Please provide us with a brief background on your band.

(James Jason) Gothic are currently a dark avant-garde multimedia project of music, poetry and figurative arts (drawings, videos, programming). I’d like to stress “currently” because Gothic are a perpetuum mobile: we have always changed musical genre and approach since our first demo, the terrific “Into the gothic gloom” (1989). Gothic have embodied so far many musical/artistical visions: grindin’ death-gloom metal mainly performed by keyboards instead of guitars (1989-1991), death-hardcore-punk metal (1991-1993), doom metal performed by synthesizers (1993-1994 !), gothic-speed (1994-1995) or gothic-prog metal(1997-2000), art-dark rock (1995-1997) and tons of neoclassical, free-jazz, hard-groove, techno-jungle, experimental etc songs/riffs/arrangements with some hints of dark psychedelia here and there. Back to nowadays, our multimedia studio project represents the endeavour to release the glooms inside the contemporary human being through modern technologies.

"Gothic" could easily be thought of as a rather common word these days, considering other bands that might be using the same name. Was there ever a point in time when you felt the need to change it?

(JJ) “Gothic” are a fact, not a fashion.We aim to create, not to follow transient trends.In 1989, when this project saw the light of the day (or better, the darkness of the night...), the term “Gothic” was a surprising novelty in the field of the heavy/extreme music. In the second half of the 90’s there were two other bands named “Gothic”: the older was a French band, whose present status quo is uncertain, while the other was a Romanian band, currently disbanded. Other bands having similar names, like the Italian “Gothica” (I never listened to) formed far after us. And, finally, the renowned and homonymous Paradise Lost album is dated 1991 and so... To change our project’s name would be like to counterfeit our identity card... quite impossible and utterly deceitful to our fans and, above all, to us ourselves.

Your latest offering, Grim, is already your 11th album and it somehow occured to me that after so many years you've chosen to limit your audience and shun all commercial opportunities, why is this so?

(JJ) Well, you have to know Gothic were one of those ghostly misanthropical musical entities who wanted to hide themselves from the “outer world”, trying to preserve the purity of Gothic’s dark visions from any possible source of corruption. This misanthropical attitude reached its apex from 1993 to 1997; in 1997 I and David Bosch, our draftsman, re-founded “Gothic” so to give that “outer world” the opportunity to love or to hate our products, spreading Gothic’s releases all over the globe. In this connection, though I personally took care of public relations as Gothic’s spokesman worldwide, the support from our sound engineer (and webmaster) John Ruin has been essential.

I haven't listened to any of your past albums yet, so I'm definitely interested to know if they have the same structure as Grim. Having said that, kindly tell us about the developments of your music.

(JJ)Not at all. As I said before,Gothic never released an album which could even remotely resemble the previous one. I learned this wise lesson from Tom G. Fischer many years ago, when I moved my first steps in the darkness of my gothic world, musically speaking. That caused sometimes misunderstandings from a few fans who wanted Gothic to play endlessly death-gloom metal or gothic-prog metal. But I, John and David can’t create music/art for the others, because we can’t brake Gothic’s evolution: I myself grew very much over these 15 years, musically and humanly... I’m always searching for new styles to explore, new sounds to contaminate, new boundaries to go beyond. The development of our art goes along with that of our gothic souls, no more no less. The difference from yesterday is that nowadays we’d like Gothic were considered as a multimedia project and no more as a simple“band”. Our poetries and pictures are all at one with our music and have the same importance of that. (John Ruin) I think Gothic’s evolution is essentially independent from our conscious wishes. Personally, I think of it as a side result of our present experiences and explorations. We aren’t simply able to draw a future plan for our work because we can’t even imagine how we could figure it out from our art.

Actually, the song "Barren Moors" is one of my all-time favorite electronic songs. The distorted vocals against a dancy backdrop is a perfectly corrosive formula that a lot of listeners do crave for these days. Also, the song "Victim of Distress" is the gothest track in the album. These two examples are just a couple of your many sounds, am I correct?

