Chelsea Wolfe

On May 6th, Chelsea Wolfe played a fantastic concert at the Trix in Antwerp. Before the concert, Phil Blackmarquis had the opportunity to meet Chelsea for an exclusive interview, done together with Michael Thiel, aka Weyrd Son, founder of Weyrd Son Records and a huge fan of the American singer/songwriter.
(Check the review of the concert here.)

PhB: Thank you very much for this interview. You are in the middle of your European Tour right now. How is it?
It’s been cool. It’s been different than usual because we’re doing a half acoustic, half electric set, so it’s been a little wierd sometimes to balance the energies of the two different sets. But it works out well.

PhB: Why did you decide to split the concerts in two sets?
We had the new(ish) acoustic album that had come out in October, so we incorporated a fair amount of it in the set but without doing an entire acoustic show, just to challenge the ‘old’ songs with something new… And we split the show in two sets…

PhB: In the US, I think it was only acoustic?
Yes, it was a suggestion from some of the venues that we’d do an acoustic and an electric set and it kind of worked out, so…

WS: Is your acoustic album, “Unknown Rooms” a sort of bridge for you between the ‘old’ and the ‘new’ Chelsea Wolfe, especially since you changed label?
I think so. My label had asked me if I wanted to do an acoustic album because I had so many old acoustic songs. People were asking me when I was going to release songs like ‘Flatlands’, which I had done years ago but hadn’t released yet. So, when the idea came up and I started compiling these old recordings, I decided to do some new ones as well. At the same time, I wanted to get away from the imagery of my former label, Pendu.

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Chelsea Wolfe’s interview with LA Canvas is out in hard copy or can be seen in full online HERE pages 31 + 32.

Does the queen of darkness take her coffee black? How does it feel being the dream woman of metalheads and goths alike? These are the questions I ask myself regularly about Chelsea Wolfe, the Northern California singer whose ghoulish melodies are as uncanny and dread-inducing as the veil she occasionally wears while performing.

Wolfe’s dusky melodies inevitably resonate with a sense of apocalyptic doom, but are still rooted in the strums of country ballads that win over our blackened hearts time and time again. Currently she’s touring to support the release of her latest, a collection of sparse acoustic tracks entitled Unknown Rooms.

Over ‘50s surf rock tunes on the radio and a delightful slice of quiche at DC’s most darling pie shop, Dangerously Delicious, I had a delightful conversation with Chelsea about tour tats, haunted houses, the mystique of death and driving an ex-prison van around the country.

Thanks for trekking out here on your day off from tour to eat pie with me.
No problem. I got to sleep in late, then I think we’re going to try and find somewhere to go and spend the day. I was actually looking for a tattoo parlor.

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Chelsea Wolfe: “I am interested in revealing the beauty in the darkness of things…”

American singer-songwriter-multi-instrumentalist Chelsea Wolfe is one of the most intriguing and interesting artists I’ve came across in sometime. Her haunting, brooding and at times beautifully challenging songs are a breath of fresh air. November sees Wolfe touring on Australian shores for the very first time! (thanks to Heathen Skulls). She is also set to release her emotive, captivating album, Unknown Rooms: A Collection Of Acoustic Songs on October 16. Here Chelsea gives insight into the release, song writing, her experience with hyperosmia and her adoration of the natural world.

When did you first become aware of music?
CHELSEA WOLFE: I was very young…my father was in a country band while I was growing up. My parents were divorced and I mostly stayed with my mom or grandmother but the influence of my dad’s musical life and home studio had an impact on me.

Who or what inspired you to start making music yourself?
CW: I started experimenting with recording around age nine. I don’t really know how I discovered that I could do it because it wasn’t pushed on me at all, but I just started writing songs and never really stopped.

Why is music important to you?
CW: It’s something that’s instinctual for me—it’s the only thing that makes me feel like a normal human being.

