Interview mit Êlea von Noêta

First of all, I’d like to ask you to introduce your band NOÊTA for those who are yet unfamiliar with your music. How would your describe your „black ambient“?
Prophecy described our sound as ”fascinating and compelling, yet difficult to categorize. This is music as mood; poetic, dark, ambient, landscapes”. I would agree – our music is not easy to summarize as it varies throughout, however, the dark folk sound is somewhat consistent, so „Black Ambient Folk“ would be a more accurate description.

There are hardly any elements of metal to be found in your music, at most in the background. Have you maybe still been influenced by metal? And what bands and musicians had an impact on you in general?
Yes, I dabbled around the many types of black metal since my early years – the avantgarde, folk and atmospheric kinds are specifically what made it into influences for NOÊTA. For example Drudkh’s use of distorted guitars to make soundscapes that resemble winds or natural elements as well as Deathspell’s use of dissonance. In addition to metal we’ve had many varying influences between the two of us, everything from contemporary folk/blues like Lönndom and Tallest Man on Earth, to Sigur Rós‚ lesser known album “Von Brigði”, Rolf Wallins contemporary percussion pieces to name a few. As we were working on the album, we listened to less of that music as to not become overly-influenced by them.

You are creating music as a duo, consisting of you und Ândris. How did you two get in touch with each other, what is your relationship? And how did your collaboration come together?
We met while teaching in mid 2013, I had just taken a short break from the film industry and taught at Ândris school for about 6 months. In order to practice playing together, we began jamming various songs for a full 4-5 months. We finally got so good at playing together that we were able to improvise such songs as “Hades” and “Dead Soil” in one long continous go. I moved to Vancouver at the end of those 6 months to return to work, so the rest of NOÊTA was really created on a distance, and much is still.

Music, lyrics, songwriting – this is quite much to do for a duo. Which one of you is contributing in which way and how do you two work together?
This has always been a difficult question to answer. Early on it was more divided, but the longer we collaborate, the blurrier that line gets – as we both want to take creative part in everything. Usually even if one of us writes a melody/riff, or even the tempo and outlines of a song – the other person will say “no, not like that – we have to do it like this”. So to put it lightly, we have a lot of creative differences. Working together has proven to have its challenges. But it also means that we challenge each other to question every decision we make. We usually develop song melodies and chords in a back and forth type of collaboration style, rather than finishing the music and then writing the vocal melodies afterwards. Quite naturally though, Ândris takes a larger portion of the instrumental side as I do melodies, choirs and lyrics.

Your bandname NOÊTA derives from Greek philosophy and describes the concept of cosmic thoughts existing without someone thinking them. Why did you name your musical project after this concept?
‘Noêta’ holds many (slightly) different meanings depending on where you look. Even as late as the 1700’s, Kant used the word ‘noêta’ in his writings, and not so differently from Parmenides, who defined the ‘nous’ to be our awareness, and then described the ‘noêta’ as a universal nous, an unchangeable, indestructible one. But he also spoke about the ‘noêta’ as a conservation of energy – the nous is an energy that cannot be created nor destroyed. These concepts together captured the search and wonder that the music is about. Because, NOÊTAs core conceptually and lyrically has always been a struggle to understand this consciousness, how this mechanism of self contemplation is possible and where it comes from, as well as the questions around the validity of sense perception, and the essence of awareness itself (you can for instance hear this on our song “Urkaos”, very clearly). Lyrically this was present in our EP too, especially on the song „Psykhē“.

How can we imagine these thoughts and in which way would they affect us humans?
We use the greek philosophies and words like ‘noêta’ as ways to describe our areas of focus or exploration (in consciousness, thoughts, truth, reason etc), rather than to present any clear answers. Contemplation of the psyche, searching for empirical truth or losing oneself in introspection, these sort of questions that we aim to project, have dominated mankind for much of our written history. Religion, philosophy, and psychology are examples of fields that have originated from mankind’s predisposition to ask those questions, of mind and truth.

