The Obelisk Questionnaire: Ascalaphus from Forlesen
The Obelisk Questionnaire is a series of open questions intended to give the answerer an opportunity to explore these ideas and stories from their life as deeply as they choose. Answers can be short or long, and that reveals something in itself, but the most important factor is honesty.
Based on the Proust Questionnaire, the goal over time is to show a diverse range of perspectives as those who take part bring their own points of view to answering the same questions. To see all The Obelisk Questionnaire posts, click here.
Thank you for reading and thanks to all who participate.
The Obelisk Questionnaire: Ascalaphus from Forlesen
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How do you define what you do and how did you come to do it?
Most broadly, I exist, fleetingly, like everyone else. Where that begins and ends is probably outside the scope of the question. It feels pertinent to begin there because the music we make is often about the loss universal to existence and seeking the transcendent. And everything else is context dependent.
More narrowly, I am a musician and songwriter. If I had to concisely describe our sound, I’d say something like Pink Floyd’s Dogs or Echoes filtered through doom and black metal, though that leaves a lot out. But I’ve written songs since I was a kid and became more serious about it roughly 20 years ago.
I was deeply immersed in black metal and dark ambient and from there got into doom through stuff like Skepticism and Khanate. That creates a backdrop for a lot of my sensibilities, but then I was studying composition and theory in college while obsessively listening to Sigh’s Imaginary Sonicscape and Sunn O)))’s Flight of The Behemoth. Some of my teachers were people that had albums out on Tzadik – including Milford Graves! – so that experimental, avant-garde, sometimes revolutionary way of thinking about music felt within reach. I don’t feel like I can claim that lineage in my music, but it certainly influenced me. Speaking of Tzadik, Kayo Dot’s Choirs of the Eye was another album that meant a lot to me. It’s still really a trip that someone who played on that album is part of Forlesen.
I think all that crystallized into wanting to make music that was as ambitious and grand in scope as classical or modern composition, but with a sensibility that hit a listener on a visceral level. Not that classical can’t do that, but I mean like Tony Iommi, Lou Reed or Michael Gira. Music that leaves space for you to be leveled by the right two to three notes repeated ad nauseam if that’s what is going to be most powerful. I wanted to claw open new sonic space the way Black Sabbath, Swans, Bathory and Neurosis all did. A lot of the time when you see someone cite one of those bands as an influence, it means they basically sound like audio fan fiction, some quite good of course. But I wanted, and suppose still want, not to sound like those bands, but to be like them.
Lastly, working with Bezaelith has dramatically impacted how I think about writing. Everyone in the band helps shape the sound immensely, but she and I began this together and her mark is indelible.
Describe your first musical memory.
Probably my dad playing acoustic guitar or my mom singing to me.
Describe your best musical memory to date.
I’ve been fortunate to have a lot of really cool experiences, both as a musician and as a fan. I’ve played shows that felt like a scene from a movie and I’ve witnessed truly uncanny things in live settings. But as a creator, the best musical memory I have is always the most recent instance of hearing whatever I am working on come to life, especially when other people are involved. There isn’t some time in the past that was better.
As far as life changing experiences go, when I was 12, my dad took the family to Woodstock 94. I saw Nine Inch Nails play their (in)famous set, the one where they were covered in mud. While they aren’t a band that I actively listen to at all these days, that absolutely set my path. It felt dark in a way I hadn’t experienced before. In a certain sense, I’d call it a spiritual awakening. I was seeking out whatever I could find that was dark from that point forward. While my tastes and interests are more evolved and less unidirectional now, that hasn’t stopped.
When was a time when a firmly held belief was tested?
I feel like if you have any spiritual/animistic tendencies, this is essentially what it is to be alive every day in the modern materialist/materialistic world. This is not a romanticization of some mythic past that for the most part never existed, but it is a prerequisite to endure and navigate if one wants a life beyond the mundane while still existing within society. I certainly fall prey to it myself.
Where do you feel artistic progression leads?
As a creator, ideally to the here and now, and from there, the future. But perhaps that’s reversed. Being with what is alive here and now and creating from that place hopefully breeds progress. Then again, Motörhead will always be one of my favorite bands. And for a lot of bands, their best work is obviously at the beginning of their career. So, true inspiration must be present, but presence is essential to receive that. Though I’ll note the irony in that statement, given that we sometimes spend 4+ years refining and adding layers to a song.
Within the world, I think new art can unlock new or hidden parts of the universe. It changes people’s minds, perhaps extremely subtly, but certainly sometimes less so. And for that matter, we shouldn’t discount the subtle. The subtle can be quite powerful.
How do you define success?
Any success still exists within a process of losing. The world is on fire and we’re all doomed and damned. This is an eternal truth, but especially so these days. But there’s a freedom that comes with that too. So if you’re someone who feels called to bring something into the world, especially something with a sense of Otherness to it, and you somehow get to do it, you’ve won. You might just get to score the soundtrack to the fucking apocalypse. Everything else is a bonus. Though it’s much easier to say that when it feels like things are going well. And let’s not make this overly pos. Even if through a certain lens just the act of making music is winning, there is certainly plenty of bad art out there.
So, internally: Forging new paths. Doing something that feels unsafe and honest as well as you possibly can. Being a torchbearer, defiantly holding a dwindling light as the world is subsumed by darkness. Or raining darkness upon the light of the obsequious. Getting to make music that feels inspired, in the true sense of the word, with people that I respect.
Externally: Making music that means to someone else what the most important music in my life has meant to me. And hopefully, for it to have as broad an opportunity to reach those people as possible.
What is something you have seen that you wish you hadn’t?
There’s a lot that’s deeply horrific and sad in the Anthropocene, but I think it’s better to recognize it than to turn a blind eye or live in denial. There are wounds we all bear, trauma from what we have been shown of the world, of life, of other people’s behavior and of our own. I don’t know that that’s for the best, in fact, I think by definition it isn’t, but it is a feature of being alive. So the work isn’t to not see it, but to not be blinded or paralyzed by it. That said, I have to acknowledge the relative safety I live in and the amount of horrific shit out there that many people in the world are confronted with on a daily basis. I haven’t been forced to watch war crimes perpetrated against my family.
With that acknowledged, I had an experience with DMT where it felt like the hologram of consensual reality completely shattered and I was being chewed up in the gears of what exists behind it. While on some level even “bad” experiences like that are still pretty interesting, and I do have an interest in the otherworldly and monstrous, it gave me a firsthand appreciation for the Lovecraft quote about the terrifying vistas of reality that would drive us mad if we understood them.
Describe something you haven’t created yet that you’d like to create.
A body of work that carves out its own sonic space within music. But that’s only something that can happen as a byproduct of being successful in the ways described above.
What do you believe is the most essential function of art?
To create/destroy. To be as god. Or to be God. Union. The most essential function is in the doing/being. There are certainly many important places this can lead both internally and externally, but they are secondary.
Something non-musical that you’re looking forward to?
Satan.
Also, autumn’s dark and lovely in these parts.
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