I’m still very much haunted by the past: Interview with Kim Larsen (:Of The Wand & The Moon:)

We ve been plan­ning to inter­view dan­ish musi­cian Kim Larsen (:Of the Wand and the Moon:, Solanacae, White Cham­ber, ex-Sat­ur­nus etc) for quite a while since his cre­ations impress us much and «The Lone Descent» by :Of the Wand and the Moon: even took a spe­cial place in the inner playlist of our Deer Edi­tor.

Thanks to Arc­to Pro­mo who reg­u­lar­ly orga­nizes gigs of :Of The Wand and The Moon in Rus­sia we man­aged to con­tact Kim direct­ly right after his recent tour and had a brief yet excit­ing talk of his lat­est cre­ations – he’s been notice­ably active in 2016.

Larsen and co gave birth to two full length releas­es : togeth­er with Marc Liens he record­ed Nebel Ledel and also col­lab­o­rat­ed with Thomas Bøj­den for Vril Jäger project. More­over, by the end of the year Kim also pro­duced a sev­en inch sin­gle I called Your Name this time for his major project – Of the Wand and the Moon

To what extent does your music reflect your per­son­al expe­ri­ence? Sur­face analy­sis of the lega­cy of :Of The Wand & The Moon:, as well as your oth­er projects, such as Black Wreath, sug­gests that love sor­rows are an impor­tant source of inspi­ra­tion for your music.

The very name of your inge­nious album «The Lone Descent» res­onates with the name of our project (kataba­sia): descent to a per­son­al hell in order to rise, puri­fied or to stay there.

What inspires your cre­ativ­i­ty — spe­cif­ic emo­tion­al expe­ri­ence (if yes, are your songs addressed to some­one oth­er than lis­ten­er?), or the total sum of it, aggre­gat­ed into a gen­er­al­ized arche­typ­al image?

:Of The Wand & The Moon: is very per­son­al in it’s expres­sion. And there are lyrics that are very lit­er­al. Point­ing towards a spe­cif­ic per­son in that par­tic­u­lar moment in time or the dis­cour­age­ment of life in gen­er­al.

Then again some lyrics are done with artis­tic free­dom. And then again some lyrics that you would think are about some­one is about myself. Or turn out that way over time.

When I did the lat­est album “The Lone Descent” I thought that might be the last I ever did. Due to the very bad state I was in.

Does your music serve as a ther­a­py for you? When you fin­ish a song or an album, do you feel that cer­tain things relat­ed to it stop haunt­ing you?

I’m not real­ly sure. Maybe it is just Self-fla­gel­la­tion. Maybe when you expe­ri­ence intense sor­row it will exhaust and exor­cise with time.

Or maybe it’s both. Or maybe some things will stay with you for­ev­er. I’m still very much haunt­ed by the past.

Num­ber of your songs can be under­stood as a sort of mag­i­cal acts, dec­la­ra­tion of intent to man­i­fest your will — is this so?

Yes, per­haps more in the past. Nowa­days it’s just about how shit­ty I feel haha…

What do runes and rune mag­ic mean to you?

Prob­a­bly also meant more in my past than the present. At least I don’t read that much about these issues nowa­days.

But I still feel drawn to the runes, mag­ic and weird signs, in a per­son­al and intu­itive way. I love mean­ing­ful coin­ci­dences.

The two most fre­quent words in your lyrics are Love and Empti­ness. What do they mean for you?

Guess we all are look­ing for Love?

Empti­ness… That con­stant haunt­ing and pain of real­i­ties as we march on. Immer Vor­wärts. Towards the end.

«This machine kills shal­low­ness» (ref. note)

It would be very inter­est­ing to know how you con­ceive your own art. If you able to, please, describe with three words the most impor­tant projects, in which you par­tic­i­pat­ed (just your own asso­ci­a­tions and out­ward glance).

A bit dif­fi­cult request. But for the most impor­tant project for me; :Of The Wand & The Moon:

- Per­son­al
– Soli­tude
– Devo­tion

Les Chas­seurs de la Nuit
– old-school
– fun
– provo­ca­tion

Vril Jäger
– Para­noia
– UFO’s
– Shaman­is­tic

Solanaceae
– Nature
– Bon­fire
– Calm

White Cham­ber
– 80’s
– youth mem­o­ries
– movies

Sat­ur­nus
– Devo­tion (as it was my main focus for 5 years)
– Dis­s­a­point­ment
– Betray­al

Intros/outros of a num­ber of songs make an impres­sion that you like old films and the music of the first half of 20th cen­tu­ry, is it so? 