Your EP „psykhē“ also seems to be lyrically centered around Greek philosophy. How did you get in touch with this subject and what fascinates you about it?
Turning to philosophy was, perhaps, to find some direction in the nature of my own behaviour and to make some sense of a subjective life experience. Sometimes reading philosophy can help you gain much needed perspective. The greeks were in many ways conceptual progenitors to modern philosophers, which is indeed fascinating.

Now, moving on to your latest album „Beyond Life And Death“. The songs are conceptually divided into three parts: starting with emotions, we later on face anxiety and resignation until we finally get to accept the coldness of nature. What inspired you to create this concept?
We defined three emotional states we wanted to communicate, thoughts and issues that were also current in my personal life at the time. In addition to that we had purely musical moods we needed to convey, so it really happened quite naturally, as those emotions, suited those soundscapes we wanted to project.

Just like philosophy the lyrics are quite vague and abstract. Can they be understood as a journey towards cognition?
Absolutely, or as we prefer to call it, “an accompaniment to introspection”.

Apart from their lyrics, where do you spot the differences between „psykhē“ and „Beyond Life And Death“?
„psykhē“ is without a doubt a lot more desperate and fragile, the soundscape has a brittle, but close atmosphere, whereas the album is more distant and apathetic, but at the same time almost hypnotic. The album is transcending beyond physical anxiety and tangible things that the EP in a sense represents.

Your music is really varied, every song sounds different. While „Beyond Life“ solely consists of dark singing and sparse percussion, „In Void“ features mysterious acoustic guitars and the melancholic „Dead Soil“ is filled with soft electric guitars. How do you decide, which song or section needs which kind of instrumentation?
It depends a lot of the process of the song, how the song was made and what our connections or ties are to it. Sometimes we work really hard to get a song to sound the way we feel it should, and other times songs falls into place through experimentation. That will then affect how we chose to finalize the songwriting. Sometimes we don’t know until we do. „In Thunder“ and „Urkaos“ were written in 2013, but we didn’t know how to finish them for almost 3 years. Sometimes you are forced to gather new perspective.

Is there a certain song that you would consider to be the turning point of the album?
We worked with the album as to have two turning points, which bridge the different parts. But personally, both „In Thunder“ and „Urkaos“ are something of their own nature, so they will always stand out to us.

Especially „Darkest Desires“ seems to set itself apart from the other tracks, the vocals are a lot more tangible and the track as a whole sounds quite sensual. Why is that so?
It’s a, for us, unusually raw song. It started with the lyrics, which were meant to describe this idea of life’s meaning being distilled down to a mere need for reproduction. It’s the one thing all living things strive for. Survival of their race, reproduction. It describes this desperate seeking for unity, to feed a missing inner piece, but also the boundaries between violence and love, as well as a shift in dominance of normative sexual roles. Due to that the song was crafted differently than all the other songs, to fit this, for us, unusual topic. The breathing feels near with a distant heartbeat. We left the vocals unmixed, except for some analogue compression while recording, same goes for some of the guitars. It’s our only song of that nature, which is why it stands out from the rest in regards to its sound.

On the album’s artwork we see a human torso. Considering the colors and the point of view, the picture seems to be sort of morbid or lifeless. What can you tell us about the artwork and in which way does it reflect the lyrics?
We wanted an esthetic representation of this lost perception of self. The surreal nature of self contemplation, and the anxiety as a result of the incapacity to find empirical answers. Like being lost in limbo.

The album was released on Prophecy Productions, which is known for releasing exceptional music. How did you get in touch with the label?
I found them while exploring new music, sent them our music and so our collaboration began.

What have you got planned next for NOÊTA?
Playing live, as well as continue working on new material for the next release.

We are reaching the end of our interview. At last I’d like to ask you to take part in our traditional Metal1.info-Brainstorming:
Spirituality: Is a very loose term.
Sweden: A lot better to reside in than most countries. We are lucky.
Prophecy Fest: The ideal choice of a festival venue.
Life – Death: …are man made definitions of a beginning and end, whereas reality really consists of constant cycles.
Refugee Crisis: A very complicated issue.
Darkher – „Realms“: Songs that flows together nicely.
NOÊTA in five years: Completely different.

Great, thanks again for doing this interview with us. The last words shall be yours:
Thank you as well!

Publiziert am 27. März 2017 von Stephan Rajchl