PW: Greetings and thanks for doing this interview. Firstly I was intrigued by your name and some research shows that Ayin is the 16th letter in ancient Semetic alphabets and also can be translated to ‘eye’ in Hebrew and Arabic. Aleph is also a word with several ancient meanings and is the 1st letter of some early alphabets. Can you explain the name you have adopted a bit more please?

AA: Thank you for inviting me to do this interview. Actually it is my baptism name. It is the “church” name that I have had all my life. It is not my full name because I have 7 names and the other ones I will never use because it would be too complicated. The explanation of my first names is given to me by others, in fact. Jewish have their way, Arab people also. One has to know that before the Hebraic or Arab alphabet there was the Phoenician alphabet that has its roots in the old Egyptian alphabet, which was linked to the birth of the first orthodox religion. I don’t know further about this question. I have the feeling that other people know better than me the meaning of my first names. My opinion is that it rather comes from Egypt as my fatherly family had roots in Alexandria.

PW: You were born in Moscow and started playing the piano at the tender age of 4 and were recognised early on as being very talented. You relocated to France in 1990 where you still reside. Can you tell us a bit about your musical evolution and what is it about France that has attracted you to stay and live there?

AA: Regarding my musical evolution, the first track I heard was the first chorus of the KYRIAE ELEISON from the B Minor MESSA. It was injected in my veins and stayed with me my whole life. It has also shaped the style of my thoughts polyphonically. After that, I have known other composers, universes, and styles, not only in music but also in other kinds of art, which always feed my evolution and musical aspirations. As you may have noticed in my Metal album, guitars, bass, backing vocals, lead voice are all polyphonic. If you put out one thread of this cloth, it will sound incorrect. It is just like life; if you ignore one sense, you will destroy the harmony of your vital sense and any situation will change into the evil sense. In the eighties, just after the Moscow Olympics, there was a lot of occidental music coming into this at-the-time closed country and we started to listen to Peter Gabriel, Queen, Kate Bush, and to finish Black Sabbath. Despite the fact that records cost the wages of a person with a good position, we bought vinyl and copied them onto tape. Before France, I lived a short time in various European countries. I ended up in France by hazard and I was obliged to stay. I mean that at the beginning it was not entirely a choice. In France, I started to do some piano recitals but it didn’t interest me that much because it is just one part of my art. Then I performed small parts in various French movies and to learn baroque opera singing. After that, I have been trying different music styles such as rap, techno dance, electro, French rock. Unconsciously I was brought to Metal. I cannot consider that France has nourished me musically. but it gave me lots of knowledge in other cultural fields like literature (very particular), medieval and baroque architecture, paintings, and of course Art-deco! All the traits of these things, that I have seen, you can discover them in my videos, though the music has nothing to do with the French musical culture.

PW: I believe Ayin Aleph I is your debut album, I cannot find any information about demos or other recordings? You are signed to a label called Invencis who only appear to have your album on release. Is this perhaps your own label? Did you send demos of the album to other labels and what sort of feedback did you get?

AA: Invencis is my own label. Of course I have sent demos almost everywhere. Not only demos, but also my finished album. I was rejected everywhere, even with these videos. With my manager we spent two years to fight to find a license deal but we never, never, never have been accepted. What could we do? Do everything ourselves. But you have to know that at a certain level of evolution, it is not possible. Because just after AYIN ALEPH I, we will release AYIN ALEPH II (which is already finished) and which is taking back some songs of AAI with only piano arrangements and new backing vocals. In AA II album, I play the metal music on piano! I have done this album with the hope that it will enlarge my audience and when I showed this album to my Metal friends, they loved it. So we will release this album to a larger audience and also for the Metal public as well. I made a style of piano interpretation opposite the classical music style and you will see that everything that I allowed myself to do in this album will surprise even the more “constipated” classical musicians!

PW: Musically you are impossible to categorise although the ‘Baroque Rock’ description I have seen is a pretty good one. Obviously you are classically trained and this is very apparent on your musical composition. Looking on your myspace page you list Bach, Prokoviev, Wagner and Beethoven amongst others as being an influence. I was somewhat surprised to see that Debussy was listed in your hates. I am assuming that with classical musical the more bombastically evocative orchestrations appeal to you more? Also what about the other Russian greats Tchaikovsky, Stravinsky and Mussorgsky?

