Extract of Interview in Elegy Magazine, 2005 France

Interviewer(s): Yannick Blay and/or Alyz Tale for Elegy Magazine www.elegy.fr

Mark Krol seems to have participated to Ghost Fish. In what way ?

Mark wrote lyrics for ‘Skin Meadow’.

What are the main themes in Ghost Fish?

Consideration of these themes is like diving into seas of emotional contrast: isolation vs closeness; alienation vs community; parting vs reunion; exile vs acceptance … ghosts can be participants, or cohabitants, in what we call reality.

Ghost Fish differs a lot musically to your previous works…. It seems very much based on guitars & drums. It is rawer more rock. How do you explain?

Yes … no explanation, except to quote the poet Walt Whitman: “I contradict myself …”

A few specific words or anecdotes about ‘Cigar of the Red king’ / ‘The lonely King’?

“You won’t believe your cigar / When she tells you to roll”:

If Hades could smoke a cigar, I imagine he’d be rolling one in this studio … An underground cavern of concrete, with phantasmagoric red walls … a den for sleepy eccentrics …

And ‘Skin Meadow’?

Someone handed me an electric guitar and all this energy came in a rush … “Those legions of sleeping moons / Lay regions of a silver platoon: / Rain on pages, melting notions / Washing debris away … My skin meadow for you!” (Lyrics by Mark Krol)