We won­der what is the ori­gin of speak­ing sam­ples in the Black Moth intro, and a speech sam­ple that is the refrain of Hol­low Upon Hol­low.

If the sam­ple fits the song I don’t real­ly care when it is from. But it is fun to find some­thing obscure and put it into a new con­text.

Those two sam­ples you men­tion I real­ly don’t know where they are from. It was on a tape of sam­ples that I got from my key­board­play­er. Which he got from a pre­vi­ous mem­ber of his band.

How­ev­er I believe the sam­ple on Hol­low Upon Hol­low is from some doc­u­men­tary about some prison inmates. The «When you’re smil­ing…» sam­ples is from some movie.

What are your artis­tic plans for the near­est time (the next year, for exam­ple)? We are wait­ing for the new WHITE CHAMBER release; will there be some­thing dras­ti­cal­ly new by :Of The Wand & The Moon: and oth­er projects?

Yes, the new White Cham­ber 7″ “Pale Tears” vinyl will be out as we are in Rus­sia I think, as well as a com­pi­la­tion of :Of The Wand & The Moon: songs in a more acoustic way on a 12″ vinyl called «Tunes For A Twi­light Tears For A Life­time». As always via Tesco Ger­many Dis­tri­b­u­tion.

At the moment I am work­ing on anoth­er :Of The Wand & The Moon: 7″ vinyl which has been par­tial­ly record­ed. And of course I am also work­ing on the next album.

Songs for the next Les Chas­seurs de la Nuit and Vril Jäger releas­es are also in the works. So things are on its way…eventually.

Last year you record­ed a Vril Jäger album togeth­er with Thomas Boj­den; this project oper­ates the con­cep­tions in the mold of Miguel Ser­ra­no and Sav­it­ri Devi. What is your own opin­ion on such ideas?

A: Well, the Vril Jäger con­cept is more in the vein of UFO con­spir­a­cy para­noia, celes­tial imagery and head-on weird­ness.

Miguel Ser­ra­no or Sav­it­ri Devi was not part of the inspi­ra­tion. I haven’t read any of that stuff.

The Euro­pean neo­folk com­mu­ni­ty is noto­ri­ous with its right-wing posi­tion; as its rep­re­sen­ta­tive, do you share this mind­set? Does your art reflect any events of the exter­nal world and the world pol­i­tics?

To be hon­est I have seen very few artists in the neo-folk scene that has a right-wing agen­da.

But I can only speak for myself. :Of The Wand & The Moon: is not a polit­i­cal project. Nei­ther do I have/or had any inter­est in mak­ing it so.
Be that right-wing or left-wing.

I know there are a lot of accu­sa­tions fly­ing around these days. Or rather I guess it has always been like this. I’m get­ting a bit weary of this to be hon­est.

I bet these peo­ple’s grand­par­ents were appalled by Elvis Pres­ley’s mov­ing hips and his dev­ils music.

And their par­ents were prob­a­bly in ter­ror of David Bowie’s, Throb­bing Gristle’s, Mar­i­lyn Man­son’s use of Oswald Mosley’s light­ning bolt logo.
And the punks use of the swasti­ka.

It’s like say­ing “Schindlers List” is a nazi movie because it por­trays that peri­od in time. Or lis­ten­ing to Wag­n­er makes you a nazi.

Peo­ple are so thin skinned. They should try to relax a bit in my opin­ion.

Are there any musi­cal dis­cov­er­ies, which you late­ly made? Actu­al­ly, what kind of music do you pre­fer at present?

Can’t real­ly think of much in par­tic­u­lar. I don’t real­ly keep up to date with music I must admit. Things that comes to mind though is “Anna von Hauss­wolff” and “Offer­mose” since they are my friends. Also recent­ly played with “Iron Sight”. Very nice pow­er elec­tron­ics.

I love 60s music, Ska, 80’s John Car­pen­ter kind of stuff. Like KVB. And all sorts of things that does­n’t come to mind now, haha.

This is not the first time you vis­it Rus­sia — did any­thing inter­est­ing hap­pen to you here, so you have some sto­ries to share?

Actu­al­ly I was in Rus­sia as long ago as in 1989 when I was young. And that of course was a very spe­cial expe­ri­ence. How­ev­er, our 5 date tour in 2010 with Arc­to Pro­mo was par­tic­u­lar mem­o­rable. Too many sto­ries to share here. But it is always spe­cial to be there. And I am Look­ing so much for­ward to wit­ness it again! See you soon!

Inter­view: M.S., Maya