AA: I don’t find any single trait of rock in my music because rock music is another feeling, other harmonies, modulations etc …My sound is obviously metal to give support and a « Wagnerian » sense to the expressions of my melodies. Apologies to compare myself with genius. I am not of course at this level but what is essential for me is to follow this direction, but in Metal music. As regard my disinterest for Debussy, despite it is very nice music, I find these kinds of expressions quite cold, which means that for me music that is exteriorised just in “exterior” beauty (like a lot of Italian music for instance) does not interest me. Just like the paintings of Claude Monet, it is very nice but I don’t consider them at the same level of evolution of Art history as those of Dürer, Bosch, Egon Schiele, Burn Jones, or Pietro Della Francesca, where their sense of Beauty expresses the hurricanes of beauty needing mixed with human cruelty during all history of terrestrial evolution. Impressionism is interesting to know but it doesn’t create any vibrations in my genes. If you have understood after hearing my album, I belong to the world of the most expressive art and my choices regarding my favourite composers belong to this world. Though I am not a genius, I have a small musical talent. Bach, Prokoviev, Schuman, Schubert, Beethoven, Wagner are the most expressive composers of classical music. I quite love Russian music like Rachmaninov, Scriabine, but to be honest I am more linked to the Austro-German musical culture. Harmonically, my album belongs to two worlds; European baroque music and German Nineteenth Century music.

PW: I didn’t get the information with the promo of the album and was wondering who is responsible for the instrumentation on it? Obviously piano arrangements are your own but what about everything else?

AA: I have done all the arrangements myself for every instrument of my album. Regarding drums I have just managed the artistic direction. I have played all bass and guitar lines on piano, even solos. I have arranged with the musician according to their capacity and their instrument capacity which means that mostly what you have listened at the instrumental level was realised on piano and then transmitted to the electric instruments. All backing vocals and writing of choruses was done by me and I record all the vocals – (as you can see, sometimes the absence of material capacity opens your professional and artistic capacities, which you have never imagined before).

PW: Onto your unique voice. On first hearing it I tried to think of anyone remotely comparable and came up with Kate Bush, Bjork, Lene Lovich and perhaps Nina Hagen but there are so many styles it is impossible. I wondered what you think when people do try and compare you to other singers, does it amuse or annoy, I guess in defence it is the nature of the beast to do this?

AA: For me it is indeed the nature of the beast to do this. I use my voice in any sense because I want to spit the maximum on the poor heads of the public as well in their poor eyes, the maximum of expressions, beauty and ugliness, that I have inside me and at the exterior of me. I am not against being compared to anyone. I just laugh because I am compared with great famous artists. Maybe in my voice, there is sometimes a provocation of comparison with someone that you have heard before but I flee quite quickly to express my music and not the presence of the others (that I of course like a lot). Maybe you have heard this part of love for all these artists in very few intonations but believe me I fish all these expressions of my voice in a different world.

PW: You obviously have a huge range of styles ranging from whispers to screams, soprano operatic to torch song chanteuse, both, feminine, masculine and even demonic sounding annunciations. I know that you record every single vocal line but was wondering if you were self taught or if you have had coaching on techniques?

AA: I can tell you that I have never had any coaching on my technique. The only knowledge that I have is the operatic baroque voice (and not even sufficient); the rest is ejected naturally from my injured soul; and as I have already said I use my voice, which is at the basis mezzo soprano and alto, in any directions just like an instrument to express my gloomy world inside. Just imagine a white raven hurt by the black ravens only because it’s white and because the black ravens don’t want to accept its sense of love. I am laughing but it’s really me!

PW: Reading the album lyrics things are incredibly poetic. You start off with the song ‘Hamlet’ and take us on a wild journey, part Shakespearean but there is a deep Gothic slant that reminds of the likes of Shelly & Poe with love and death being intertwined throughout. Is there an actual concept here you can share with us and I am assuming you penned the lyrics?

AA: I have written the lyrics. The word “concept”, I don’t understand it in my art because all my lyrics, until the last atom, corresponds to every turning of the expression’s destiny of each melody and the subject is built by itself, not only with the images, but with the expressions that follow all the melodic course. If you have understood the subjects are not at all explanatory. Because for me music is the highest art which doesn’t need any explanation of its existence. It can just have an explanatory literary support. It is just like beauty, one tries to explain why something is beautiful, but if it is really beautiful, it is impossible to explain it and we don’t know why.

PW: As mentioned I love the videos (they are all available to view on website see link or on the double CD DVD edition of the album). They look incredibly expensive especially as there are 5 of them. What sort of budget were you working on, who filmed them and were they shot back to back or over some period of time?

AA: All my videos didn’t cost a lot because I have lots of friends in France who love my music and who have offered to help for free in order that I become someone. The first video “Valpurgis Night” was done by a team of students from a Cinema school in Paris. It was broadcast on German TV originally with quite good success in 2003 (it was ONYX TV but now this channel is dead). The second video “Butterfly” was shot in 2004 and the last three videos were shot in almost 5 days in August 2006 one after the other. I was really helped not only from my friends but also from all the people that were present at the shooting: cameramen, some musicians, writers and my producers appear in the videos because they really like my cinematographic style. I didn’t have any team for the staging and the creation of the costumes and make up, so as regards the creation I mostly did everything myself. Believe me it is not easy because when you don’t have the budget you are obliged to take students of schools, to do everything yourself, program, manage and play at the same time. In brief, despite the circumstances, for me it is really an accomplishment.

PW: As far as the props department is concerned you have a huge array of elaborate costuming here (not to mention the wigs). Were these all hired or do you have a personal wardrobe the size of a small planet?

