DARK BUDDHA RISING - Oslava všeho a ničeho

DARK BUDDHA RISING - Celebrating everything and nothing

Dark Buddha Rising never did an interview, so we took the chance. In fact, mIZZY in Austria. And this is the first part of...

The interview was conducted at the Austrian festival Funkenflug in the backstage - meaning a wooden cabin, next to an anonymous sleeping drunk. I spoke to Vesa Ajomo (Dark Buddha Rising, Mr. Peter Hayden, Atomikylä, ex-Hexvessel) and Jukka Rämänen (DBR, Hexvessel, Atomikylä); his brother was also present and had a few things to say. Later, the new guitarist Vesa Vatanen (Mr. Peter Hayden, DBR, Atomikylä) joined the conversation. I was told this was the first interview Dark Buddha Rising ever did. 
 
How did Dark Buddha Rising start?
Dark Buddha RisingJukka: We are brothers, we used to have a band together back in the 90’s and I really missed playing with him and we had some troubles with a band we had earlier. We started this other band because we wanted to play some heavier stuff. I wanted to start a band with my brother, you know how it is with siblings, it’s a different level of playing.
Vesa: We started playing in the band played called Galacticka, and then you guys moved to Tampere and we needed some heavier stuff.
Jukka: I wanted to play with him. So we started it as a trio. We did two records as just the three of us (I, my brother and Vesa). In the beginning we just wanted to play, we never wanted to make gigs or even records, we jammed a bit, it sounded good, grown in a way, but it was never a plan anyway. It’s fun to play, to form a band and so.
Vesa: We’re all friends, no one is outsider. 

What do the band name (DBR) actually refer to?
Vesa: It’s obvious, the idea of a Dark Buddha that is rising (laugh)

The name says everything?
Jukka: Yeah, it’s weird, because people ask that question about what does it mean – Dark Buddha Rising.
Vesa: I kind of like the name. It’s a process. It’s not risen, it’s rising. It’s still rising. The idea of Dark Buddha as an entity came when we had this really long discussion about Buddhism and maybe darkness, enlightenment and contrast. The name came, when you guys had Rising Buddha and I said “no! Dark Buddha Rising!”

What about the names of your other bands? Atomikÿla means “atom village”, right? Is it just a name?
Jukka: No, it existed in Tampere, the region where we had the rehearsal space. It used to be… How was it? When they built the nuclear power plant back in the day in the “coast”, these buildings and houses where workers lived, and when it was finished they moved it to these fucking sketchy regions in Tampere. All the alcoholics and addicts lived there; it’s called Atomikÿla. It was named by the workers who built the nuclear power plant back then.
Vesa: It is true. Then it burned down.
Jukka: It’s not there anymore. There is just an empty fucking space on the spot, just wasteland. It’s proper wasteland. And trashland, place where you put all the trash, there’s a garbage dump built on top of that. It really has not a very good history. Let’s put all the alcoholics there and forget about them. That’s the place! It’s just a fucking cool history with the place and the name and all. That was the only name we thought about.
Vesa: Pazuzu Rising was also good! (laugh)

Can you tell me who Mr. Peter Hayden is?
Jukka: No. Nobody knows. It’s a person but nobody knows.
Vesa: I’m not a good person to talk about PH, because I’ve been in a band for just two years now. But things I know about Peter Hayden... It’s a tricky one, it is not a person, it is what will be some day.
Jukka: Like Buddha Rising.

And what does the last album name (Dakhmandal) actually refer to?
Vesa: It’s a combination of Dakhma, which is a tower of silence in Eastern countries, in India etc. They used to build these towers to bury dead bodies there. In Tibet there is no proper soil, there are just rocks, so they cannot dig graves. Dakhma is this tower of silence. And Mandala is Mandala… So this is a combination - Dakhmandala.

Two years ago, you went on a tour with Neurosis, your new album will be released by Neurot... How did this happen? Were you actually asked by Neurosis? (I’ve read that Scott Kelly is a fan of yours...) Do you have any special memories for that tour or for the one with MPH?
Vesa: The story goes with Scot Kelly, he heard us at his friend’s. He told me that he was obsessively listening to our Ritual IX record. And then he came to Finland and then he left… (laugh)
Jukka: The thing is, we didn’t have any information even on the Internet, so nobody could contact us in any way. But he was trying to contact us and he really put an effort into finding us.
Vesa: Walter from Roadburn gave him the info and Kelly asked us about the tour.
Jukka: And that’s fucking weird! Walter from Roadburn has to gave the information to this American dude that signs us. It sounds weird.

