Since the mid-90s you have been creating music as part of the classic dark electro-industrial duo Seven Trees. When did you first discover/get into Dark Ambient, and what inspired you to start your solo project Subverge?
I discovered dark ambient in the early 90’s through Cold Meat Industry. Being from Sweden you easily came across CMI, and I remember the first releases I ordered from Roger Karmanik were cassettes by Raison D’Etre, Megaptera, Morthond and Archon Satani released on his Sound Source sublabel. I was very intrigued by what I heard – the sound ranging from soothing and meditative from acts like Raison D’Etre and Mortond, to harsher stuff like Archon Satani and Mz.412. I always looked forward to the catalogues that Roger sent out so I could get more of the same.
Anyhow, while working at a record store I met Johan in 1992 and we decided to try to make something similar. We had very basic equipment, but what we did wasn’t all that bad, although we’d probably laugh at it upon hearing it today. We then started the band Beneath The Moor in 1994, mixing dark ambient with martial elements and harsh vocals. We did a few gigs and recorded a demo at Johan’s place but never sent it to any label since we decided to put full focus on Seven Trees instead.
Me starting up Subverge was a way to get an outlet for this type of stuff, and to be able to make different types of compositions compared to what we do in Seven Trees – to get away from the verse-chorus-verse-chorus way of thinking… Channel emotions in a different way, do some exploration and go out of my comfort zone a bit, try out something new.
While Subverge still exists on the periphery of “industrial”, it seems to be mostly influenced by “post-industrial” styles such as dark ambient, death industrial, modern classical, etc. What draws you to this type of music and how does writing in this style compare to writing Seven Trees?
I’m kind of a pop guy at heart (no, really), so for one it’s very liberating with a format that doesn’t require certain ingredients to work. In dark ambient and related genres you can basically go whichever route you want, it doesn’t have to follow a certain pattern. Much more experimentation. Format aside, I like the soundscapes a lot obviously, be it dark ambient or death industrial. It resonates very well with me. It has to be fairly engaging though, I’m not much of a drone guy. I think all in all it’s the sheer desperation, darkness and gloominess of it all that’s intriguing. It’s often claustrophobic and unsettling, I’m really attracted to that, showcasing the most twisted sides of the human psyche. I’m really fond of the laid back harshness of some death industrial acts like Brighter Death Now, and a lot of power electronics gives me the same kind of outlet for aggression like Nitzer Ebb did with their “That Total Age” album when I was in my teens.
With Subverge there’s a blank canvas. Anything can happen. With Seven Trees there’s already squares laid out on the canvas and the music “has to” or “should” go into those boxes. I experience more freedom doing dark ambient and death industrial tracks. And it resonates with my soul to a very high extent. We’re gonna try to experiment a bit more with semi-blank canvases when doing more Seven Trees material, but there will always be more of a fixed formula to it regardless. Not that that’s necessarily wrong, but it’s nice to have two projects so you can get some variation.
You did a remix of the Seven Trees track “Valium Dreams” for the Arcanum Vol. I comp. Can you tell us a bit about the process of this remix?
That particular track has some history – I actually wrote it around 20 years ago. At some point I ended up sending some older stuff to Johan, and he really liked Valium Dreams (along with “End of the Line” from our “Dead/End” album, which has the same history/story) – and decided he wanted to do a revamped version of it for the Dead/End album. Johan and I sometimes work a bit differently when it comes to production – his “ear candy” if you will is sometimes put slightly in the background so you get more of hints of it, it’s kinda lurking there doing it’s job. Upon getting the parts for Valium Dreams I decided to pull out all of the programmed goodies and use it as a foundation for the remix. So while that remix sounds very different from the original, a lot of what you hear is actually stuff that goes on in the background of Johan’s track. I also restructured it quite a bit and added additional stuff to it to make it more soothing and meditative.
Tell us a bit about the process of bringing the Subverge project to life through the debut album Zechrum.
