Interview by: Angela Ambrose

The Journey To “The Obsession”: Creating A Focused Sound

Congratulations on your brand new release of “The Obsession”. I had the chance to listen to it recently, and it’s just like this really interesting mix of many different influences from, kind of your past work that you’ve done, but also like new things that fans have never heard before. How do you feel the recording went overall?
“Oh, I’m very happy with how everything went. Like two years ago, I think around the release of “Tales From Six Feet Under Vol II”, I realized that I didn’t want my next album to be another compilation of songs that I made by myself with digital instruments in the basement. I thought: “I want to make a traditional album effort again” where the songs get more than a month, where I replace the digital instruments with musicians, and where I try to make an album that is more focused in terms of sound and thematic. I’m really excited with how it came together. I’m really happy with the work of everyone involved on this album. The band was absolutely amazing, and my other collaborators as well.”Your band lineup was quite familiar to fans of the former Delain lineup. How did it feel to continue working with them?
“Absolutely wonderful! We never really separated in personal terms. We always kept in touch and hung out. But we reconnected musically when I did a few shows performing the material from “Tales From Six Feet Under” and “Tales From Six Feet Under Vol II”. It was so lovely to be on the stage together again and to be sharing that musical synergy that we have. Then to bring that to a next level by involving them in these recordings… to see how invested everyone was in the material. Not just when it comes to performing their respective parts. Timo (Somers), for example, was very involved in the rearrangements of the songs, taking midi guitar parts and making them into these huge guitar arrangements. But also getting the songs ready for band recordings. I feel like everyone really put a lot of personality and heart into their performances. It was really nice to see how everyone kind of went above and beyond for the record, and to see them share that excitement that I had about the project.”

Collaborative Synergy

You’ve collaborated with Simone Simons and Alissa White-Gluz for this album, and they’ve been familiar faces in your work before. What brought you together with them, and how do you feel like that each of you complement each other?
“When it comes to “Dopamine” with Simone: this is a song about some side effects I was experiencing from a certain antidepressant that I was taking a while ago, and it was the very first time that I opened up about that. Simone actually reached out and she was like: “Hey, let’s chat”, and we hung out quite a bit after that, and we connected. We did some other collaborations, among which “The Sirens”, which we got to perform last week at their Symphonic Synergy shows, which is really awesome. We kind of connected over the subject matter of the song. When I put the first version of the song on Patreon, she expressed how much she liked the song. So I was like: “You know, if this ever gets to the record, it would be wonderful if it was a duet with her”.

When it comes to “Ode To The West Wind”, this was also really cool, because it is my fifth collaboration with Alissa. Four out of five are based on famous poetry, and I was working on this song “Ode To The West Wind”, based on the famous poem by Percy Shelley. I thought: “This would actually be such a nice continuation of our thematic series of collaborations”. I asked her if she wanted to join on the song, and we ended up recording it for the record. I really like the harmonies that she does in her clean vocals, but I also really enjoy the edge that she brought by adding her screams to it too. We also have a gospel choir, G-Roots, on “Praise”, which I also think was a really, really cool addition. I’m really happy that they made that happen. Phenomenal singers as well. Elienne Anemaat played cello on a number of songs, and Vikram Shankar made some wonderful key and orchestral arrangements as well. There were lots of pieces of the puzzle that fell into place on the record.”Your video for “Ode To The West Wind” was just released the other day. There are some obvious themes: being confronted by nature, environmentalism, and other contemporary issues. What was your intent or message behind it?
“The song or the poem itself is really about the author’s admiration for the incredible force of nature, but also about his own legacy on the world. For the video, we gave that a spin and made it about our legacy as humans on the natural world and it’s not pretty. So we did that by taking some famous paintings and sort of recreating them, putting ourselves in it, but then adding trash to it, adding our legacy to the natural world. It was difficult because I wanted us to use actual trash, because we’re not going to make more trash for the video, you know. So this is also very adamant, as there are some scenes with flowing plastic. We have to reuse the plastic, and at one point you have people come from different sides of the world: how are you going to do that in terms of travel? It is especially important when you want to tackle a theme like this, like you want to do that in your daily life, but it was something that we spend a lot of thought on. But yeah, we recreated the “Wanderer Above The Sea Of Fog” with trash, and we gave Raphael‘s “Cherubs” from the Sistine Madonna trash wings and covered them in tar. I think it’s a topic that you cannot be reminded of too much.”

