Welcome to In Conversation, a special interview column on the site where we sit down with artists and dive deep into everything music. Natalia and Dobbin chatted to Forlorn about their most recent record Aether, including the inspirations for each track and their spiritual side.
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Nat: Throughout your history as a band, you have been mentioning how much your music is inspired by Midsommar movie and horror in general. How are you brining the horror elements into your debut album Aether?
Edd Kerton: The whole thing is kind of build like the ritual. We’re starting things off with a chant and then we’re leading into all these different elementals with other breaks in between as well, but there’s just one constant ritual type thing. The interludes are almost like songs in their own rights. Actually, I feel kind of dirty calling them interludes, because it’s not really giving them their due. I feel like they add so much to the film concept of the album. We kind of wanted there to be no comfortable breaks – they’re a little bit more stripped down and less intense than songs, but you’re still in the same place, like a constant slope of dread up until the end. Then there’s that nice release at the end of “Spirit”, then it loops you straight back into the start, and you’re good to go again.
Megan Jenkins: Three out of five of us are a big horror nerds. I think a lot of that kind of influence definitely comes from horror movies, particularly for Eathan [White-Aldworth]– he is thinking about concepts that incorporate the horror element into the band.
Edd: 100%, he knows his movies well. Meg and I are both big horror fans as well, but I think Ethan’s the king in the band.
Megan: Yeah, he watches more obscure stuff.
Dobbin: Especially on “Matrum Noctem”, where I feel like it’s all of you joining in that chant in the background ,and also on the “Keeper of the Well” – you’re all sort of involved and part of the ritual right?
Ed: Yeah, 100%. On “Mother of Moon” we’re all doing the chant together. Fun little Easter egg as well: if you listen closely after the big boom and that intro, there is sound like someone’s just shrieking uncontrollably. That was Meg and I just running around in sampler’s library in the dark, just shrieking, being absolute goblins. But all the guys are on the chants, they’re on at the end of “Keeper of the Well”, everyone kind of pulling into the fold.
Meg: “Matrum Noctem” was actually just looped – wasn’t it just looped sentences? I don’t think you guys were in that one, weren’t you?
Ed: No, but I think it works so well with just the layered textures of your voice, and the varying degrees of how you perform the lines. It’s great that you thought it was, you know, so many of us, but that one specifically its everything that Meg is capable of doing.
Dobbin: Megan, you practice Witchcraft, and I’m wondering what is the day-to-day of that? What kind of meaning does it have in your life and also, how does that play into the record in terms of forming it into a sort of ritual?
Megan: I was brought up around Witchcraft. My mum is a druid, so basically, from the age of about 13 to 14 I was interested, and I would go with her to events. We didn’t really call that Covenant, but a Grove with few other friends. I would attend ceremonies or meetups most weeks. As I kind of grew up, and I suppose started being interested in other parts of life: school, relationships, work, and whatnot, so I stopped practising. But for me to call myself a witch, that’s just part of who I am. It’s in my bones, it doesn’t matter if I don’t spend every single day doing something, like a spell or some kind of intention work. I did kind of step away from it a little bit, and then came back to it probably sort of in the last five years or so.
Megan: I think I’ve always been interested in many different parts of Witchcraft because there are so many different ways you can go with it. You could be into lunar magic, which is working with the phases of the Moon, or ancestral magic, which will be kind of working with your ancestors. There are so many different paths. But for me, I think the fact that I was, in one way or another, called to make a dry flower business – no one told me to do it, it just kind of happened – I think that’s when I realized that I identified as a green witch. I use plants, herbs, flowers and their properties to weave items from. My flower crowns, bouquets and the little intention vials that we’re going to be making on the spell crafting workshop at the Aether release event, it all ties in and then it just made sense to start bringing that element into the band, because it was something that felt authentic. It’s not just an aesthetic, it’s a genuine part of my life that just connected with music and what we’re writing about so well. As for what my day-to-day is like, I’ll often pull like an oracle card or a tarot card. Particularly at the moment, we’ve got so much going on as a band, you know, if there’s something that I want to know, or I’m struggling with, I’ll just grab my oracle cards, ask the question and what comes out, write it down. Often I do a little bit of breath work or grounding when I’m coming home from work and I’ve had a hectic day. I’ll just re-centre myself, which often helps. But even the simple act of thinking about something that you want to manifest into your life, and lighting your candle – that is magic. That’s accessible to everyone, and we probably don’t realize that we’re doing it half the time. I’m always out and about on walks too, identifying plants. If I see something, straight away I’ll get my phone out, get the identifying app out and I want to learn about it, and then the next thing I check is if I can dry it. If so – the plant is coming home!
Dobbin: Being ‘metal’ brings us towards darkness in some way, so what is the darkness that we’re considering on a sort of spiritual, ritualistic level within Forlorn? Where’s that coming from, in nature, in our lives?
Megan: I think that’s what the folk horror side of it brings to the table, because none of my practice is dark. That’s not something that I’ve dabbled with too much. I know people that do, certainly like to lean more towards the darker side with their practice. I’ve not kind of gone down that route yet, purely because I’m quite susceptible to a bad night’s sleep. I would say that those dark undertones are from the horror element within it. The folk horror-like atmospheric side rather than the spiritual.