(JJ) Absolutely. As you surely noticed, not only every Gothic album is different from the previous one,but there aren’t even two similar songs within the same album. According to me, Forlorn and Victim of Distress are Grim’s most representative tracks. Forlorn is obsessive, gloomy, very experimental and maybe darker than Victim of Distress, which is on the other hand a bit more complex than Forlorn and really stately in its heavy tragicalness. Grim probes other genres too: heavy industrial (Lurking Limbo, Between the Endless Tides), techno metal (I Give Up – Defeat’s Dance), dark-IDM (Wintered Wings, Down in your shrine), goth-prog-psychedelic-free jazz-jungle (Splinters Inside), trip-hop (Feed my frenzy), trance-core (Am I ?)...

You do both the lead and backing vocals? I also noticed the unmistakable vocal quality of Rozz Williams in "Down in Your Shrine". Was that intentional?

(JJ)Yes, I perform every vocal. I love the” true” Christian Death, those featuring Rozz Williams, one of the most underrated genius of XX century’s music, yet to be discovered more than how much we all have done so far. Having been said that, I try not to let me be influenced by “packaged-and-ready-to-use vocal style” since I always wish to create and not to follow. My vocal-style changes along with music, song after song, riff after riff. No rip-off, sure ! But our minds can’t be free at 100% from any kind of influences and so... maybe unconsciously... who knows ?

There are songs in your album written in Italian, what are they about?

(JJ)There are essentially 6 mysteries scattered in “Grim”. The first one is in the Forlorn video, the second one in Feed my frenzy, the first of the two ghost tracks; the third one is about the respective track numbers of “Feed my frenzy !” and “Am I ?...”, while the forth one concerns the hidden meaning of the background noise in “Integrationsstatus: Negativ (?!?). The fifth is represented by the whole ”... Poichè... la Morte... è sulle colline…” (=”As… Death… is on the hills…”), the only track performed in Italian. It’s a pure avant-garde poetry played as a theatrical pièce by four actors who have different roles. Its real meaning is too painful and frightful to be revealed... I wrote that poetry in a state of drowsiness, during one of my mystical raptures in the deep night... but I’m sure some of our listeners, the darkest of the dark minds, will grasp its deep meaning... it gives me the creeps... “Noir (Czarny)” (=”Black”) is another enigmatic theatrical pièce, though more intelligible than the track above. It’s played in French by two actors whose real role represents the sixth and last mystery featured in Grim... Now it’s your turn...

Don't you think that some of your impatient audiences might find the long instrumentals rather boring and a potential drawback?

(JJ)Of course. I regret a certain kind of listeners who directly skip to the chorus or to the main-riff, leaving behind instrumental parts which introduce or conclude a song. That’s superficiality and ignorance. If you go directly to the final chapter of a book you’ve not at all read it, you ravaged it. Again, if you look at a picture, you will appreciate it as a whole, while you can’t gaze at only one detail, ignoring all the others. And the same goes for every brand of art, music included. Of course you can prefer the main-riff rather than the bridge and so on but you can’t totally ignore the former or the latter. As Gothic isn’t just your average easy-listening band... you are warned beforehand !

You cited that art is a huge part of your music and vice versa. Is this a significant step to ensure that the listener really "gets it".

(David Bosch) That’s the difference between old and new Gothic. Our multimedia project rose from the interpenetration of different visual, audio and literary suggestions. Neither any picture nor any sound nor any line lives as an entity apart. We have nothing to teach, we only express our unconscious, even unconsciously. The images I draw are the sheer result of something I’m not aware of, neither at the end of my work: e.g. if I draw a tree I don’t mean always to represent a wood, if I use the blue colour I don’t want always to describe the sky... (JJ) Yeah, that’s our concept of total art as unification of human senses through the creation of one solid black diamond whose changing faces represent our different ways to be “artists”, faces to be discovered listening after listening, reading after reading, views after views...

Is your technic in writing a remnant of your death-gloom metal past or is it based on other influences?

(JJ)I can’t and don’t want to forget my musical past though many moons are passed away by now. During all these years I have been “ ripening” different kinds of songwriting and at the present time I’m elaborating something quite new for our near future. I was told by some listeners my songwriting could recall some stuff of the early Opeth even if when I listened to it for the very first time I already got my style, without any special influence. Gothic’s songs are like a huge gothic cathedral, rich in details, some of them hidden to neophytes, sometimes even superabundant, quite disquieting...

What made the transition to gothic music?