Harnessing Creative Freedom

How has your creative approach changed in the past few years since diving into independent post-Delain projects? Have you found that this creative freedom allows you to explore different genres more freely?
“If you look at the previous records, that was really just me in the basement. I really like collaborating. So, it’s not like I feel this is always better, but in terms of how free you are to carry out an idea in your head from A to Z, without the chance of anyone saying: “I would do this differently”, especially for those albums, that was the case. And of course, on this album also, especially the writing phase was very, very similar to that. Then the collaborations happened in the second part. I totally get that the creative freedom is seen as a really great thing, but often it is paired with collaboration, kind of being like a thing that can limit how much of yourself you put into it. For this record, what I really felt is that the things that I wanted to put into it by collaborating with people that I worked with on the album became more the way I hoped they would become. I feel like that in this case, the collaboration didn’t take away anything from my personal ambitions, but added to it, which is a very nice experience. I’ve been experimenting and dipping my feet in all these different genres for the last couple of years, and I do return to a heavier sound. If you really ask me – and this is the question that I asked myself when I was making this record: “So, what is the music that you really want to make?” This is heavier again, but I do enjoy the fact that I’m still doing a song every month on Patreon, and I still feel like, if tomorrow I want to make like a fully electronic song, I will do so. If I want to make a folk song, I will do so. This is really nice, that sort of autonomy.”

How do you feel about using Patreon as a fan engagement platform? Do you feel like this is a future direction for other artists?
“I am obviously very excited about it, it has worked wonders for me. It has allowed me to remain a full time musician over my band splitting up, over the pandemic, over a lot of things that could have led to other outcomes if I would not have had the Patreon. I experienced a lot of support from it, on a financial level, but also just on a motivational level. Having such a wonderful community behind me, getting to celebrate, our wins together. It is absolutely lovely. For my previous two records I just had a distribution and a production deal, and now I have a full deal with Napalm Records again, and they are so supportive, it’s really wonderful. But I already started recording this album before I had signed with them, because I did not have to wait for a recording advance. I could just fund this album through Patreon, which gives you so much support, motivation, all of those good things. I know it’s not for everyone, and it does help if you have an audience to start with, it’s harder to build it up from scratch. But if it’s something that you know you enjoy doing, and if you also enjoy this community aspect, it can be wonderful for a lot of people.”It seems like a special way to maintain that connection, maybe more than traditional social media platforms like Instagram or Facebook.
“You can actually reach them, you’re not getting snowed under in an algorithm. And yeah, you can just reach out to people very directly. It’s very nice. I follow a lot of people on Patreon myself and I also enjoy the platform a lot as a consumer, so that helps.”

Hopes & Inspirations

What do you hope your fans will take away from “The Obsession”?
“On a very basic level, I just really hope they enjoy it. I think about the way that I connect to music, even if it’s just, you know, riding my bike with my headphones on, and having that extra spring in your step from something that you’re listening to. That would already make me very happy on another level. If people are maybe experiencing some challenges, like the ones that I’m also singing about on this record, and have some sort of form of relating to it, that also would be absolutely wonderful. I don’t think that you have to have the exact same challenges or fears or obsessions in order to enjoy the album. I think that fear is very universal, and especially at the end of this album with “Vigor And Valor”, which is about gathering yourself, your strength and your courage – a self-revolution. It is really about doing the thing, even if you’re scared. If it can nudge anyone through their fears, then that will be mindblowing!”Who are you currently listening to or inspired by?
“I’ve been listening a lot to Vola, which is fun because we’re going on tour with them. I’ve been listening to Chappell Roan a lot. I’ve also been listening to a lot of classical music… and Zeal & Ardor. I like their latest singles a lot.”

Is there anything you’d like to tell our readers?
“Yeah! We’re going on tour in Europe with Vola soon, so that’s really nice. I’m looking forward to seeing so many people on the road. And thank you for checking out “The Obsession”. I’m also still writing and releasing a song every month on Patreon, and there’s new music every month. If they like “The Obsession”, you can also go back and listen to where the songs came from, you know, because all of the first versions of the songs are on there as well. I just want to say thanks. I don’t take any of the interest for granted.” ■