1. Can you give us an update on what has been going on with the band since the recording and release of the new EP?
First of all, we really appreciate your interest and want to thank you for taking this time with us. I'm Cleopatra the Alchemist, lyricist, guitar player and vocalist for Eusapia. It’s always really exciting to finish up a project. This one was kind of emotional to be “done” with, though, so I kinda sat and let it sink in for a little while. But we aren’t really the type of musicians to sit around for very long, so we’re currently finishing up recording our next two EPs and we’re almost done writing our first full-length.
2. In August you released a new EP. Musically, how does it differ from the stuff you have released in the past?
These are actually songs from the past. I wrote both of these tracks prior to our first iteration in 2013, so these are really what kind of started it all for the project. When we changed our name to Eusapia, we decided to close that chapter, and we actually put our coming spring EP, The Grove, on hold for a year so we could complete these tracks.
But the difference between Thin Cities / Desert Festival and our Formless EP is night and day. Somnium wrote Formless as a one-man project, so when he approached me for lyrics, those songs were really almost done. They have so much of Somnium in them, and I think they are really intimate and vulnerable, where Thin Cities / Desert Festival is on a much grander scale.
Bringing our drummer, Deenie, in for this EP really elevated the compositions. He’s hypnotic to watch and really seems to approach the songs as a writer, so I think that alone made a huge difference in the overall presentation.
3. What are some of the lyrical topics and subjects the band explores with the new release, and how would you describe your progress as songwriters over the years?
Thin Cities and Desert Festival are both these sort of explorations of mortality and impermanence. They feel to me like two sides of the same coin.
Thin Cities deals with exploitation of labor, especially in agrarian parts of the world, and the comforts a lot of us in the developed world extract from these people. It’s a pretty blatant critique of capitalism and complacency.
While Desert Festival is the other side of opulence: this beautiful desert festival is filled with magic and people and decadence, but it’s also a sort of funerary rite, or perhaps the best last breath I could give a friend who passed.
Somnium and I performed in a band together prior to working on Somnium and eventually Eusapia, and the environment was really creatively stifling, to the point I really withdrew from playing music after I stopped playing with them. I think something we bring to our process, more so than any other project I've worked on, is trust. Somnium drew me back into music because what he was making was what I wanted to be making for years, and when he reached out to me, he knew what to expect. As a core partnership in writing and producing so far, I think we are probably each other's biggest fans and that makes the process for us so much more simple.
I think one of the biggest changes for us is that we’ve really grown into being a band rather than a collection of people contributing to songs. Early on, there was a lot more separation between who was writing what, but over time we’ve become much more interested in the composition as a whole. Nobody really has sole ownership of a song anymore. We’re all listening for what the song seems to want and trying to serve that rather than worrying about who wrote which part.
Bringing Frank and Chazdyn into the band has definitely pushed that further. They’re both really different players, and having that much more range available to us has opened up a lot of possibilities. Frank can move between guitar, bass, vocals, and whatever else the song needs, and Chazdyn brought a really natural musical chemistry that we didn’t know we were missing until he was there. I think you’ll hear that more clearly on Blinding Light.
I also think I’ve changed a lot as a writer. I’ve become much less interested in trying to force an idea into a song. I still write poetry separately and pull from my notebooks when the music is ready, but I’ve gotten better at listening to the music and figuring out what it’s asking for. A lot of the time it feels less like I’m writing lyrics and more like I’m finding the right words for something that already exists.
And honestly, I think we’re just much more comfortable with ourselves now, we're older and I think that forces some reality on a person. We’re not trying to prove that we can make a certain kind of music. We’re more interested in following an idea wherever it goes, whether that ends up being heavy, quiet, psychedelic, beautiful, ugly, or something we didn’t expect. I think that freedom is probably the biggest change I’ve noticed.
4. You have also recorded music under the name “Somnium.” How does the music of “Eusapia” differ from the stuff you have released under the previous name?
Somnium was really, I think, intended as a one-man project or a pseudonym more than a band. When he reached out to me, I wasn’t really even in Somnium. I was more of a lyricist and a guest vocalist, and I never left. When we started really doing stuff as a team, it was during our Bummer Summer of Covers. It was our way of figuring out how to even make this thing work.
So I think Somnium was sort of a cocoon or a nest for Eusapia to grow in, but the characteristic that really stands out to me is the vulnerability of the songs on Formless.
5. What is the meaning and inspiration behind the name “Eusapia”?
Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities is a surreal book about Marco Polo and Kublai Khan’s friendship. In the book, Polo describes all of these cities that simply couldn’t exist.
The City of Eusapia is one of these cities where the living and the dead live these mirror lives. Above ground, the living do what we do, but those who pass are taken below ground and positioned doing their work from life. But this tradition has gone on so long that the inhabitants don’t know if the dead are mirroring the living or vice versa.
The entire book is really beautiful. Each city feels like a poem from another world, and it really inspired me in general. But I think the sort of gray space between the living and dead really fascinated me. These transformative margin areas are always special to me.
6. Can you tell us a little bit more about the artwork that is presented on the new EP cover?
Yeah, I really wanted to create this sense of space and the sky. I think to me, there is a sort of desolation that shows itself, but these recordings kind of transition between crushing, dreamy, and almost majestic. There are parts that remind me of flying above the clouds.
To me, from the perspective of someone who is covered by a canopy of leaves most of the time, there is this magic that the desert, even the high desert on the eastern side of the state, has. The sky opens and it’s almost like being on another planet or in a dream.
