Extract of Interview in Zillo magazine, 2003 Germany

Interviewer: Elmar Klemm for www.zillo.de

The first song gives the album a very heavy beginning.

Yes. ‘The Throng on the Pier’ refers not only to Homer but also to Dante’s Inferno. Metaphorically, with wars and massacres of the past century, souls awaiting the Ferryman have been too great in number for one boat. So instead they are calling for trains! Imagine: ghost-trains coming up from the underworld, to bear the dead to Hades? I was also trying to get inside the vision of the Assassin: “Deliver the boon of eternal life” … a summoning, a conviction, a promise.

Alabaster shows Louisa’s fairy-music from different points. It seems, that your Europe-Travel has really influenced your work. For example ‘The Seventh Ingress’, which you improvised with Stoa in Halle. I remember your Shortstory The Valley of the seven Keys. Is this Song the sequel?

You are ahead by a few hundred valleys … in the studio of Olaf Parusel, he was standing at his keyboard near the window; my eyes traced the grim, romantic pre-war stone buildings and skies of Halle. Another part of my heart was still with musicians of Love Sessions. At the same time I was missing my husband faraway in Australia, thinking how precious every moment is.

‘Me and the Machine’: Not only the title doesn’t fit to your filigree emotional world, most surprise are the powerful arrangements somewhere between The Cure and U2.

Thanks! Perhaps there is suppressed emotion, pinned under metallic prohibitions: No handwriting allowed! No secret letters! etc. We were also thinking of Gurdjieff’s notion that many humans are sleeping machines … a metaphor for basic forms: mammal, breeding engine, consumer. Brett introduced loud speakers to create an impression of a society that shouts orders, herding humanity into economic units.

The final ‘Dancing over Acheron’ goes one Step further: catchy electronic melodies beneath hard and technoid dancefloor-beats presents you from a totally other side.

Ironic, too: my husband wrote it, yet he’d sooner die than hit a dance-floor … Brett Taylor cut loose on the electronics – with our approval, we were curious – so I cannot take any credit for the production. I enjoyed singing my little part.

In ‘Approaching the Island of Sirens’ you return to your origin mystically style with it’s mythological contents. A very interesting journey.

Thanks, Elmar. The Sirens were set to the soundscape of Oophoi (Gianluigi Gasparetti). We’ll record more in his castle on the way through Italy … Following up your recommendation in our first interview for Zillo magazine (issue 09/2001): you asked if I were familiar with Hagalaz Runedance, project of Nebel: I now have 2 wonderful albums by her and we’ve been in touch.