becomes experimental when it differs from the current fashions and when music styles are being somehow re-invented or mixed into new formulas. Who knows what's experimental in 30 years or so. Ontto: In my opinion making new music always involves experimentation. We are mixing up our favorite styles, like black metal and krautrock, but since we don't have any references on how to do it, we end up trying different things. It's a certain mood that we are aiming for, and we are slowly getting there. Metal has already a huge variety of subgenres, I don't know how much it needs to evolve. But it is natural that different things get mixed up with each other, I guess it's some kind of musical or cultural equivalent to entropy.  Do you see Oranssi Pazuzu's sound taking even more psychedelic influences of galactic proportions in the future, or you really want to explore even more your "metal" dimension? Ontto: I'm hoping that we find a way to mix these influences so that the listener doesn't think "this is metal" or "this is space-rock", it's just something dark and psychedelic. So my vote goes for both musical directions! We'll see how it turns out. Would you describe every band member's musical personality and his personal input inside the band? Ontto: Everyone in this band has a huge influence on what the music sounds like. Jun-His is the one who mostly writes the main guitar riffs and is pretty rhythmic player. Moit is his counterpart in a way, he’s doing all these weird psychedelic melodies and just floating with the music. I deliver lyrics and some riffs for the songs and try to make the bass lines as hypnotic as I can. EviL puts a final touch and mood to the music with his soundscapes, without those the songs would have a very different feel. Korjak is the backbone of the band, who keeps it all together when we are travelling somewhere far out. Safe metal, what kind of music are you mostly exploring nowadays? Any special suggestions for our infovore readers? Ontto: I've been into many things lately. Boredoms is very interesting band, saw them live in Helsinki about two years ago and it blew my mind. My Bloody Valentine did the same last summer when I saw them in Spain. From the older stuff I have to mention Can, their classic krautrock albums like Future Days and Tago Mago are simply amazing. Currently I’m also pretty addicted to Fela Kuti’s afrobeat. He knew a great deal about repetition. Do you have any preference when it comes to creating strange sounds or recording your musical parts, between analog and digital means? Ontto: It's hard to say because we have never used a tape recorder. It would be interesting though, since we are not fans of this digital recording practice which slices songs into tiny peaces and then constructs them with Pro Tools. We want to capture the live feel of the band when recording. When it comes to creating sound, the guitarists and I use only pedals but EviL has lots of digital stuff going on with his keyboards. I think the analog sounds are usually better, but nowdays the digital keyboards are so good you can get pretty useful stuff from them. The bass sound is very prominent in Oranssi Pazuzu. In some songs, I would even say that there is a sort of "Dub" feeling. It is quite rare to hear so much groove within the kind of genres you mess with. Was this something important, to keep it groovy and warm? Ontto: I think there're lot's of possibilities you can do with bass, but in metal bands the bass is traditionally just backing up the guitars. I try to make it sound more hypnotic and simple enough. Certainly groove is not going to do any harm if you keep it natural and don’t over-emphasize it like they did with nu-metal. Thanks for the interview, guys (or aliens)! It was very interesting to know a bit more about what lies behind your mysterious band. Before we leave it at that, what would be your wettest musical dream? Ontto: I look forward to making an album that completely captures the essence of this band’s musical idea and sound. After that I hope people will hear that album also. That's about it for now.  www.myspace.com/oranssipazuzu www.violentjourneyrecords.com Oliver Side |
