Interview mit Years of Denial

„The music mishmash we hear is a reflection of our time, over the past decade, information overload, access to technology, and capitalism.“

Years of Denial – das sind die tschechische Performancekünstlerin und DJ Barkosina Hanusova und der französische Musiker, Produzent & DJ Jerome Tcherneyan. Sie waren schon unsere Band der Woche (hier) und sind regelmäßig bei unseren Musik-Tipps vertreten. Seit 2016 kreiert das Duo dunkle Elektro-Klänge und erforscht die Grenzen neuer Klangspektren, experimentiert mit Tönen, Stimmungen und rhythmischen Mustern. Mit ihrer Musik verweben Years of Denial pulsierende  Elektronik mit Poesie und dunkler Romantik.

Barkosina & Jerome dokumentieren was sie leben und fühlen und erschaffen mit ihren Songs eine elektrisierende, raue und dunkle Atmosphäre. Seit dem letzten Album Human tragedy  (Vö. Juni 2020) sind zahlreiche neue Songs (Various  & Various 2),  Remixe und Covers (z.B. Sisters of Mercy, Death in June) entstanden. „Resonance“ und „Pleasure“ sind die aktuellen Tracks des Duos. In unserem Interview sprechen Years of Denial über ihre aktuelle Situation als Künstler*in, den Sound der letzten Dekade, Kreativität, Inspiration und über die Zusammenarbeit mit anderen Künstler*innen. Herzlichen Dank Barkosina & Jerome!

How are you doing, and how do you handle these times of uncertainty?
Barkosina: Still alive, still going. At the beginning of the pandemic, we lost our tour, too bad. Gradually, the lockdown situation felt almost like a holiday. The world stopped and brought a sense of bizarre excitement, a dystopian dream, brilliant moral opportunity. Then the post covid era began, and not much has changed for us. That’s where the entire situation became a heavy burden to carry. Uncertainty is something you learn to live with, and what you do about it is up to you. I admire Jerome, he always keeps his head above the water, and he is such an eager beaver. My head is more above the clouds, and lately, I’ve been feeling like the character from Dostoyevsky’s – Notes From The Underground. He talks about a scene where the underground man wanted to be thrown out of a tavern window because that would make him feel alive again. A sort of existential dread.

What do you love so much about music? What are the boundaries that you look to explore with music?
Barkosina: I love music because it is a powerful tool that creates chemistry in your brain, it evokes memories, tears, and joy. I guess music is the medium that helps me to artistically, and individually express myself, just another form of artistic expression, that’s what I am trying to explore probably, other possibilities of performance practices.
Jerome: I love music for the headspace it creates, the range of emotions it allows me to feel, and the constant back and forth between the past, and future memories.

What topics are you currently drawn to in your work?
Barkosina: We are drawn to Humanism, Isolationism, and Hyper-Reality.

How do you inspire each other? In what unique way do you both complement each other?
Barkosina: I would say I bring the darkness, chaos, impulsiveness, and Jerome brings order, clarity, and sensitivity. We complement each other in our unique ways, Jerome’s knowledge of music production and engineering, and my knowledge of sonic direction, and poetic narrative.

What are your thoughts on creativity, and how do you channel it? Do you have any rituals, something that helps you get the creativity flowing?
Jerome: Experimenting with sounds became an addiction a long time ago and is still my daily ritual, spending intimate moments with machines and getting lost in sounds is like a martial art for me … a discipline. During that time I don’t record or feel the need to achieve anything, there is no structure / no start / no end but the pure joy of being exposed to frequencies, and visit places I have never been to … it is immersive and works as a psycho-analysis, a therapy … This keeps my creativity flowing when it comes to working on a track/project.
Barkosina: Creativity to me is like breathing, something that happens naturally, something that is part of you every day. You feel it inside, this urge, emergency, purpose, creative force, without this feeling you suffocate. In recent times, I feel I need the courage to create, maybe it is the pandemic comedown, sort of fatigue, crisis, lack of motivation. No daily ritual can help. I need a reason to create. I need to feel alive. Sometimes artists are under the spell of continuous creativity, expectation, they have to do it, maybe it doesn’t come from the heart anymore, it becomes a job, even better – an unpaid job. That’s where the conflict comes along. Creativity is fragile, just like human life. You have to be careful and look after it, and others too.

