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Music can be much: Art, passion, entertainment or expression of mystic feelings. Omnia unite all these characteristics to a whole big thing, free and without borders. With their latest work Wolf Love they createt another masterpiece, which extensivly knows to inspire. We talked to the adorable Jenny about the new album, live and the world in a whole.
Otti:
Hey Omnia, thanks for another wonderful album: I´ve listened to Wolf Love hours and hours and couldn´t get enough of the beautiful songs. You sure are proud of your new release, aren´t you?
Jenny:
Thank you so much for your compliments! We are very proud of our new baby.
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"Sex is the most important thing in the world"
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Otti:
Wolf Love is more than an album, you´ve combined a cd with new songs and a DVD to a multimedia package. What was the idea behind this?
Jenny:
Last year we made professional video and audio recordings of the always amazing ´Pagan Night´ at Castlefest (Lisse, NL), and we just had to use these great videos on something more than YouTube we thought. Also, seeing as the video company D´iMages are good friends of ours and love this kind of stuff, we decided to make some recordings at the studio and put all of this together on an extra DVD to go with the CD. Omnia is very much a ´live´ band, meaning that you don´t get 100% of the Omnia experience just listening to the CD. Especially for the people that are not able to come to concerts, we thought it would be great if they could still meet us in person, as it were.
Otti:
The album is full of interesting and experimental songs we could discuss here, every track has it´s own fine flavor. In your eyes, what are the most impressing ones on Wolf Love, and why?
Jenny:
I myself love every track of it; Steve and I have composed all of them so asking which one is your favourite is a bit like asking which of your children you like best, haha. But still, I think I have listened to Shamaniac and Moon the most often, because they are meditational and full of layers, with ´intuitive´ (improvised) singing, which was new for me, and when I hear my voice I think ´wow! can I do that?´ which is great. I also love Dance until we Die, and I used to hate hiphop before I knew how to listen to it!
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Otti:
Listening to Love in the Forest is more than fun. But sex, especially in such an open way, is still a topic which is often kind of taboo in our modern society. What does sexuality mean to you and how do you deal with it while interacting with friends or strangers?
Jenny:
We live in the most hypocrite society ever. When it comes to sex, it is definitely a taboo with most people, children can´t see boobs in a film or on television, but it´s OK if there is violence and lots of blood (check the difference in ratings). On the internet, around 90 % of the downloads are porn, yet nobody will admit to ever watching it, let alone talk openly about sex.
All major religions are based on sex; if it´s not a positive thing, it´s a negative thing, but it always boils down to it (celibacy? it´s still about sex). If people would stop being so incredibly stuck-up and ashamed about this topic, many people would be much nicer and happier, there would be less rape and misuse of girls and women, and possibly the kinds of really strange and unnatural porn wouldn´t be that interesting anymore. As soon as something is OK, it becomes less of an issue. I could go on about this for ages, but I´ll just suffice to say: Sex is the most important thing in the world, and by accepting that and working with it you can become closer to nature. So what better place than a forest to celebrate life with making love?
Otti:
I have read something about some "management stress" you had in the past - May I ask you, which problems you encountered there and what finally happened?
Jenny:
It´s a long story, and we´ve written and spoken a lot about it, on our newspage, our fan-newsletter the Raven Times, etc. In short: The managers sucked, we told them ´fuck off´, gave them a lot of money but survived (not in the least because of our amazingly supportive fanbase!) and now we´re free again!
Otti:
You use lot´s of exotic instruments in your music. How difficult is it to learn and combine those variations of sounds, and how do you for example descide which flute is the best one for a special song?
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Jenny:
Often it´s the other way around: The music comes out of a certain instrument. But if I for example want to play something that sounds ´Celtic cheesy´ I would go for the harp, whereas if I´d like something ´Dancy Frenchy´ I go for the hurdygurdy. Songs with a lot of key-changes or songs needing a lot of low bass sound will be on the piano, and as for the flutes, well we haven´t written any flute songs for ages, but it would just come out of the flute and then you stick with it, only changing if you want to play in another key because of other instruments.
Otti:
The first time I saw you live was last years´s amphi festival, and it was amazing. It also was my first encounter with Dance until we Die. Most goths dislike Hip Hop very much, but your song got celebratet as hell. Is it your plan to ring down such mental borders?
