ORANSSI PAZUZU: The Shaman Scientist Way

I might as well come clean right now: it is barely the end of October, but I already know that ORANSSI PAZUZU's Valonielu will top my 2013 Playlist. Just like Kosmonument was my favorite album of 2011. Need I say more?... It is a real pleasure to interview these guys as their blackened psychedelic explorations represent the perfect modern blend between shamanic spirit and scientific attitude: in my eyes, those are inextricably intertwined paths, both aiming at discovering the mysteries of life...

While Kosmonument made me feel like a reckless spacewoman facing unknown dark perils and mind-blowing cosmic puzzles, for me listening to Valonielu is like being exposed to music written by aliens announcing the terrible destiny of our planet: the feeling is disconcerting and exhilarating! Can you enlighten us on the actual lyrical content, and the viewpoint it was dealt with?

Ontto: I’m very happy if there is room left for interpretations like that in the music. On Valonielu, there is a lyrical theme that’s haunting throughout the album, but I hope that when I talk about it, people don’t take it too literally as a “guide” for how to experience the sounds. Anyway, the main lyrical theme on Valonielu is a question about the limits of our world view. I think empiricism is the way to gain some understanding of reality, but there is also a deep mystery rooted in it, which is consequence of our natural limitations as human beings. There are holes in the landscape, like one song title suggests. The human answer to this “problem” is to fill these holes with illusions that satisfy our needs to feel security and certainty. But the problem with this is, that these illusions also might stop you from asking new questions that help us understand the reality better. In fact, they migh make your brain go into a dissonance state, if you even go as far as trying to think outside your fixed mindset. The mystery is the real truth, and if you gaze into it, it gives away small pieces of reality, slowly and painfully. This is one philosophical point of view for the album, of course there are other themes as well, like evolution, life’s unity, religion and so on, but in my mind they all connect to this basic question somehow.

In this album you let any residual inhibition go with regards to experimenting with sounds and patterns, which play a mesmerizing part against the unlit scenario. How did you compose the music this time around?

Ontto: The idea of letting things evolve naturally had an even greater importance for us than before with writing these new songs. We didn’t have much rush, and we tried lots of different ideas and saw which ones felt the most inspiring to us. Most of them turned out to be actual written riffs, which we just jammed and played with collectively. We didn’t want to spoil them by pushing too hard, but rather let the atmospheres, the soundscapes, the grooves and everything settle into their natural states with time and patience.

Your songwriting has expanded and refined itself greatly, but the feeling of freshness and potential for further mind-expanding explorations is now more evident than ever before. Do you have the feeling that you have made up a lot of ground as far as musicianship & composing skills go, and that you have pierced through a wider (but still very mysterious) dimension creatively?

Ontto: The thing with creating something new is that you are always a beginner in a way. I mean we have learned a lot for sure by doing those earlier albums, but it is the uncertainty and the unexpected that makes it all more interesting. I’d like to see every album as an individual point of musical evolution process. Each album is just a link in a chain that hopefully leads to new ideas later on.

“Ympyrä On Viiva Tomussa”‘s eerie, hypnotic atmosphere during the build-up section plunges me into cosmic scenarios evocative of Pink Floyd’s Ummagumma. Your unique interpretation of classic psychedelic/progressive rock through the aesthetics of black metal sounds so genuine and fresh that feels like the fruit of an instinctive stream-of-consciousness process, not a diligent reconstruction. How important is it for OP to have an extensive knowledge of old-school music? Do you set out to do some research into other bands’ sounds and atmospheres to widen your technical toolbox? 

Ontto: It’s not exactly something we do research for, it’s just that we are all very much into the 70’s psychedelic/prog rock. For OP that is just as important musical influence as black metal, something we enjoy aesthetically, something we want to reach towards. I have always been especially into the 70’s drum and bass sounds, because they let the groove breathe more than the modern “snap & buff” bass drum, and it’s inspiring to smuggle these things into a more extreme music style. I think fusion is a key to new worlds and atmospheres, and if the fusion feels at the same time natural and weird to the listener’s ears, the experiment probably has been a success. 

