Interview with Tot Licht
http://www.myspace.com/totlicht
Bars-Ursula: Your group has formed in 2006. Tell about that time for group. In what atmosphere the collective was created? Why You have decided to play such music?
Tot Licht: Tot Licht’s foundations have been formed thanks to a chance meeting in 2005, born from our common passion for horror films, gothic art and decadent poetry, moreover from the implied passion for all the 80s dark sounds which range from gothic to post punk, gothabilly, new wave, techno pop, batcave. At the beginning of 2006 we tried to play together and we loved the result, so we started to devote ourselves to our project with body and soul. We started to play this genre because it’s the only one we can really do, since it’s the mirror of our souls. These three years of activity haven’t been a cakewalk because of our personal engagements, but the time we’ve been spending together has made us like two brothers!
Bars-Ursula: «In Fear of The Light» – not the unique release of group, could You tell in more details about two others relizes. Whether there were they on any label? What about their concept? And what main thing in your opinion difference “In Fear of The Light” from them?
Tot Licht: In Fear of the Light is the first full length of our band whereas Tot Licht and In the Dead
Light are two demos fruit of a first approach to the music, maybe sometimes wild, but with these demos we’ve completely expressed our most introverted feelings. We think that In Fear of the Light is Tot Licht’s most mature and various work both in the sonority and in the lyrics and maybe it’s less experimental than the other two previous.
Bars-Ursula: In this case, tell us about the lyrical part of Tot Licht. What does lyrics mean for you? What gives you the sorts of inspiration?
Lou Rumble: The lyrics draw theirs inspiration from personal experiences and horror films, from books and from life itself, for what concerns me.
Lover Morkt: Lou writes most of the lyrics, in the ones I write I tell about whatever obsesses me, about my fears or I try to describe the mood I can’t hold back.
Bars-Ursula: There are two members of the band marked on your disc cover, but there is one more member, Valery Morkt , Female back-vocal, mentioned on your MySpace page and we can hear her voice on «In The Fear of The Light». Is she an equal member of the band? How important is she in the creation of your music?
Lover Morkt: Valery is a vocalizer but all the voice lines are made by Lou Rumble. We’re thinking about removing the female voice, perhaps for a period or forever, we’ll see. However, we thank her for her participation in recording.
Bars-Ursula: The only one of you composes the music. Tell us, what instruments, programs do you use? How do you manage to create such minimal and very atmospheric sound simultaneously, if it isn’t a secret? How do you give performances with this staff? Is there any need in the help of other temporary musicians?
Lover Morkt: I use a synthesizer and a sound programme of synth and drum machine, then I employ my beloved bass, but I use the guitar to produce effects, my favourite guitarist is Daniel Ash and I’m obsessed by the sound he succeeded in creating in the famous track Bela Lugosi’s Dead. So I employ my guitar trying to merge it as much as I can and to make it part of the musical atmosphere.
For what concerns the sound I create, I just try to find the best atmosphere for our lyrics, trying to identify myself with them or turning some of my feelings into music. Sometimes Lou Rumble reads me one of his lyrics while he describes me the atmosphere he would like to call up, and I get down to work: obviously I consider Lou’s opinion as well and if he has an input to give me I always try to pick it.
In live performances I prefer to play my bass because it makes me feel more in contact with the music and freer in movements, Lou is the voice and my PC gives the bases!
Bars-Ursula: Tell us, about your live performances? Whom would you like to perfume on the same stage with? Where would you like to perform, what country, place?
Tot Licht: Frankly our live performances aren’t regularly because of our jobs but we are trying to organize ourselves to perform more times and we’d like to so much playing out of Italy to travel and meet new people.
Bars-Ursula: Your album can be found on the web-page of the Zorch-records. How did you get acquainted with Manu?
Lover Morkt: I’ve read about his band on a French fanzine, A Gore Hurlant, afterwards I read about Zorch Factory on Ascension Magazine in an interview done with Manu, then I understood at once that he’s an approachable person truly interested in music, and the rest came by messages exchanged on MySpace.
Bars-Ursula: Nowadays many bands, even such commercially successful as NIN, Radiohead, spread theirs records in Internet. What do you think about it? The future is in such web-labels as Zorch records even in the underground world, don’t you think?
Lover Morkt: We think that the future will be that, but in our opinion a true fan must have CD, CD are things that remain and last for a long time: they contain lyrics, sleeve and buying those gratifies the hearer and the band. But net labels like Zorch are a great device to become known, especially for self-produced bands like ours that aren’t able to produce a huge number of CDs and have trouble in finding contacts.
Bars-Ursula: You indicate your stile as darkwave, but your music is very close in features and atmospherically to post-punk/ batcave. How do you obtain this? Are there still darkwave in your music or you play high-quality experimental music, with the roots in old school gothic?
Lou Rumble: Our music is darkwave with all the influences of background, even if the simple definition of darkwave is tightened to me. We are a band that likes to attempt and express various feelings and this makes us produce tracks which wander from common darkwave.