What influenced your personal taste in music and art during the last decade?
Jerome: Underground parties and literature is what inspired me the most during the past decade, places like Kaos London and writers like Baudrillard and Borges.
Barkosina: I’ve always been drawn to and influenced by industrial music, performance art, and literature. The art world that challenges and violates borders between everyday life and art, and goes beyond entertainment, with perhaps radical presence, and provocation. I will quote Richard H Kirk from Cabaret Voltaire, (who left us way too early. RIP Dear Artist. This quote was published by Minimal Wave) – R.H.K – „Jean-Paul Sartre has this phrase called ‘the Against.’ If you’re an artist, you’re in a position to challenge the fucking status quo. That’s where I’m coming from. That’s the job of an artist in society. It’s not to paint pretty pictures. It’s to say something, even if it’s only ‘Fuck you.’“

What is sound to you? When did you first fall in love with (electronic) sound?
Jerome: As a teenager, I used to play on loop tapes of Public Enemy but I wasn’t conscious it was electronic, it was just so powerful. In the early 90s, I was going to outdoor raves in the South of France, it felt new and daring, the perfect place to meet free-minded people but I didn’t connect at all with the music that was played, I was rocking drums in bands and something was missing to my ears. I first fell in love with electronic music in the mid-90s‘ with projects like Scorn/Techno Animal/Basic Channel/E.A.R.
Barkosina: Sound to me is Waves, Frequencies, Harmony, Chaos, Voice, and Rhythm. I fell in love with sound when hearing Laurie Anderson’s work for the first time, an unbelievable artist who mixes performance art, music, theatre, videos, and technology. She invented the tape bow violin back in 1977. She replaced the horsehair of the violin with a recorded magnetic tape and equipped the bridge with a tape head. The sound captured on the tape was then reproduced and could be played backwards or forwards. Also, the way she transforms human voice whether sampled, altered, or pitch-shifted, also using a vocoder. I found her work extremely innovative.

What is the sound of the past decade? How could one describe the last ten years musically?
Jerome: So much music came out during the past decade and I’m not aware of all scenes but Broken English Club, Ancient Methods, Regis, Orphx, Phase Fatale, and also pioneers like D.A.F, Cabaret Voltaire, Throbbing Gristle, and Nitzer Ebb contributed to define the sound I was into during the past decade. Industrial Beats and EBM with vocals that seemed to have been forgotten in Techno for years. As for each decade, new technologies helped to shape the sound, for the good and the bad. Affordable modular synthesis and software developers have certainly broadened possibilities, to my ears, electronic dance music took a sound design approach which I find hard to connect with, too much information … too well organized, sounds like Jazz-Rock to me and not Free-Jazz which I’m a big fan of. I’m missing that loose vibe you get in early electronic music.

Barkosina: The sound of the past decade has been evolving continuously, even though it has its broadening cultural approach, what we witness is a lot of crossovers. From darkwave, post-punk, industrial music, hip hop to electro, broken beat, techno, and a lot of trance, and pop. All of those styles tend to be mixed up together, and recycled from music from the past, sometimes with excellent and innovative technique, and sometimes with a dreadful mishmash. Electronic music, mainly techno also became very mainstream-oriented, which is killing the background, and legacy of this particular music scene. In a way, I believe that the music mishmash we hear is a reflection of our time, over the past decade, information overload, access to technology, and capitalism. Everything is going fast, and the BPM is with it. We are entering a musical era that is becoming painful and saturated. Music and musical scenes used to be sacred. You had to go and hunt it. Also, these days you see more DJs than live acts, it’s probably cheaper to have a DJ with a USB stick than a live set with gear, and the sound is changing with what DJs are circulating, the sound is fast, and people have their phones on and cameras on, DJ is lit with lights like a superstar. It’s a totally different experience. I would like to remember nights out when you are about to discover something new, and by the time you leave, you can feel at least a tiny bit of transformation. Maybe even learn something new.

