The interview with Lacrimosa was delayed quite a bit due to problems with their luggage. But after these being solved, Tilo Wolff and Anne Nurmi were two extremely pleasant dialog partners. I’m pretty happy I got the chance to talk to the members of one my dearest bands and I’m glad you can’t hear the tremor in my voice when I asked the questions.
This is the first time we get the chance to talk to you, so I’d like to ask you how is the composition, the creation process going on in Lacrimosa.
TILO WOLFF: So far so good actually because it’s our life to create music, and because that’s the only moment when you can really one hundred percent open yourself and get your feelings into what you do. Therefore we are very excited on one hand to be right now in the studio to work on a new album, on the other hand to always have concerts and to interact with a crowd of fans, so it’s like you’re not so far away from everything, you’re in the middle of where it happens actually. That’s really nice.
ANNE NURMI: Going back to the mountain and write lyrics and start working in the studio again – that’s a lot of fun. So we get always new inspiration and the original feeling that the music is always coming back when we don’t lose the contact with the audience.
It’s only the two of you; how do you find musicians for the concerts?
TILO WOLFF: Well, it’s always depending. First to get somebody to get along with very well because especially when you’re on tour and you’re day and night together with those people they got to be people you like. Second, they got to be people that musical-wise are pretty much open-ranged. Because Lacrimosa is very various; we have very hard songs and songs that are very emotional, so they have to be musicians that can understand and play everything, from here to there. That’s how we try to get all our musicians together.
What does it take to have a good or really good concert?
TILO WOLFF: I think it’s gotta be the…
ANNE NURMI: … interaction between the audience and the band…
TILO WOLFF: Yes, there must be some energy coming from the audience to open the heart of the musicians. And when they can open themselves then it’s becoming kind of what you said – some kind of interaction. Problems? I’ve seen concerts where the audience was really into the band and the band was just playing their stuff and it was like completely boring and after a while the audience also got bored. The other way around also doesn’t work, when the band on stage is really into it and want to give something, and the audience is just standing there – that also doesn’t happen. So it’s gotta be an interaction.
On Lichtgestalt you worked with London Symphony Orchestra – how did that go and will you do it again?
TILO WOLFF: It’s always very interesting to work with people from a total different world, because they of course don’t know that kind of music you do; it was OK for us because the manager of the London Symphony Orchestra told us that some musicians are themselves Lacrimosa fans so it’s an honor for them to play with us, but still they are working in a totally different way. To bring that together is very interesting, of course. It’s absolutely a challenge, sometimes it works and sometimes not, but mostly we were very happy with the result so we could do it again.
From metal to symphonic and back, do you still consider Lacrimosa a metal band?
TILO WOLFF: We have lots of metal influences, of course, but I don’t know… We don’t think in those sounds; sometimes we do sounds that have nothing to do with metal and sometimes we did sounds that influenced the whole metal scene so much. I wouldn’t consider us only as metal band, but of course metal is one of the biggest influences in our music.
Tell me a bit about the DVD Lichtjahre.
TILO WOLFF: Well, that was kind of a dream I had to do – a movie about Lacrimosa being touring and we’ve been one and a half years filming us through Latin America, through all Europe and Asia. So the audience can see not only the band on stage, but also what happens before the band goes on stage, what happens afterwards when they are partying, what happens when they have problems with each other and whatsoever.
ANNE NURMI: And see how different fans in different countries are like, because people don’t know it.
About your influence on the metal scene, can you tell me if you listened to some bands that you influenced and you liked?
TILO WOLFF: Well, there are actually many. That we liked? Dreams of Sanity, Lacuna Coil, Therion somehow… Well, there are so many bands telling us they wouldn’t play in that kind of way if they hadn’t been listening to our music. So it’s always hard to say if this is now an influence or if it’s just because they are music fans. Many bands of course took some ideas from Lacrimosa and developed them further and that is also very interesting I think. Not to copy us, but to develop that further.
Anne, how does it feel to be a girl in metal world?
ANNE NURMI: It’s great. A lot of attention. There are just men around, it couldn’t be better.
What does the goth culture mean to you both?
TILO WOLFF: It’s a very strong influence, even though we have not so much in common with the development of the goth culture nowadays. We are both fans of old gothic bands like old Powerhouse and the lifestyle of that time, but not so much how it developed nowadays and that kind of stuff that is now understood as gothic has actually nothing to do with what we are. So the influence used to be big, but now it departed a bit.
One last question: last year was the Mozart Year – what did it mean to you?
TILO WOLFF: Well, for me every year is Mozart Year, so it didn’t make any difference.
Thank you very much. Have a nice time tonight and have fun.
2008, Metalfan.ro
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