(JJ)Mainly the lyrics: the transition from prose to poetry was dictated by my inner need to bring to light some demons of all that darkness I bear within. Secondly I was really fed up of the overall metal scene. But some traces of this utterly drastic change can be found already in Cold Winds of Suicide (1997), indeed a worthy ghost album we’re currently re-engineering along with all the other past Gothic releases, in order to rescue it/them from an eternal oblivion. By the way I’d like to emphasize Gothic played always gothic music, even when we were a death-gloom metal band: the deep, true spirit of music counts really more than any label you and I can stick to the music itself. (JR) As far as I’m concerned, the word “gothic” means a natural way to be. It’s a concept very similar to that of the Strange Attractors in the Chaos Theory:as well as a numeric quantity can assume chaotic values but at the same time is so bounded as to reach an equilibrium, I experimented several ways to approach life, but I always came back to my gothic-way-of-living, unconsciously. I like to think about it as a shell where I can face my inner demons and fears, which whispers to me every day... The re-engineering of the past releases is a gift to ourselves and to our fans: it also represents a necessary stage in the present microcosm of Gothic: a way to remember the past in order to create total art in the future...

Some artists do live the gothic lifestyle and make the music at the same time. What other hobbies or interests do you have when you're not in the studio?

(DB)I and James often feel the need to retire to some “gothic spots” our region is very rich in: medieval villages, ancient woods, deserted fortresses, isolated cemeteries, barren moors and so on... all this was and sometimes is still one of our various sources of inspiration. (JR)My mind is always full of strange philosophical theories. I really find very difficult to stop and take a break from my present work because I get quickly involved in what I am doing: I remember thinking about “working for one hour on Forlorn” and finding myself in the middle of the night after several hours of work... Besides that, I have many hobbies, which I can sum up by stating that “I like to create worlds”. (JJ)I won’t tell you I’m a vampire, feed on bats, dwell in a cave in the night, sleeping in the day firstly because from 7am to 7pm I, John, David as well as Davy (Jones) all are common persons who work to live (or better to survive life) and secondly because these old clichés have bored me to death since I was 16... nevertheless I feel like a 101% dark mind who sometimes enjoys wandering by feet or by car in some wasteland in the deep night. But I just guess it’s a passion common to the most of goths, isn’t it ?

You mentioned that you're part of a dark movement in Italy. Are you by any means connected with other goth-oriented groups there?

(JJ)We’re necessarily part of it since we’re Italian; notwithstanding this, in this case isolation is actually a good thing... Besides, as far as I’m concerned I’m Italian only because I was born here... that’s all... the region I live in has by far a major influence on my moods and then on my way of writing music and poetry.

Are you open to experimental fusions of music? Is there any chance that your sound will explore other genres?

(JJ)The terms “experimental” and “fusion” are really dear to my concept of art... Gothic don’t repeat themselves, so we are “condemned” to change musical approach album after album. We never know how our next release will sound like because we don’t plan anything but an overall artistical direction... we let ourselves be guided by our lunatic creativity... and then every genre could be the “fil rouge” of our next album: I mean ALL, really ALL is possible. Nothing is too avant-garde when you’re talking about Gothic, ah !

Have you had side projects in the past and are you also willing to work with other artists?

(JJ)Nothing worthy to be mentioned... I do repeat: I, we prefer our sweet bitter self- isolation, because this is the only mental and physical state we can start from in order to let our creativity flow. Sorry, but we couldn’t just share“our inmost demons” our art springs from with anyone.

Give us a forecast of what to expect in the near future. Thank you.

(JR)As aforementioned, in the near future we’re going to carry on a re-engineering process which will keep us busy for several months. We aim at offering to the “outer world” some of the previously limited released songs, by using the current technological means.Expect very surprising news in the multimedia direction too: Gothic are now a 101% , true multimedia project, and we want to push this concept to its extremes, so stay tuned! (DB)Abstraction, matter scanning... hmmm... annihilation... (JJ)A Gothic work isn’t like a mainstream band’s album which can be released in a few months... We need a lot of time to develop and to bring to perfection our intuitions, our ideas. Hence our next album will be released not earlier than three years: anyway I can assure you all that it will be a shocking re-vo-lu-tion in music’s history... darker and far more avant-garde than any stuff you will have ever listened to until then. A real artistical suicide of the Gothic project... I’m sure you’ll understand what I’m meaning... Thanks to you.

Copyright 2005. All rights reserved. ABORTED LIFE