If you look back – how do you feel your sound/music has changed over the last years?
Jerome: I don’t feel it has changed but evolved. In the beginning, we were improvising, relying on personal influences and skills, we found our chemistry that way. Nowadays we are more aware of what we have in our hands and wish to develop our live performances and focus more on songwriting.

What songs or albums of the past decade would you recommend listening to at the moment?
Barkosina: I will give you a list of record labels that we both admire, they have been part of the last decade, and beyond, till the present moment. And the artists on these labels have been creating brilliant work, and should be explored, and cherished more. Total Black, Khemia, Hospital Productions, Hands, Bedouin Records, Modular Mind, Editions Mego, Posh Isolation, Dais Records, Lies Records, Minimal Wave, Mannequin Records.

How does the visual aspect relate and reflect your music?
Barkosina: I honestly feel that we never thought much about the visual aspect of our work, and it is something we would like to incorporate more.
Jerome: We’ve been thinking about short movies and scenarios. Since our music always carries a narrative.

In the last few years you have worked on different projects and with many artists. What do you find particularly fascinating about working with other artists and projects? Are there any plans for collaboration next time?
Barkosina: Collaborating with others is always a breath of fresh air, it allows us to sonically visit places we might not go to. We have been collaborating with Unknown Pleasure Records and making cover tracks, for instance of Death in June, Absolute Body Control, and The Sisters of Mercy. This work has been challenging and extremely valuable to us, as we could carry the legacy of some of the greatest Artists, adapting their work to our sound and interpretation. We also love to support underground record labels that are new, and fresh, by being part of numerous compilations. The highlight of collabs is definitely with Alexey Volkov, one of the most crafted artists around, his input has always been extraordinary, sonically and artistically. And Meaned Veyl, with whom we collaborated on three tracks and the result was fantastic. A mix of rock & roll, heavy metal, and bass music, just wonderful to get to those places, thanks to Thomas. At the moment, we have no plans for more collaborations, we will be focusing on our second album, merchandising, videos, and tour.

How would you describe the world you are trying to create during your performances?
Barkosina: Dark romanticism with a touch of rave, no wave, and modern ’new beat‘, poetic endeavor, and anxiety of our times. The world we are trying to create when we perform is to be here and now, we want to play our songs, and dance with our audience, and exchange energy. We hope people can relate to our work one way or another, and enjoy it as much as we enjoy playing live.

How do you see the last decade? What has changed over the years and what excites you about the future?
Barkosina: The last decade has been very progressive in our society, everyday life, and art. Activism and heroism are taking place, and perhaps strangely shifting into paranoia, and digital court. We are entering a new era of cyber-influencers, cultural policemen, and political correctness. Music is measured by the number of followers, and celebrity/popular culture is taking over. Virtual streaming „concerts“ have more views than record sales. Our brains are targeted with information overload, and with social media, we are becoming cold-blooded online monsters hurting and bullying others while hiding behind our screens. Mental health issues are rising, people are not free. The future doesn’t excite me at the moment, and I hope I will be able to find life exciting again.
Jerome: She said it all.

What is in the pipeline for you at the moment? What are your hopes and dreams, and what do you wish for?
Barkosina: We are about to write our second album, and we hope to finally tour and spread our Suicide Disco as much as possible. I dream of education for free, and affordable housing. I hope working-class artists will have more opportunities in the art world. I wish for the music industry to get better, and stop exploiting hard-working artists, and their ideas, stop paying billions of money to Instagram DJs because of marketing and advertising strategies and return to music that supposes to be special. I hope for collapse, change, and revolution, and I hope to begin that change within myself. Cheers to that!
Jerome: I don’t have much dreams at the moment. I just hope the world could be less violent and less divided, and with more nuances. I am looking forward to work on our album and finally hit the road and tour.

Years of Denial im Netz:                          Bandcamp                         Facebook                         Instagram

(1790)