Lover Morkt: I agree, the approach to the music is darkwave, but there are various influences and we often stray to other genres, we like to experiment and we always try to do new things, keeping our personal style and giving our brand to the tracks.
Bars-Ursula: Do you think the modern darkwave is in the dead end now? All the German bands, appearing like copies of something like Das Ich, Sopor Aeternus, are sooner only images with the loud signboard “Gothic”. Is it just an exploitation of this term and making money?
Lover Morkt: I think that all the ties with the past are lost now, the bands you mentioned have a strong bond with the past and I admire them, but so many people and groups start now wanting to be like them, without having bases and losing the ties with the true gothic.
Lou Rumble: Everyone lives it the way he wants, I think that music is life and I don’t dare to judge, each of us does what he wants and has his personal ideas about music.
Bars-Ursula: Italian darkwave is world-wide famous thanks to The Frozen Autumn. How do you treat them? Also, our zine’s editors and readers highly evaluate such Italian bands as Il Giardino Violetto, Bohemien, Chants Of Maldaror, Le Vene di Lucretia… What do you think about them? Are there any unity in the Italian scene?
Tot Licht: You have mentioned great bands that we hold in high esteem, there is unity in Italy but we think that it could be better because people are too much linked to their own region.
Bars-Ursula: Northern and southern Italy differ much historically, economically and politically. Are there any great difference between the life in this two regions nowadays? Is it reflected in the regional music?
Tot Licht: Yes, there are big differences, a band like ours finds it difficult to stand out in the southern region of Italy, in some south towns they are still suspicious of gothic and we are talking about that consciously because we used to live in the south and now we live in the north!
Bars-Ursula: We know about the awful earthquakes in Italy recently. Please take our condolences to all Italians and the victims. Would you like to say something about that events?
Tot Licht: We are with our fellow countrymen and women in their sorrow
Bars-Ursula: There are a very strong influence of the catholic church in Italy. Is it reflected in the foundation of stupid stereotypes about youth subcultures? (In Russia we have thanks to the orthodox church a law, forbidding to wear gothic, football-fan’s , emo attributes. Gothic subculture became equal to extremism).
Lover Morkt: Yes, there are some stereotypes, but I think that they are everywhere. I’m sorrow for your situation in Russia, I just can say that anyway who feels and decides to wear goth knows it’s a hard way and knows he will draw on himself judgements and looks.
Bars-Ursula: There are a very strong influence of the catholic church in Italy. Is it reflected in the foundation of stupid stereotypes about youth subcultures? (In Russia we have thanks to the orthodox church a law, forbidding to wear gothic, football-fan’s , emo attributes. Gothic subculture became equal to extremism).
Lover Morkt: Yes, there are some stereotypes, but I think that they are everywhere. I’m sorrow for your situation in Russia, I just can say that anyway who feels and decides to wear goth knows it’s a hard way and knows he will draw on himself judgements and looks.
Lou Rumble: Of course the Church has a huge influence. There are also extremist followers and I think that’s not good, like all the extremes.
Bars-Ursula: What is your personal opinion to the catholic church? I think, The church in Italy even nowadays deals not only with the businesses of religion. I know, in Italy there is a blocked law by socialists about the abortion legalization (it is blocked by that social institute which is to blame for inquisition victims, witch hunt, religious wars, supporting Italian and German fascists during the World War II). And how do you treat the question of the abortion legalization?
Lover Morkt: I’m against any religious institution, I think that priests, who don’t have children and wives, cannot tell people how to behave in their sentimental life and how to bring their children up. Here abortion is allowed, but before doing that women are obliged to go to some courses where everything that may dissuade them is done.
Lou Rumble: Everyone has the ideals he wants. The freedom of each person finishes where the one of another person starts! I am a believer but I dissociate myself from the catholic outlook on that: I completely agree with the abortion legalization and I am a supporter of it, I think that each one of us has the right to choose if he wants a child or not and none can decide for the others, because that’s an inviolable right.
Bars-Ursula: Do You have any interests, besides Your music? Have you ever wanted to try yourself in other music styles? Or to create other projects?
Lover Morkt: I have a great passion for horror movies from 30s to 90s, I like reading horror an philosophy book, and goth fanzines, but I also love buying e listening to CDs.
Lou Rumble: Since I’ve been playing in Tot Licht I had no other bands or projects, I’m very busy and satisfied of it.
I adore horror movies from 50s to 70s as well, I also like drawing and recently creating and modify photos on the computer too. I also have a one-man band that plays primitive rockabilly called Billy Storm.
Bars-Ursula: And your final words…
Tot Licht: Thank you so much for this article and the support for the goth heart, we are so sad because this interview is end! We invite everyone to listen to our CD on www.zorchfactoryrecords.com And on www.myspace.com/totlicht, or write to lovermorkt@libero.it. A warm embrace to everyone and stay goth!
Questions: Vadim ‘Bars-Ursula’ Barsov
“Grave Jibes Fanzine”
