Wraipe
Aurora Interview
by Mark Hensch
.
Mark Hensch rakes enigmatic duo Wraipe
Aurora over the coals about their punishing, snuff film worthy soundtracks!
ThrashPit: First things first. Think
you could give the readers at home unfamiliar with your band a brief yet
definitive history of who Wraipe Aurora is, what it stands for, and why
you felt compelled to disrupt the goodness of the world with your dark,
malevolent evil?
Wraipe Aurora: Well, quite simply
we are the embodiment of emotion, despondency, isolation, decay and pain.
Aurora comes from a background of noise, ambience and industrial music,
whilst I come from a background of black metal, dark ambience and black
noise.
We were both disappointed with the stale
movement in both of our genres of interest and were sick to death of one
man bedroom acts putting together 50 minute releases of synth done on a
computer and calling it art. We want to distance ourselves from our pasts
whilst still retaining some of the key notions that bought us to those
genres to begin with.
Wraipe Aurora therefore, is our own journey
through personal noise soundscapes, entwined with reeds, roots and emotions
alike.
TP: Some say inspiration knows no bounds,
and in a genre like noise (which is essentially a key factor to your sound,
and entirely boundless as it can be anything a person can hear), where
do you draw forth the twisted hellscapes present on your various releases?
WA: All come from inside. When we
cannot be sure on the world around us, religion, faith, etc then all you
can be sure of is the way they have effect you. Therefore emotions are
the key kind of starting point. Where we go from there depends entirely
on the kind of emotion and this is why we are Wraipe Aurora and nothing
else. Everything we display is us in its entirety, we don't do side-projects
to express another angle of our sound, this music is us, it encompasses
who we are and what we feel completely. Again, this is why I agree with
statements like the boundlessness of the noise genre as a whole.
TP: In the few tracks I've been fortunate
enough to hear, I've hear everything from flocks of scavenger birds, sick
men coughing up lungs, and beasts that gargle and gurgle in the pits of
Hell. How do you artists use the studio to capture or create such distinct
assaults on the auditory sense?
WA: Most of the sounds you hear
are done by myself and Aurora. The coughs (especially in the earlier material,
which was a lot more painful) and general vocals are done by myself, whilst
Aurora recorded the recent storms in the UK and the crows you hear in one
song. There are other samples, but they are all organic, in that they were
created by us and not downloaded from the internet like so many other projects
we tire of.
TP: Like most bands with a definite
noise/ambient/soundscape influence, a wide variety of other band's styles
are probably weaved into your own sonic tapestry. What other bands impress
Wraipe Aurora and drive you to be inspired and create the music you do?
WA: Our influences are wide and
far between. It's not so much original bands that inspired us to do what
we are doing, but the lack of inspirational bands. We do of course take
influence from Black Metal, Noise, Dark Ambience, Industrial and some less
well known acts and more personal trips through the lands of noise have
helped us to arrive at this point, which has held strong for the last 3/4
years.
TP: There is an age old idea that Britain
is a dreary place. Seeing as you are residents of the United Kingdom, how
do you feel living in the United Kingdom contributes to your band's thematics
and general atmospheres?
WA: The atmosphere hear at anyone
time is drab, wet, dismal. All the things the rest of the world associates
with British people. The history is violent, unrelenting and extremely
dark. The people are all against each other, there is no sense of 'help'
and people rarely smile. It makes us feel like misanthropes (although we
ourselves acknowledge the hypocrisy in the very definition of a misanthrope),
for lack of a better word. It does therefore inspire us greatly to look
inwards more. It's rare to find an individual you can work with so well,
which is why Wraipe Aurora stands and remains a two person project.
On the whole though, living in the UK has
provided us with an excellent source of influence and an endless pit of
mythology which we can envelope in our sounds atmosphere.
TP: Creating the soundscapes present
on your albums would certainly be an immense challenge in a live setting.
Have Wraipe Aurora considered manifesting themselves in this particular
arena?
WA: We have done at times small
live performances infront of close members of Churchfall (the collective
and distro - www.churchfall.co.nr), whereby the numbers never exceeded
the 10 mark and each was encouraged to add their own voice/mark on the
preceedings. Each of those live performances were recorded and released
as a rehearsal to the members of Churchfall only. It was of course quite
hard to lug a piano, 2/3 guitars, 7/8 mics, a chello, many amps and all
the other instruments present to create anything worthwhile sounding in
such a small space (our Cellar - where we regularly record in the much
the typified way, peeling paint, bare walls, cold brick floors, no light
through the sooty window, etc). But to an extent all of our releases have
been recorded 'live' in one take (with the exception of one or two of the
longer tracks).
TP: Seeing as the majority of your music
lacks traditional vocals, what sort of message or feelings do you hope
listeners get from your work?
WA: We do not publish the lyrics
in our releases, but in upcoming releases we will publish text and verse
to accompany the release. Again, the message is solely based on emotion
and isolation. If the listener can feel the emotion (and the right emotion,
which shifts from track to track) then that is enough, from there they
can take what they want from our music.
TP: What is the worst nightmare you've
ever had?
WA: Avoiding the typical clichés
of "I live in a nightmare, day by day I see the human turds walking the
earth, filthy, infested" etc. (which we completely tire of). I'd say a
recurrent one I had a few years ago where I would cut my flesh with a blade,
which wouldn't stop cutting. Eventually, limbs fell of and such and then
I would start cutting my neck, which is around the time I woke up.
TP: You maintain your music is influenced
heavily by black metal. With this in mind, how do you see Wraipe Aurora
in the cannon of black metal tradition? Is this the sound of pure evil,
or are you attempting to spread Satanic/Pagan imagery via your soundscapes?
WA: Whilst we hold allegiances with
many satanic bands and projects, we are not religious ourselves. We are
not traditional Black Metal, rather something that comes after Black Metal,
where the closed circle notions are taken to create something that does
(we hope) disturb again and does provoke anxiety. We are far removed from
the Black Metal sound, but the beliefs and ideas are still there. Anti-Christianity
(but not pro-satanism, which is hypocritical and idiotic), pain, suffering,
etc. All the world has taught us really.
TP: If given the chance to say whatever
you want to the entire world (and in a sense, here you are!) what would
you like to say to sum up everything that is Wraipe Aurora, past, present,
or future?
WA: Your birth and your death. Music
is eternal, you are not. Your musical taste will define your entire existence
and how you are remembered.
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