Hi! Waldgeflüster is Solo-project I started in 2005. The first demo "Stimmen im Wind” (Voices in the wind) was released one year later. Afterwards I started working on the debut record "Herbstklagen”, which was released in 2009. In the meantime I found some live musicians and we played our first concert back in 2007. The line-up changed over the years but I think I've found a pretty stable lineup which hopefully can present itself at more gigs in the near future. For the new record "Femundsmarka” I was joined by my brother P. with whom I wrote the whole album. Started as a Black/Pagan Metal Band, you now can hear some new influences like Post-Rock on this record, although Waldgeflüster will probably always be based in Black Metal.  

The show was great. It was a very special evening for us, celebrating almost two years of work with friends and fans and we had a lot of fun. As a special the live line-up was joined by my brother who handled the additional vocals and guitars in "Fichtenhain”. Although he wrote and played half of the record in the studio, he normally is not with us on stage. Additionally, the Vienna crowd was awesome and really supported us. So this was a great experience for all of us. 

I have to correct you, this time the photos were not made by me alone, but also by my brother. But none of us has some artistic background, we just took a lot of pictures and some turned out to be really good. But I studied media technologies at a Fachhoch Schule, a small part of these studies was photography and image editing. Though I'm pretty much clueless when it comes to photography my Photoshop skills have improved over the last years, therefore it's now way easier for me to create our artwork independently. I think what differs us from some of the other Underground Black Metal releases is that artwork is really important to us. We put a lot of effort in the artwork for Femundsmarka, an effort which hopefully won't go unnoticed.

I wouldn’t agree that it can make or break an album. After all it is about the music not the pictures. But for me artwork is very important, you can somehow "see” how much work someone put into a release. Some of the underground bands don’t put any effort in their design and this is a shame, sometimes the word "loveless” comes into mind. I see an album as a package, and I will work on every detail until I love it and I am proud of it as a whole.  

The logo was designed by Freakly Art Design.

Actually I only play the guitar. I started this instrument about 15 years ago, never really mastered it and always trying to improve. Bass I started to play just recently, and it is almost the same as playing the guitar, so that doesn’t count. I have an idea what is possible and how to play it on the drums and the piano, but I can’t really play them. It’s enough for writing although. My brother learned Keyboard when he was young and played it for some years, also in my other band Scarcross back then. He started with the guitar just about two years ago, and he became really good in this short time. He also knows what to do with the drum sticks, better than me, but he is no real drummer as well. I would really like to learn piano and a bit drums. I am sometimes working on some electronic music and it would be really helpful to know more about these instruments. But we will see if I ever realize this plan. 

There is no real plan in my mind right now. This depends solely on the specific song, its mood, what I want to say with it. But I have some ideas that could be interesting. A violin or a mandolin could be possible, and maybe I will add some electronic stuff to Waldgeflüster sometimes, like a beat or something like that. We will see. 

I enjoy a lot of different musical styles, such Black Metal, Post-Rock, Electro, Folk… There is so much music to discover. Right now I’m really impressed by "The Swell Season”, the new "Woods of Desolation”, "Subheim”. The last "Primordial” and "Aaskereia” were pretty ok. "Katatonia” are one of my alltime favorites. Concering Drudkh and Odal, I like almost every release of both, but Odal’s "Wilde Kraft” and Drudkh’s "Blood in our Wells”, especially the song "Furrow of the Gods” are just epic. 

This is always so difficult to answer…Katatonia’s "Night is the new Day” is one of the best written records ever in my opinion. I will just list some records I also really enjoyed: Austere – To lay like old Ashes, Nocte Obducta – Nektar I, The Tallest Man on Earth – Wild Hunt, Wolves in the throne Room – Two Hunters, Agalloch – Ashes against the Grain, to name just a few.

I gather inspiration from my personal life. Almost all Waldgeflüster songs cover some real personal topics. Additionally I am inspired by nature, by the pictures nature is able to evoke in my mind. But one of the most important inspirations is music. All the music I hear is somehow treated in my own, music is the most important part of my life to me. 

We will hopefully play some gigs this year, but only two are confirmed until now: on July 22th at the Bavarian Battle Open Air near Rosenheim, and on August 2th at the Free and Easy Festival in Munich. Concerning new releases, a friend of mine and I just started to talk about a real special Split EP. But we are just at the beginning, so I can’t tell you more at this point. Just this much: I am really looking forward to work together with this great musician and friend on this "kinda-more-than-a-split”-EP. I hope it will all work out as we plan it right now.  

Panopticon…

To be honest I prefer the CD. It is practical and I like the sound of it more than the noise of some vinyls. I know some will cry out now, but that is allright. This doesn’t mean that I have none of the other mediums at my home, there are enough, and there is still the plan to release "Herbstklagen” as Vinyl. Vinyl is a beautiful medium, and I hope to perhaps find a label that will release Femundsmarka on Vinyl as well. But I prefer the CD because of it’s advantages.

Concerning real literature I will have to go with Goethe’s "Faust”. One of the greatest written piece of all time, linguistically and with regards to the content, in my opinion. Concerning a book to entertain, to just read and being pulled in another world, it would be Robert Jordan’s "The Wheel of Time” series.

Femundsmarka is a concept album about a trekking journey my brother and I did in 2009. We traveled through the Femundsmarka natural park in Norway by foot, with a tent, some stuff to eat and not much more. This was such an inspiring experience that we decided to treat it musically, to handle all the feelings and impressions we got there. The record deals with real parts of our journey, with the fields of stones we crossed in "Steinwüsten”, or our mixed feelings when the journey neared its end in "Fichtenhain”. Every song deals with a different aspect of our voyage, Seenland is about the beginning, it’s about the joyful moments, the wonderful feeling of  beginnings in general. Steinwüsten covers the darker days, when we were tired, when we had to fight to move on, because feet and mind wanted to lay down and rest. As mentioned above, Fichtenhain is mostly about our mixed feelings at the end: joy to finally reach the end and having accomplished something difficult against the sadness of having to let go of this beautiful place. All songs also treat with some of the lessons we learned on this journey, lessons about ourselves, about life.

I think Fichtenhain was the song we enjoyed the most. At the beginning this one was the toughest, we had no idea how to accomplish our goal, everything was mixed up and difficult. But after some time, this song developed, and it became very easy to write it, when we knew which direction it had to take. We then worked really hard on the details, and now it is the most thought-out song on the record, every detail has its meaning and place.

Thank you so much for your support and this interesting interview! We hope we can take some of the readers along on our journey through the lakes, stones and woods of Femundsmarka and inspire them to make an experience like this for themselves! 

Thanks for your time

Links 

Facebook:  http://www.facebook.com/BlackMetalWaldgefluester

Official:  http://www.waldgefluester.com

Interview by: A schrijver

July 2011