I started doing Subverge tracks with no real goal in mind back in 2014 and between then and last year I’ve gone through phases ranging from meditative dark ambient to harsh noisy power electronics. I ended up kind of moving away a bit from the power electronics stuff and felt that the debut album should be more of a fairly sparse back to the roots dark ambient album, not as sparse but kind of like those first Sound Source tapes I mentioned but with more of an evolved sound. I also have a fondness for keeping things kinda dramatic – mostly expressed by channeling my inner through minor harmonies and by using a lot of sad/melancholic/ominous strings and pad sounds, topped with a fair amount of lead piano that sometimes borderlines modern classical, so I added all that to the mix as well.
I have a lot of material recorded since 2014 but decided on doing new tracks to more easily get a uniform album, with the exception of “Limbic System Failure” which is a track I did with Dan Barrett (Worms of the Earth) for a compilation back in 2016. I’ve always been really happy with that track and felt like it deserved to get a bit more attention, and also that it fit with the other tracks quite nicely.
If you’re curious as to what specifically was the source of inspiration there’s a playlist I made on Spotify called “Zechrum roots” (featured on my profile there), which contains tracks that fairly likely were somewhere in the back of my head subconsciously during the period of writing the album.
You’re preparing to release the follow up Etterath which feels like a noticeable evolution of the Subverge sound. What were your inspirations/goals for this album and how was the process of writing it different from Zechrum?
I felt like going for a more complex and in some ways harsher album. I also wanted to experiment more. It helped a lot that I bought a lot of new stuff for my studio earlier this year, it made me explore and try out things I haven’t done before. I also wanted it to have more gritty feeling.
With the debut it was easier for me to see what inspiration was in the background. With “Etterath” I see no specific inspirational backdrop, and I find it hard to label what kind of album I’ve done here. Is it dark ambient? Partly. Industrial? Certainly has a lot of industrial elements. I haven’t really heard anything that’s similar in style, so I guess I succeeded with the intention of experimenting more. Another difference between the two albums is that Etterath has way more sounds layered in the tracks. There’s more going on. It’s also a bit more rhythmic. Zechrum is deliberately quite sparse, and Etterath is a bit more complex sounding.
Last year you started your own label Arcane Dirge along with Dan Barrett of Worms of the Earth/Aetherium Nebula. What were your reasons for starting your own label, and how have things gone this first year?
The main reason can be summarized in one word: Freedom. We have had many discussions throughout the past years about how it would be really beneficial for the creative process not to have to wait for material to be released. The conversation turned more and more towards starting our own label to get more control and to be able to put out an album once it’s finished. It’s sometimes really frustrating having to wait a long stretch of time for your work to be released – we both find it hard to fully move on before it’s out, so things become a bit stagnant and you don’t get as much done when it comes to writing new material. So, one of the reasons why we started Arcane Dirge was to get a means to release our own stuff – but we also have the intention of releasing albums from other acts once the label is more established. It is a bit of work running a label, but the freedom factor trumps that. The first year has been good all in all – we’ve made some rookie mistakes, nothing major though – you live and learn and with a bit more time and experience we should have most things covered.
What are your goals for Arcane Dirge in the near future?
We have a few more releases coming up fairly soon – I think Dan is basically finished with the follow up to his Aetherium Nebula debut album released on Winter Light just recently, and I have a bunch of stuff to complete for an EP or an album. I’m thinking these will be put out in early spring, but we’ll see. We have other plans and discussions for the label as well after the next few releases, but we haven’t fully decided in what direction to go just yet. Some of it is also classified. 🙂
What are your plans for the future of Subverge?
I’m trying to get a feel for what I want to do next. Something more laid back and ambient? Something harsher? I don’t know at this point. I’ve done 2 albums this year, so I think I could benefit from sitting back and relaxing a bit and think things through about what’s next in store. I do have quite a lot of tracks to pick from and finish up – from ambient soundscapes to harsher stuff – I just need to decide what my next musical journey should be.
Are there any plans in the works for Seven Trees?
We are currently working on new material. We have 4 tracks in the pipeline right now and we’ve taken them pretty far. We’ll see if we do an EP or a MCD – an album feels like too much of a commitment right now. The new material is rather different from previous material; we’ve done some serious development of structures and sounds used, without taking too much away from our core sound. Can’t wait to share it.