Dark Buddha Rising - Inversum

So Scott really put an effort into contacting you?
Jukka: Yes. And it’s funny, Vesa is the biggest Neurosis fan ever. And we had never even thought about touring with Neurosis or even releasing some albums.

So it’s something like a dream come true?
Jukka: Yeah, totally! And they are really nice guys. The tour was fucking awesome, even though we played like four shows.

When can we expect a new album? Which musical direction or theme do you want to explore? Do you plan a similarly sophisticated graphic design as on Dakhmandal? Whose work is it?
Vesa: It’s my work. And it’s gonna be released at the end of September, I think.
Jukka: This year?
Vesa: Yes.
Jukka: Great! (laugh)
Vesa: The theme is Inversum, it’s more spacy this time. Two kinds of space. This is like two kinds of perspective that are going towards this big explosion. We are going to play whole record today.
Jukka: The album makes our gig nowadays. It’s not like 3LPs, it’s just one finally. It’s shorter, but good one, straight to the point. It doesn’t go straight, it doesn’t go anywhere (laugh) Not to a point. It just goes on!

 
Is there a chance to get physical copies of your older releases? If not, are there any plans to re-release some of it?
Vesa: We have thought about it, but we need to do more planning and I think it will be released on maybe a CD and vinyl or maybe a cassette.
Jukka: The older ones are planned to be re-released by Neurot.
Vesa: We had some discussions, it is on the table, but we want to release Inversum first and then the older ones.
Jukka: And like I said, when we started, we were like let’s make a record, let’s make a 5 handmade CDr copies or something like that.
Vesa: No, we made 9.
Jukka: So for the band and for four friends (laugh)
Vesa: That was the first the I or whatever it is. The first one.
Jukka: It is also hard even for us to find them. We don’t have it.
Vesa: I don’t know if there are any copies of the first one and Ritual IX left. Jukka has one, I mean Hapinen, and Lauri has one and maybe Jaska.
Jukka: So you know, it totally wasn’t planned, this whole thing. No, no, nothing is planned. And it never is, all of our plans. All bands do not want to be successful. We just want to play. And if you can get to a beautiful place like this, it’s just fucking yeah, like a bonus.

Dark Buddha Rising

I suppose you will mostly play new material, but will you include some older songs as well? I would love to hear Dapuris for example...
Jukka: Let’s fucking play that! But we cannot play it (laugh) We don’t know how to play it, we don’t remember it.
Vesa: The problem of the old songs is that we used this kind of drop D and C tuning, since Abyssolute Transfinite we have used standard C-tuning and on Inversum we have used the “universal” tuning which is that A note is tuned to 432 Hz. At least for my guitar, so it’s really hard to play these riffs. Some of them are impossible to play in standard tuning. We like to take riffs from different songs and mash them up all together, it’s like a medley. We do it a lot. When we play like two songs an hour, we take a riff, parts of different songs and arrange it as a part of set. We might play a part from Dapuris for example, but it’s just a part of the song, we don’t play the whole songs, we fit it in there somewhere.
Jukka: Because all the songs are not songs, you can do it, because they are like feelings not songs. When our feeling kind of changes so we don’t want to play this, we say ok let’s not play it, let’s make a different part of it. It’s easy, because it’s mostly instrumental music, so it’s not like ok, now I’m singing about love and next thing I’m singing about death and raping.

Are there any plans for shows/tour in Europe?
Vesa: There’s a plan to make a short one, maybe week or two, probably concentrating on Germany and countries around it.

Speaking of countries around Germany, what about the Czech Republic and Prague? We want to help you with a gig in Prague!
Jukka: Yeah, great! Please! I want to drink to that! Take that! Cheers!

Dark Buddha Rising

Your stage presentation includes some sort of a ‘totem’. Does it have any specific function? Who made it?
Vesa: It’s basically made by a friend of mine, a girl called “Minna”. She has this Last Havoc Charms thing, she makes jewellery, rings and stuff like this. She uses human bones.

She also made your necklaces?
Vesa: Yes! All of them. She’s really good at doing this.
Jukka: And the totem… It has a really deep meaning.
Vesa: It’s something we have since Jaska - the former singer who used a lot of blood - left the band. It was not to replace him. But in this state there needs to be something dead. Something to concentrate on and something to celebrate.
Jukka: It’s also an honour to Jaska, for being a part of the band and not being there anymore. He was such a big part of the band with the blood and stuff. Everybody was like, this is cool. That’s what is left for him on the stage, the totem, it is him on stage.
Vesa: And it is the focus of the music of sorts. The necro stuff. And it feels good to have something dead on stage.

I’ve read that your singer ‘disappeared’ into the woods or something. Is it true? What has he been up to recently - in the forest or elsewhere?
Vesa: He is somewhere in the south.
Jukka: We don’t know where he is actually.