AA: Some costumes and some decor were hired at the Paris Bastille Opera (as I have a classical music background, the people of the opera lent me the costumes and decor for a very good price). Other costumes were realised with my dressmaker. The rest was taken from my personal wardrobe. Some decors were done manually by my friend ARGUS AVATAR who is a great surrealist painter.

PW: The latex make up you are wearing looks incredibly detailed as well, I can imagine you sitting in make up for some of this effect for hours. Who was responsible for these and did you really suffer for your art here?

AA: Just imagine starting at 5:30 in the morning and for 6 hours having your face pasted with highly hot silicone without any breeze, just to play a monster. You have to keep yourself cool in order that the make-up person can realise their artistic follies and then go on the shooting stage and manage the artistic direction with the walk-on actors who are not professional actors; then you have to dive in a dirty marshland alone (without knowing how to swim!) and dive your head under the dirty water – what I have to do in order that my music sounds! Then you have to remove your make-up to become a new character: a nice erotic lady and eject eroticism and aesthetic beauty, all that just one hour after! Change your internal world to provoke love! But I don’t complain because I was able to do all that, it has proven to me that in the future if I work with more professional people, I can do even more!

PW: There is a real sort of Arthouse feel to the direction here. Who inspires you, watching these I was thinking along the lines of Ken Russell, Walerian Borowczyk, Pier Paolo Pasolini and Peter Greenaway but all in a completely unique style?

AA: I have several inspirations like Kübrick, Peter Greenaway, David Lynch, and Andre Tarkowski, but of course I can not compare myself because I am a musician. Everything I love flows through me and is somehow rejected in one form or another. It doesn’t concern only cinematographic preferences but also literary, pictorial, architectural and of course musical preferences. It is like a sort of baby made with love but without parents.

PW: Have you ever been, or would you like to take this to the logical progression and be in a full length movie yourself?

AA: I don’t want to play in someone else’s movie because I have started to write my own Metal opera. I hope to be able to finish it and record it and then shoot my own movie based upon it. It will be half unreal and will go through different époque of the human history. It will speak almost of the same thing like a leitmotiv in a symphony.

PW: I guess reviews are just coming in. I wondered whether you particularly took them to heart? As I said, I saw a particularly scathing one where it was evident the reviewer had neither tried to comprehend your music nor even appeared to want to attempt to? How have things been in general?

AA: I take everything in my heart and in my soul. Of course I do suffer from the incomprehension of my global love for music, life, beauty and love itself. But I accept the good and the evil because my love is higher than faith. If you don’t love my work, I am not only hurt, each time I die. But every time I have to stand up again and by falling I shall even more open myself, not to be love but in order that my love becomes accepted. It is the notion of my existence. So I don’t have time to be miffed.

PW: With the album being 79 minutes long I guess some people would play the 1st couple of tracks and simply not make it any further if they were not able to immediately get to grips with things. I guess the album works as a complete composition but were you perhaps tempted to scale it down and make things shorter and perhaps more accessible?

AA: To have more is always better than to have things not in sufficient quantity. Believe me, there are not all the songs that I wanted to put in my album; I have already shortened it and if people prefer to buy an album with just one single and the rest is boring, that is their problem. Melodically, as you have heard, I have not only done one style. If someone doesn’t love it, he doesn’t love it. It is not his universe. And as we say in France, you should not try to « put a big closet in a small room ». I thank you for your understanding because my album is just like one song starting with “Hamlet” to reach “Greed” which is the culmination and finish with “I Miss You”.

PW: Do you play live and what could we expect if you interpreted this to the stage? I cannot imagine this taking place in the normal gig scenario. There is a huge sense of Grand-Guignol, theatrical extravaganza bordering on cabaret performance in your music. It strikes as being designed more for a full stage show?

AA: You are right. I can say that I will put some of the ambiances and characters from my videos in my show but with something new. In the same time I have to sing and play piano, express my characters and not only wear an opera costume. That is what my Metal asks of me!

PW: In closing any final points you would like to share with us and what is next for Ayin Aleph?

AA: I don’t ask to be understood. I ask to be loved and if not loved to be felt. I can only speak about what I know, how it happens; only God knows. After promotion of this record, I wish to do my Metal Opera and look for money for my movie. I hope it will be AYIN ALEPH III after my acoustic album that will be released after AAI. Then I wish to write a Metal Requiem. I have a big wish which is to meet people with great personality that I am waiting alone in my universe like the little Prince in a small planet with its poor unique rose in its hand (my music), in order to build in real this universe and enlarge it. Thank you for your intelligent questions. AA

So this should have given you an insightful taste of Ayin Aleph’s unique universe if this is your 1st encounter with her work. If not perhaps it has helped explain some of the ideologies behind her complex world. Check out the links below, explore and if you are perhaps starting out go check out the video section on her main site.

Visit the band at www.ayinaleph.com
www.myspace.com/ayinaleph

Interviewed by Pete Woods

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