 Writing and working on the final track-list of Valonielu must have been a very intense experience, starting from the gathering and build-up of its inspiration. The album sounds so darkly vibrant and terrifyingly organic: the free-jam feeling that was quite predominant in the past has evolved into a creature almost with a life, a brain of its own! Do you get the odd feeling that OP music comes from “elsewhere”, and if so, surely your rational mind must enjoy the bizarre sensation?

Ontto: Haha, it sure has a disturbing brain… Yes, I get feelings like that sometimes, and many times those are the best thing. I guess we’re just lost in the music and trying to find some way out of there as a collective. When we’re jamming some new stuff together, usually everyone has different ideas of what’s it all about. Slowly the different pictures start resembling each other and after a lot of jamming you can recognize them as parts of one unified piece of music. And even then many people can’t… I wish it was easier, but that’s how it goes. Definitely there’s an element of unpredictability. You can bring riffs for the guys to play, but you can never be sure how they twist them into something new, and that’s one of the great things about playing in a band.

Velonielu is eons away from mainstream/sellable rock or metal: even when you unleash the “groove”, it adds layers and dynamism to the complexity of your work. “Olen Aukaissut Uuden Silmän” is the ear candy of this new album, with its almost gothic-sounding guitar: it’s an avalanche of swirling colors against a pulsating black background I am curious about the title, can you tell me something about its story and how it reflects into the music?

Ontto: The title translates to “I Have Opened A New Eye”. Lyrically it’s a song about personal growth, about gazing into the unknown and finding the enlightenment in the mystery. Jun-His had this simple riff and the song kind of grew from that seed. After the verses there is a short and hazy black metal bridge, that represents the dreams of an individual breaking down, and soon the part itself breaks down too, morphing into an instrumental middle part with guitar melodies and arpeggio synths that represent the mystery. At least that’s how I feel about it.

I am already fantasizing about hearing this album in a cool club with a good projector, and I cannot wait for some European dates to materialize. Are you a visual kind of composer? Perhaps do you take notes of what you imagine for the live situation, as well as for the lyrics (if and when they are written after the music)?

Ontto: Well, we don’t exactly take notes, we’re too unorganized for that... About visuality, I think the worlds that music refers to are created in the listener’s head. At live shows you can ease that path with lights and projectors and stuff, to get people “in the mood” so to speak, but the most important thing is that the person who’s experiencing the music should be there with an open mind and willing to make his/her own imaginary psychic cinema from the music. We just provide the soundtrack for them. It’s up to them if they wanna turn it into something exciting or boring. Actually we have not planned the shows very closely, so we’ll just have to wait and see how it turns out this fall…

Ontto: Haha, it sure has a disturbing brain… Yes, I get feelings like that sometimes, and many times those are the best thing. I guess we’re just lost in the music and trying to find some way out of there as a collective. When we’re jamming some new stuff together, usually everyone has different ideas of what’s it all about. Slowly the different pictures start resembling each other and after a lot of jamming you can recognize them as parts of one unified piece of music. And even then many people can’t… I wish it was easier, but that’s how it goes. Definitely there’s an element of unpredictability. You can bring riffs for the guys to play, but you can never be sure how they twist them into something new, and that’s one of the great things about playing in a band.

The contribution of Jaime Gomez Arellano in making this album so blazingly vivid yet swollen with dour eeriness, masterfully highlighting even the finest of detail, seems crucial. Are you guys all about instinct or are you obsessively anal when recording?... Did you learn anything from Jaime that has already sown its seed for the future?

Ontto: Working with Gomez was great. He had a good understanging of our musical aesthetics and he also knew how to accomplish that in the studio environment. That allowed us to relax and just focus in the musical side and the playing. We are pretty interested about the recording process, but when you have a professional taking care of that, it allows you to get into the atmosphere and go with the flow. Definitely we learned a lot in the sessions, about ourselves as musicians, how we play and what things are meaningful in the pursuit of a more spacious soundscape. Gomez had many cool ideas that we wound’t have thought of ourselves, for example he divided Evill’s keyboard soundscapes to stereo “widscreen” signal before recording and that made his playing sound fucking cosmic! Gomez also loves to play with effect pedals and wanted to make all the effects old school way, with pedals while recording, instead of using some digital studio plug-ins afterwards. I like that attitude.