Natalia: Is there any sort of folk creature or presence that is being embodied there or taken the inspiration from and weaved into this album?
Megan: Particularly in “Creaturess”, although all of the tracks interlink. They also have their own story and their own element that they’re aligned with. “Creaturess” is inspired by the ancient Norse deity Moder who, if you’ve watched film or read the book The Ritual, she appears in that. She kind of embodies this monster really. But the followers within the film, I suppose it’s like a cult – if they worship her, give themselves over to her, she will offer them eternal life and abundance. Then beyond that, we have “Veiled One” which is all about honouring The Cailleach, which is the Celtic goddess of winter, so it’s not just one kind of deity that’s venerated in this. Each track has got its own story.
Dobbin: On “Matrum Noctem”, one of the motifs of the lyrics is talking about the ‘wheel,’ especially the lyric “the wheel stops”. In a lot of the music and media I’ve seen that deals with a lot of natural themes, this idea of cycles and wheels comes up a lot. How does this play into “Matrum Noctem”?
Megan: You essentially have the pagan Wheel of the Year, which is split into the different sabbats – Beltane, Samhain, Yule or the Winter Solstice, Imbolc, and so on. Essentially some pagans and some witches will work quite closely with the Wheel of the Year. I would say, in my practice, I definitely do, particularly with Country Witch Floral the flower business – I create according to the season, or I will see what’s out and about and what can currently be foraged and dried. When we talk about the wheel stopping, we’re talking about what’s considered the death cycle, and that begins at Samhain – what people commonly know as Halloween – and goes right through until Imbolc, the very early spring. “Matrum Noctem” translates to the ‘Night of the Mother’, which you will hear in that song, but reversed. The Night of the Mother happens on the eve of the Winter Solstice. That was the time where people would honour their female ancestors with different celebrations, offerings, fires, that kind of thing. So that’s what “Matrum Noctem” means.
Dobbin: Jumping to the track “The Wailing”, that’s one that really feels like it’s got the biggest tonal shifts on the album. A reference point that I picked up on was Devin Townsend, and the huge range that exists on some of his tracks. I’m wondering what was the story behind that track, and perhaps how that might relate to balancing the dark and the light.
Ed: That’s another demo that our guitarist Eathan put together. We were trying to get that one over the line for a while, because in its original state, didn’t really flow very well. It was very much not enough and then too much. There were a lot of really cool ideas, and I was just trying to figure out on my own basically how best to structure it – how do I make this track stand out on his own, and have its own identity? And how it could sit within what I know Meg’s been working on, with the concept of her lyrics and her vocal performances. I think I just looked at a few different prog structures where there are recurring themes. It is kind of like a pop-prog song in the sense that there’s slight variations of segments, but actually, they’re all recurring, so there’s nothing mega progressive going on. I just had no idea how to end the song and I was like, it would be really cool if we just sparred off into something bit more bluesy, a bit rocky – something that sits within our field of what we do, but isn’t essentially like metal? Myself and Eathan played around with it, I made it a bit more pentatonic, and in the end it feels a bit more bluesy with some groovy bits from Eathan. It just created this really cool sort of different vibe, and it fits so well within the element that it was assigned to. Even when I look back on all these tracks, they weren’t initially in that sort of concept, they were just songs. Now I can’t look at them without feeling like that’s the water song, that’s the fire song. In this case, this is the air song – in my brain, whenever I hear the outro, it’s like a straight desert, blistering hot, like stuff is melting on the side of the road.
Megan: That track it is pure air. I don’t know how to describe it. It’s like when the weather is just absolutely relentless. Its so connected to the element of air that track, more on the darker and destructive side rather than the life-giving side I think. Even the way in which those screams come in, and the kind of effects that Sam Bloor‘s put on them. It just feels like I’m in the sky, going absolutely mental. That one was inspired by a supernatural western called The Wind. It’s about this character that lives in a barren landscape, and because it’s so windy all the time she can’t grow anything, nothing survives. At the same time, she’s plagued by these demons – in the film they’re called demons of the prairie, and they are the demons that you hear mentioned in the song.
Dobbin: You mentioned that the last track, “Spirit”, was actually the one of the first ones conceived. That one feels really central to the album particularly because it’s got that title drop in it – Aether. Can you tell me about how that track ties the whole thing together? That is connected to an element, right?
Megan: Yes, its connected to the element of spirit. Earth, fire, water, air, spirit – people don’t always work with the element of Spirit, but I actually think it’s like the most important one, because it is the central element that connects everything else together. Which is also why the album name is Aether. It’s kind of like the umbrella term for everything that’s within it.
Dobbin: Does it work to link all of the elements together in its position on the album as the as the closer?
Megan: I would say so, because it encompasses everything that’s happened before. We wanted to lay the tracks out in the order of how we wanted to call them in. It ties everything up, and it’s the most epic track of the lot. Some of the guys might say differently, but it’s like the element that’s everywhere and nowhere – it’s invisible, formless, and it’s kind of there underneath the surface of every single track.
Thank you to Megan and Edd for sitting down us with us, you can order Aether here. You can also read our previous interview with Forlorn here and our review of Aether here.