You’ve recently released Unknown Rooms as a collection of songs rather than an actual next album; what process did you go through when choosing songs to include on the release?
CW: The idea came up when I started working with Sargent House. Cathy Pellow suggested I put together an album of all the old orphan acoustic songs of mine that were just floating around the internet. In the process of collecting those recordings together I ended up writing new songs along with new recordings of the older songs. The timeline of the songs spans a good four or five years so that’s why I decided to release it as a collection rather than a conceptual album. It comes out October 16th.

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Chelsea Wolfe is an indefinable force in the music world.  Critics and writers and fans alike have tried their best to place her in some genre, but the art and artist seem to transcend those barriers - much like the other musicians Steel for Brains has interviewed.  Concerning so many things like the DIY movement as well as the resistance to be labeled, here’s what Chelsea had to say:

The first question I have has to do with your approach to music in general – as it ties into the DIY movement.  I know a lot of people throw that term around today as a kind of catch-all, but where do you see yourself in that spectrum as an artist? 

CW: I don’t really consider DIY.  I’ve just always done things my own way without labeling it as anything, so I guess if someone considers me “DIY” I guess I am, because I do a lot of things in my own way as I want to do them, but I’m also at a point where I have the support of a great label.  I don’t really know what DIY is anymore.

When I hear a Chelsea Wolfe track, the thing I find is that you can’t compartmentalize it, and I’m wondering what your process is when you go into the studio to write a song or create this piece of art, what’s your guideline, as it were.

 CW: It kind of ties in with the first question.  Thinking about it more, in a sense, I have to have my hands in everything that happens with this band.  I’m not the kind of artist who’ll let someone else take over for me or take artistic direction of my project.  To me it’s like “my art,” as cheesy as that sounds, so it’s important for me to have a hand in every aspect of it – every step of the way.  During recording it’s really hard for me to let go and let someone else step in and take over, and I think that’s why my impulse is to have a hand in everything – and sometimes those things are out of your control.  Sometimes people assume in interviews, and things with the press, and with music videos, that those things are reflecting the artist, but sometimes the artist doesn’t have control over those things – you just kind of have to hope for the best.  I guess I just try to make sure it’s me and what I represent that’s being seen. 

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If you even remotely keep tabs on the news cycle these days, it’s easy to get bogged down in horrifically menacing thoughts of the world falling apart at the seams. The American military industrial complex has nearly doubled in size over the last decade, and it was already a ridiculously bloated frivolity. We continue to rape the environment for our own selfish expansionary agenda of warped materialism, with little respite in sight. There are no spiritual leaders of any real consequence despite the obvious need. The stupidest people with the least resources continue to have the most children, and their billionaire overseers encourage them to take great pride in their own shameless ignorance. And each time I think I’ve seen the lamest lowest common denominator pop culture moment possible, all I have to do is wait five minutes and something else will creep up knocking my faith in humanity down a few more pegs. It can get worse than Jersey Shore, and does.

What to do, then, with all this bleakness constantly lurking in the outskirts of our collective unconscious?

A true mystic can take even the darkest of human plotlines and shine the impenetrable light of our higher spiritual destiny on them, illuminating the hidden beauty in the seemingly most hopeless of scenarios. Which is where an artist like Chelsea Wolfe excels. She manages to take the unrelenting horror of her apocalyptic dreams and effectively channels it towards transcendent catharsis. I caught up with the enchanting Miss Wolfe recently by e-mail to chat about how exactly she pulls this off so effectively as well as her admiration of Ayn Rand, amongst other things. Read on, true believers.

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(Source: redefinemag.com)

Intervju | Chelsea Wolfe

Chelsea Wolfe er muligens Verdens største, beste og flinkeste moderne og alternativ-elektronisk folkepopindierock-artist fra California, og på Europa-turnéen har hun kommet innom Oslo. Vi møttes i anledningen ved venue for en prat med Chelsea Wolfe i like mørke klær som hennes egne øyenskygge, som hennes egne hår og som den mørkeste natt.