And since the songs were so old, almost resurrected, I felt like using a desert that felt ancient and mystical, sort of illustrated those feelings.
7. Out of all the shows the band has done so far, which one stands out the most?
We are very selective when it comes to playing live and have only ever really played in our first iteration, so it’s hard to pick one. We’re in a small town that’s pretty removed from the city, so for us it makes sense to approach the globe, or the internet, with a lot more energy.
All of our art, videos, and anything else we share comes directly from us. We don’t hire teams to make our videos or outsource that side of the project. We try to build everything we can ourselves, so the internet has really become an extension of the venue for us. That’s where we’re able to reach people outside of our immediate area and create a world around the music rather than just playing shows in one place.
We’re not opposed to playing live, and there are definitely shows and festivals we’d love to be part of, but we think our creative energy is better spent writing and producing music that we love than playing endless local shows that don’t necessarily feel like a natural fit for what we’re doing.
We love our friends who grew up playing in bands here, and we have a lot of affection for the local scene, but musically we just don’t really have a home locally. So rather than forcing ourselves into something that doesn’t feel right, we’ve been putting that energy into building something of our own online.
8. On a worldwide level, how has the reaction been to your music by fans of post-black metal?
As far as I can tell, it’s been very warm. Before we released this EP, I’d never really done any sort of press or interviews for anything I’ve made, and it’s been like 25 years of making music.
We really just want to make music that we can all still love in ten years, so the fact that anyone outside of our close friends is listening and finding something they can really enjoy has been surreal. I cannot overstate how grateful we are already.
9. When can we expect a full-length, and where do you see the band heading musically in the future?
Yes. We’re nearly finished writing Blinding Light, which is our planned first full-length.
I think that you’re going to see a more realized Eusapia. During the last year we brought on Frank Keeler, a multi-instrumentalist who helped us with the Bummer Summer project. He played bass, guitar, and did some vocals for it. Working with him was really easy, and he’s incredibly versatile, so it was a natural fit to bring him on during the transition. We found Chazdyn through the local community. I don’t even think we were intending to bring him on, but I personally jammed with him and knew it was an amazing fit. So I think you’ll see some diversity, just on that merit alone.
But the material for Blinding Light has a lot more of Somnium’s fingerprint already, some almost droney or dark psychedelic elements that we haven’t really explored yet. And I think lyrically we’ll be really dealing with more suffering and, I guess, dealing with a sort of undeniable but almost incomprehensible realization or truth.
Right now, though, we have the Mercy and The Grove EPs almost completed. "Relapse," the first single from Mercy, is going to drop on September 21st. The overall texture of that EP is a little more aligned with DSBM and post-rock; the tracks deal directly with alcoholism, mortality, and depression. I try to write in the abstract more often than not, but these songs are a lot more raw and direct.
The Grove, coming this spring, feels like the natural follow-up to our most recent release, with both the music and the concept approached from a more abstract or esoteric space. Personally, I feel like Mercy is a
slight departure from our usual form, it feels more personal and close-up, and our delivery on those two tracks reflects that shift in perspective well.
10. What are some of the bands or musical styles the band members are currently listening to nowadays?
I personally listen to a lot of Sleep Party People, Mew, Lantlôs, and I’ve been really loving The Angelic Process lately. Somnium and I listen to a lot of toe together, and he recently got me into ISIS.
Along with Isis and Toe, Somnium has been listening to a lot of Deafheaven and says that his biggest influences are forever Isis, Alice in Chains and Porcupine Tree/Wilson
Deenie has been listening to Intronaut, Cult of Luna, Mastodon, Meshuggah, and Dissection’s Reinkaos “on repeat” lately.
Frank says Enya and Orbital, while Chazdyn has been enjoying Moray Pringle, which he says comes off as a hyper-impressive, instrumental “Tame Impala” vibe with the way a lot of it is a new take on older styles.
11. What are some of your non-musical interests?
I have an enthusiastic interest in spirituality and theology, and lately I’ve been really diving into modern Hermeticist audiobooks. The Magus by Francis Barrett is a really interesting exploration of ceremonial magic from a slightly more modern perspective as it was written in the early 1800s.
I also spend a lot of time in our natural world out here, our area is filled with really incredible old woods that have this sort of sleeping magic that really inspires and informs the sound that we make in a real way. I really enjoy gardening and look at foraging for mushrooms, berries, herbs, teas and other useful plants in the world as an extension of that same love and it gives me reminders of my place here in this life I get to experience today. I have a thing for physical media. I grew up with records in our home, but in the last few years I’ve been more focused on VHS tapes, specifically things ripped from TV, nature documentaries, animation, music tapes, and other things like that.
Frank is a hobby luthier and builds guitars in his off time, he makes really unique stuff. I own a couple, one really great set neck SG, but we're gonna build my next instrument together.
Chazdyn is also one you'll find outside, he's said "the fog, moss and cascadian scenery" are an obsession of his, noting that he enjoys going into the deeper parts of the woods to lose signal and just detach in the dark and rain. He is a big tinkerer as well, building plugins, tools and workflows for recording, honestly, he spends about as much time fiddling with that stuff as he does actually recording! It's kinda funny.
12. Before we wrap up this interview, do you have any final words or thoughts?
We just want to thank you for the opportunity to share what we’re doing. It’s been really surreal to have people outside of our immediate circle finding the music and connecting with it.
We’re just trying to make something that feels honest to us, and hopefully we’ll keep making things that are worth finding.
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