Your commitment to making the kind of experimental music you love in total freedom is apparent. How has your relationship with creativity changed after the accolade that “Kosmonument” received? How was your experience with a big label like Spinefarm, and are you happy to go back to nesting within a more underground niche?

Ontto: With Spinefarm we felt a bit like outsiders, as you might guess, because they have all these huge mainstream metal bands and then us… I guess we didn’t fit into that equation very well. The people with Svart on the other hand are really into the same kind of music that we like too, which is great. This fall they are releasing many re-issues of old Finnish prog classics on vinyl, Wigwam and great stuff like that. I also like the fact that there is a kind of small underground scene in Finland and Svart is very involved in that. They are releasing music from our friend’s bands, Dark Buddha Rising for example. That makes us feel like we are at the right place. We didn’t think about label things too much when we started writing the new album, we just hoped someone would want to release the album eventually. But when Gomez got involved, it made things a bit more complex because we needed a label to help with the recording costs in his London-based studio. Our previous albums were recorded in Finnish cottages, so it was a pretty long leap from that. Luckily Svart thought working with Gomez was a good idea and also 20 Buck Spin, our label in North America, gave us a green light. They made it possible, and I’m very glad they did.

Costin Choreanu’s artwork for Valonielu which symbolizes the natural cycles of the earth, which seem ever more ominous today due to our failure to make the right sociopolitical, environmental and ethical choices. What has the Orange Pazuzu got to say about the little commitment that most people show towards a sorely needed change, individually and collectively? I’d rather go down fighting: have people lost their balls completely?

 

Ontto: I don’t think people have lost their balls, but rather they don’t know which is the real ball in the sea of balls. There are too many intuition-based views against each argumented one, and too many lobbers, who demolish the democratic and scientific systems with their selfish agendas. This makes people feel helpless and apathetic. But illusions don’t help. There are usually no simple solutions to complex problems, and this is what they trick you to think. I think that if you want to change reality, you have to first try understanding reality, even if it’s incomprehensible at times. Maybe better public awareness is a way to the change, but people can be very frustrating in their ability to take only the facts that fit into their fixed world view and dismiss the ones that might help them see things in a wider perspective. That is not very promising, because environmental and social problems are not going to slow down even if people refuse to take them for real.

Psychedelic music should not just remind us of lysergic escapism but of an era when music fans were actively committed to change foreign politics, break taboos and achieve social liberties. Crucially, does underground music still make culture these days? Do you feel there could be a renaissance of positivity and proactive attitudes after two decades spent wallowing in self-indulgent bleakness?  

Ontto: That is an interesting point about psychedelic music. To me an important aspect of the genre, and art in general, is that it tries to see reality in a new, possibly very unorthodox way. Psychedelic music celebrates freedom of the mind, hopefully without many social restrictions, and this is a good starting point for fresh ideas. It might be that the disappointment that followed the optimistic late 60’s also reflects on today’s music scene, maybe in a subconscious way. The word “hippie” actually used to mean something more than a lazy person who’s constantly too stoned to say anything understandable. Personally for me, Kosmonument was the high point of our nihilistic self-indulgence, a very bleak and unoptimistic album, whereas Valonielu is actually a counter-reaction to it, in it’s own way. On this album, some of the lyrics criticise thought patterns that are very common and in my view very unhelpful in terms of cultural and social evolution. That’s not the same thing as straight action, I admit that, but it’s not like we’re putting our heads in the bush and ignoring the reality either. Hopefully there will be a movement that smashes

the super liberal economy bubble with all it’s sick consequences. If it happens, I think there will be many soundtracks for that change.

 

(All photos by Maija Lahtinen, except for live shots)