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So I saw Chelsea Wolfe live the other day and after their impressive performance, I was fortunate enough to have a word with the charismatic musician. We discussed her excellent last album, some upcoming plans, Rudimentary Peni, black metal and more.

NC: Those recent Rudimentary Peni covers, they aren’t actual covers, right?
CW: It was more like, I used their lyrics without having listened to some of the songs. I just did my own interpretations of them rather than covering their actual music. I did a one off recording of that and then we actually went into a studio in London a few days ago and did a proper recording that will be released on vinyl this year, so that’s pretty exciting.

NC: So how did you come up with the idea of doing those “covers” if you weren’t actually listening to the songs?
CW: A roommate of mine was listening to their record, but he only had one record so I could only hear the songs that were on there. And it’s really hard to find online actually. And, like, I don’t have a lot of money to go spend on old records so I just kind of found lyrics online and worked with that.

NC: Water Borders’ remix of ‘Mer’ is awesome. Do you any some new remixes coming up? How did that one come about?
CW: I love Water Borders! I’m not really a big fan of remixes in general, I don’t get excited about them or anything. It’s usually like, if someone that I like comes along and wants to do one or if it just happens, I’m okay with that. But I don’t seek out people to remix my music or anything, you know.

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Chelsea Wolfe, the witchy goth music princess is quickly rising to success with her second album Apokalypsis, and a current European tour. Though she stands out as unique on her own, she’s often categorized into the same genre that includes complimentary comparisons to Zola Jesus, Grimes, and Lykke Li. She has the natural formula to be as successful, as she is convincingly dark and majestic with her classical sounding voice and solemn melodic music. She embodies mournful intelligence and beautiful darkness, including her lyrics that can stand alone as poetry.

Who has inspired you musically, over the years?

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With the recent release of ‘Apokalypsis’ , Chelsea Wolfe is gaining much deserved recognition for her grande, jolting ghostly vocals and distorted ethereal sounds. She talks to us about the process of creating ‘Apokalypsis’, the on location shoot and concept behind the video for ‘Mer’ and her love for Lars Von Trier and Ingmar Bergman films

How much input did you have into the visual aspect of the video for ‘Mer’ it’s beautiful, where are the locations the shoot takes place on?

The director, Zev Deans, he had control over the visuals of the video.. I gave him a small idea to go with, the scene in The Little Mermaid when we see the creatures stuck to the sea-floor in Ursala’s cave.. a sort of terrifying fate. So it had some elements of the deep sea, and teeth and snakes and monolithic rocks on the ocean. We had some troubles shooting in LA without a permit, of course, so one of the girls in the video, my friend Angel, took us to some beach caves she knew of in a more secluded area. We had to crawl through some narrow halls of rocks and be out of the cove before high tide came. Zev brought in elements of 60’s and 70’s cult horror films, with the group of nun-like women dancing around me. It was also a sort of visual tribute to the end of The Seventh Seal, when the characters dance across the hill hand-in-hand.

I had to look up the name, but I recognize some of the (Aoi Kotsuhiroi’s) work, I mean, I’ve seen it online before. Really rad, the twisted shapes and sort of primal feel. It’s sometimes hard to fully interpret things in a visual way, mainly because of budget constraints and working with different people and different ideas. I definitely have an affinity for connecting music and fashion. And I feel a strong affinity for Maison Martin Margiela especially.

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(Source: lieutenant-uhura.com)

In the final moments of last year  Chelsea Wolfe dropped The Grime and the Glow on the world, a record that ultimately made me regret posting my favorite albums list before the year had officially ended. Now, less than a year later, Wolfe is set to release her follow up, Ἀποκάλυψις (pronounced “apokalypsis,” the word is Greek for both apocalypse and revelation). The record is an obvious progression of the sound that was established with her first release that leaves me in even more of a beautiful daze after listening. Chelsea is wrapping up her tour in Europe (tour dates over here) at the moment, but I recently got the chance to shoot her a few questions about recording music as a child, current influences, doom-folk and more.

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