Interview

SOLEFALD

Lundi 10 juin 2013

How are you doing ?

Cornelius Jakhelln : I'm doing pretty well. It's the last day of the tour. We've been on tour with Solefald

Solefald

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for two weeks now, playing in France, Germany, Holland, Belgium today, Hungary, Italy... So we're kind of exhausted and our voices are a bit worn-out, but you know, the atmosphere is pretty good and we're happy to be back on the road again. Our last tour was, as you may know, fifteen years ago, so it's been some time.

© ChamO

Two questions : what made you stop back then and why did you decide to come back live now ?

C.J. : We did one tour with Solefald

Solefald

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after the first album. We were like twenty years old and we played Switzerland, Austria and Germany with Tristania

Tristania

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and Haggard back in 1998 and then I got accepted at the Sorbonne university in Paris and left Norway to study because I wanted to become a philosopher. And Lars, at the same time, joined Borknagar

Borknagar

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. So he got to play live with Borknagar

Borknagar

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. And those two things combined, me having to study and having a career as a writer abroad and Lars living in Oslo with his job and his family made everything complicated so it became a norm for Solefald

Solefald

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not to play live.
Then we got a request from In Vain

In Vain

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to be our backing band for a few festivals and this tour and I was very excited because I had always wanted Solefald

Solefald

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to go on stage but I didn't have the infrastructure or the surplus energy in order to archieve it. So when I got the offer, I gladly accepted because it made it possible for us to be on stage again.

With you two living in different countries, was it ever difficult to keep on releasing albums together ?

C.J. : No, not really, because Solefald

Solefald

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has never been about money or about image, as you can tell by looking at our photos. (laughs) It makes me laugh to look at the old photos. But we always made the music out of friendship. Lars is my best friend and he's been so for eighteen years. We have this sort of deep personnal understanding in our friendship so the music that comes out of Solefald

Solefald

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is also something more than just two people writing music together. It's an exchange, also on a spiritual, psychological, social level. I think that's very much mirrored in the music because at times, it's tragic, and then suddenly it becomes humorous, it becomes at times even joyful and all of a sudden very sad and very violent again. It's always been like this. I think we can make pop, rock music, maybe even some jazz stuff, and you would still recognise the sound because it could still sound like Solefald

Solefald

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. That's the uniqueness as I see it of our band. We're two composers, Lars writing with the keys and I write with the guitar, that's where it all begins. We lay out the sketches for the songs and then we add this in the studio with my poems, lyrics, Lars' voices, lots of orchestrations, even programmings, guitar, bass, etc. So it's a long creative cycle.

© ChamO

Is this tour a one-time thing or do you plan to do more tours in the future ?

C.J. : I think we'll do more... I hope to do more tours in the future. It depends if we're losing money doing it, it's the basic thing, then it will be hard to do another tour. If it turns out that we are actually breaking even, that is having no expenses, we can go on tour again because we are not in this for the money, I guess that will be proven by our discography, with titles like Pills Against the Ageless Ills or Latin-French lyrics, you name it. We have hopes for another tour in 2014, when our new album, Kosmopolis, will be out.

Don't you have a book called Kosmopolis ?

C.J. : Yes I do.

Could you explain a bit what you're writing about ?

C.J. : Well my bibliography is unfortunately all in Norwegian. None of it has been translated so far.
I try to revitalise the old Norse mythology, the old myths and gods, even the heroes, and to cast them in our time. What happens if Odin would be sitting next to me for example ? What would Thor look like ? Would he drink beer ? Would he drink fanta ? It's a stupid question but it's legitimate. That's what you do as a writer. You sort of imagine all these scenarios and you feel what would happen. Would he become a beggar, a salesman, a musician ? All these questions are dealt with in my books. I use the tradition but I try to make it in my own way and I like to work with the old matter because it makes my project so much more relevant, also in the future, because the characters in my books are timeless. My books are myths retold and recasted. That is also true for the poetry. I try to develop the old rhythms of the Norse poetry. I often use alliteration, half rhymes. That's not so very common. You will notice the rhythm at once, hopefully.

Will the new album be based on the book you wrote ?

C.J. : It will feature some of the poems from the book Kosmopolis, but at the same time, Kosmopolis was a title that's figured in my sketchbooks since probably 1996 or something. I have a big pile of sketchbooks at home, different sizes and different things. There are some album titles projects that never happened, a big pile of ideas. It's really about mimetics, the cultural genes, the strong tend to survive, to replicate, and the title Kosmopolis has been with me for eighteen years now. So it makes sense as we wanted to do an album oriented towards world music in a black metal context, or at least in a metal context. I think we'll leave for now the black out of it. So we're thinking about this world music with black edges. Because it will be a dark album, it will be Solefald

Solefald

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but at the same time, it will be about our civilisation, using instruments from different corners of the world and hopefully, we'll have a score of guest musicians.

© ChamO

You have many side-projects. Are they still active ?

C.J. : Yes. The next Sturmgeist will be called Zion and is to be released in the fall 2013.
And then I also have a noise poetry project called Sturmgeist & The Fall of Rome, which is really me in a uniform shouting my poetry at the top of my voice with two friends of mine who have a noise band from Oslo called Noisestar and the Fall of Rome. It's like melodic, epic noise.
My side-projects are moderately active to put it like that.

Last question was in French, so this part was translated to English :

Is there anything else you'd like to tell to the French speakers seeing or reading this ?

C.J. : Yes, with pleasure ! It was great to visit France yesterday for the first time with Solefald

Solefald

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. We played in a small club in Paris for I don't know... 130 people, but the venue was packed and I did my first crowdsurfing. I almost hitched up to the ceiling with my microphone cable. It was crazy ! It was so crowded and I kept on singing Backpacka Baba and of course, this energy made me want to come back to Paris with Solefald

Solefald

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, because most of the lyrics and the music of Solefald

Solefald

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were written in Paris. Songs like The USA Don't Exist, Anti-City Strategy, etc. carry the imprint of persons such as Paul Virilio, a Parisian thinker, for example. Which means... It's easy to forget, now that I live in Berlin, in Germany, and that Lars lives in Oslo, but Solefald

Solefald

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also has this secret little French side. Voilà.

Thanks a lot !

C.J. : Thank you.