You have no idea what is he doing now?
Jukka: No, and even when he was a part of the band, we weren’t sure if he’s going to show up for a rehearsal.
Vesa: But he didn’t show up anyway, only for the gigs.
Jukka: And it was also like “Is he going to show up?” Usually he did, but he is really special. So we don’t know about him, we don’t know him, basically. He’s a mystery man.
Vesa: He’s old friend of mine from the 90’s, from Rauma where I used to live, and he was a part of the black metal scene we had. And I know him since then. He was that fucked up guy and still is. But he wanted to go south so I’m really glad that he went to there. And to find something he was missing. Because it was like he was missing something. And it was holding him or keeping him in band. In order to proceed with his life, he must go somewhere and now he’s lost. But I heard something that he was in the south of Spain and alive. That’s good. So, he disappeared.
Jukka: He’s somewhere and probably alive. He always was and still is this mystery man. It was never like let’s talk about the band and official stuff.

Vesa: He just appeared, did things he did and disappeared again. It was really nice to have him in the band and good to have him, but all the blood and stuff like that is not logistically a good thing.

Dark Buddha Rising

Was it real blood?
Jukka: Yeah, it was always real blood, not fake blood. And actually there is funny story when we did the Neurosis thing. We had a driver, and still have this driver, mixing dude, manager, super dude “Nicols”, fucking professional. And now I forgot my fucking point! (laugh)
Vesa: The blood…
Jukka: Our first gig was in Berlin. So Jaska called Nicols the manager, can you pick some blood? He tried to buy something. And when he came to the store and said can I pick some pig’s blood or cow’s blood, whatever? And they called police because you can’t do this kind of thing. He send us a message “I almost got arrested, bring your own blood you wankers!”
Vesa: In Finland they sell frozen blood in every supermarket, it’s a tradition.
Jukka: They make this food - lettuce, blood sausage and pancakes or what the fuck it is. It’s easy to buy blood in Finland. But obviously not in Germany.
Jukka: But you know, when you do the blood thing, it should not be fake blood. It’s like having sex without your dick or something. With a dildo (laugh)
Jukka: But our point wasn’t to make a show, the singer was just so fucking weird.
Vesa: And it was the same thing as with the bones. He wanted to drink the blood and have some bones on him.
Jukka: So it’s not for show, it’s for him and he did it for us and for the music.
Vesa: And I think he is still drinking blood in Spain. Aaaarrrggh! (laugh)

Dark Buddha Rising

Your music has been described as ritualistic or transcendental. What is the importance - if any - of religion, spirituality, transcendence, ritual for you?
Jukka: I think it’s more like an anti-religion thing.
Vesa: No, there’s no religion at all. And no -ism, like Buddhism, Satanism or occultism. It’s a mixture of everything, all the esoteric currents of the world or universal thoughts about nothing (laugh)
Vesa: When we play, this thing is almost controlling us, you know. And it’s like being pushed by some force. Like being given a direction to go somewhere.
Jukka: As I said, we are not acting anything.
Vesa: It just happens. And that’s what we are kind of worshipping. The happening. It’s hard to discuss it. I don’t even know what it is, it’s something unknown. We leave a lot of room for improvising and let stuff happen. All the writings in the covers and arts, it’s the same thing. It just happens.
Jukka: He’s not planning. He might be like “I can’t do anything”. But month goes by and he just does it and it’s here. He needs this kind of mind dis…
Vesa: It’s a everlasting process till pieces fits together, and then it happens. All the artworks, lyrics, music and everything.
Jukka: I think it’s we are just celebrating it by the music. Next time we go to play, it might be the end of the band, you know. You never know what happens, that weird shit, and let’s not do it anymore. But so far it has been always better in a way.
Vesa: It has been a progress and a process.
Jukka: I feel it well better than when we started. You know, the first demo is the best one and still it is. The next one is close to that.
Vesa: It goes on and I don’t think I’m kind of spiritual person. I don’t believe in things. I just know some things are. I don’t mean you have to be a spiritual person to believe in a sort of God or whatever. The idea of Sun in a waste, emptiness as a space and some fucking rock orbiting the sun, it’s really fucked up (laugh). It’s unreal, but of course it is. That’s what we are, we’re stardust and stuff like that. For me it is really life and reality and stuff like this that are really weird, it’s not like certain. Life put into music. Celebrating everything and nothing.

Second part of interview...

Conducted by: mIZZY
Questions: AddSatan, mIZZY
Transcription: mIZZY
Translated: mIZZY, gorth, AddSatan
Editing: gorth, AddSatan, mIZZY

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