Jenny:
Good one! Yes, maybe not intentionally, but we love breaking down prejudice and mental borders, and by wanting to do anything we like, we teach people that it doesn´t matter what style something is, as long as it fits the song and sounds good (to us). We have an extensive music taste ourselves, and will happily listen to Grieg one day, Eminem on the other, and Tuvanian shamanic sounds the third.
Otti:
And as you aren´t really fitting into any clichés, what do you think about the gothic scene as it exists nowadays?
Jenny:
Living in Holland, we don´t see a lot of Goths, and don´t know a lot about the scene, for here, it is very small. In Germany there´s a big scene, but I really don´t get how it works; there´s so many sub-styles that you can hardly call anyone Gothic anymore. For me, Gothic still stands for a type of harp, a certain kind of novel and an architectural style, all of which I really like!
Otti:
In an Interview I made with Faun some years ago, they told me about the mystic and deep friendship between you and them. Is this connection still alive? And how important is it for you to collaberate and interact with other musicians and groups of artists?
Jenny:
One of the best things in our live as travelling musicians is that we keep meeting awesome people from all over the world. In the past years we have build up strong friendships with amongst others, the people from Irfan (Bulgaria) and Valravn (Denmark), and seeing each other at festivals like Castlefest and Festival Mediaval is always one of the highlights of our year. As a real musician, you just want to make music because you love to, and finding people that think about it like that, and are amazingly virtuose players themselves, makes your heart jump from joy. That´s why we love jumping on stage with each other, a fine tradition which we still have with Faun, and now also with Irfan and Valravn. We just enjoy each other´s company and music so much!
Otti:
The summer season of festivals and medieval markets is over for this year. Did you have any funny or interesting experiences on your concerts 2010 so far, that you just have to tell us?
Jenny:
Every concert has something funny, something great, something amazing. I think for me, next to the usual great stuff at the big festivals, was playing in Normandy (France), where we had never played before, but where a huge crowd of ´Larp´, fantasy, pagan and generally cool weird people assembled to see our concert, screaming and singing and dancing along, even knowing the (English) lyrics of songs of our new album! That was such a kick, I really hope to go back to France more often, the audience there is like a dream…
"As a real musician, you just want to make music because you love to"
Otti:
The next months will be dominated by your large "World of Omnia" Tour, but so far I only see dates in your home country. Was that a conscious decision, or is it possible that you do some tour-gigs in other countries and places? For example my living room?
Jenny:
The World of Omnia tour is a Theater Tour only (hence it´s called "World of Omnia Theater Tour"). This tour is booked by a special theatre agency, working only in Holland with Dutch Theatres. Our theatre show is very different from a festival or club show: People are sitting down on comfy chairs, they are silent, we play two sets with a break in the middle, and many more ´listening´ songs that we can´t play at a noisy festival.
Because of this, people from France, Belgium and Germany (sometimes even England or USA) will come to see such a show. We would love to do a theatre tour in Germany, but we have no connections as of yet, it´s a very closed world in which you need a big-assed theatre agency to put you in their portfolio and sell to theatres. BUT we are planning a clubtour in germany for 2011, and when more is known about this, we will write about it on our website and in our newsletter the Raven Times.
Otti:
As you call yourself pagan and you celebrate nature and it´s mystics... What do you think about theories, that tornados, earthquakes and stuff like that are a revenge of mother earth, of gaia?
Jenny:
I don´t know much about these theories, but people can think what they want; if this means they will take more care of their home planet, then they should definitly keep thinking it. You see, it doesn´t matter what most people think; we are really not that important in the greater scheme of things. Nature just happens, and when we screw it up, there´s even more nature happening than normally would, and you get tsunami´s, melting ice caps and rising sea levels. If all this means that the human race will either die out or be reduced to a minimum, I can only cheer and hope Gaia can become healthy, unspoilt and beautiful again.
Otti:
If you had the possibility to drink some beer and met with either the legendary Arminius or with King Arthur - Whom would you choose, and why?
Jenny:
Neither-I would rather smoke a joint with Lewis Carroll :o)
Otti:
Everything will have an end one day... Or what do you think?
Jenny:
Of course!
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