Author: Sandi Sadar Šoba
Venue: Kino Šiška, Ljubljana, Slovenia
Interview date: 05.12.2013
Few talents rattle me as thoroughly as the cosmopolitan artist Aphra Tesla, calibrated way above the Slovenian standard, and fewer still leave me in a state of active contemplation afterward. The name carries the mighty, electrified aura, mystery and vision of one of the greatest minds in human history, Nikola Tesla. At the same time it brings a breath of dark dust, elusiveness and exoticism, a near-exile from the narrow (narrow-minded, narrow-hearted) space of our homeland, with the name Aphra. It burned itself into my subconscious a few years ago, when I first heard this strikingly mighty interpreter of powerful words at the La Vie En Rose chanson night. The mental and emotional symbiosis that followed felt natural and solid. After my first listen to the album Home In The Zone, an unstoppable urge woke up in me to sit down at a table with the mysterious diva and try, even for just a moment, to respectfully peek from behind the veils of mystery and complexity that make up what and who Aphra Tesla really is. The opportunity came with the round anniversary of Jure Longyka’s show. Before the gig, two architects of the avant-garde sensibility of the Aphra Tesla Operating System project took time for our chat. Besides the project’s frontwoman and voice, we were joined by the gifted pianist and one of the most striking jazz trailblazers of the new age, the exceptional Marko Črnčec.
Rockline: It’s only right that on the night when yet another stage incarnation of Aphra Tesla happens at Izštekanih 20, I say a heartfelt thank you for everything you’ve managed to give us all this time. The last release I managed to breathe in from start to finish was the album Home In The Zone, which floored me for several reasons – the poetry, and the music itself, which is above standard for this world, and even more so for the narrow spectrum of Slovenian music. What was your red thread, and how did the concept of the record, and before that the collaboration itself, start to develop?
Aphra Tesla: I first made these songs in pure solitude, more or less in the woods. Then one day the decision came that it was time to change my backing musicians and go down new roads, into a new world with music, because there was no chance left to communicate with people who were too slow for me, and a lot of pointless conflicts had piled up too. Then I spotted Marko, whom I’d been eyeing for a while, listening to his music …
Marko Črnčec: Oh, kitty …
Aphra: Yeah … (laughs) Meow! I already knew Nino from before, and I think it’s a kind of collage that follows the concept of the record itself, which demands that Marko and Nino express the best part of themselves, while I can give them the creative freedom that holds up a mirror to the hidden messages showing through the music, right?
Rockline: Was it practically a studio jam session, or was it a structure that had been thought out down to the last detail beforehand?
Marko: Everything was thought out and arranged. Maybe some part was a bit more open. Like Aphra said, she let us weave our own expression within the framework of a fixed composition at some moment, but the rhythm and the whole thing were still arranged, so I can’t say it was a completely loose, free-flying jam session. The songs had already been created earlier with Rok (former percussionist Rok Koritnik, author’s note), and then we dressed up the old stuff a bit and rearranged it.
Rockline: Did the band come together in 2012, or had you started forming as Aphra Tesla Operating System earlier?
Aphra: Aphra Tesla Operating System was actually born around 2010, and my work with different musicians drives this ongoing growth and expansion of the operating system itself. For Home In The Zone it felt most fitting to bring together a sort of counterpole of mine, which Marko and Nino (Mureškič, author’s note) undoubtedly are, so I found a channel for a new expression of myself too. The whole process went very fast, because when you have a clear story and vision, dragging your feet is out of place.
Marko: I think you can feel our earlier acquaintance too, since we’ve played together a lot and we’re friends in private life as well, so the whole thing came together instantly and just happened by itself.
Aphra: We clicked in the moment, yeah. There’s just chemistry between us.
Rockline: Marko, you and Nino have been connected for a long time. Which lineups did you play in together before?
Marko: We played in Sagar and in other ethno and jazz music projects that have kept us together for a long time and that dominate our paths.
Rockline: Aphra, I first had the honor of meeting you at Vita Mavrič’s chanson night La Vie En Rose, I think in 2012 (at the night, Slovenian guest musicians played covers of songs by the exceptional Bojan Adamič, author’s note). Or was it 2010 or 2009? Time flies so fast … Back then I first felt that with your vocal abilities you head more toward Josipa Lisac and Neca Falk, and you also give yourself so much room and freedom that the chanson interpreter inside you can be so jazzy and fluent, and we got to experience chanson above the standard. What’s your personal bond with chanson and cabaret?
Aphra: What I personally pulled out of chanson when I met it as a little kid, I’d call love at first listen, and then I somehow built the whole thing up with my own story and expression. Since I’m an intermedia worker, I call it neo chanson. On stage, for example in the show Duša, which we made with Jože and Matjaž (the intermedia theater performance Duša was dedicated to Slovenian actress Duša Počkaj, and its co-creators were pianist Joži Šalej and director Matjaž Latin, author’s note), the emphasis is on the music, but there’s a strong connecting text in between, genuine mime, good direction and minimal video additions. It becomes very inter-media, and the contact with people, with the audience, which is very strong and very direct, has its say too. Personally, I don’t consider myself a singer. I’m an operating system. That’s how I programmed myself, and maybe at some point I’ll decide otherwise and sing bass. (laughs)
Rockline: When you dig into your essence, you quickly realize that with you it’s all about the interdisciplinarity of multiple factors. Personally, I can’t fully grasp you even as a singer, even though I consider myself an active listener of music, and then there’s the stage performance itself … You’ve also made stage constellations, video performances, projections …
Aphra: Yeah, video projections, already crossed a bit with science …
Rockline: What’s the state of Aphra Tesla in 2013, on the cusp of 2014?
Aphra: Igor (Bezget, author’s note) and I made a new electronic record, where I feel my voice comes out in an even more primary, primal way. This age of sexual in-betweenness shows itself through my shades, because I’m a whole palette, a whole assortment of images and expressions myself. With the collaboration of Aphra Tesla Operating System and Free Machine, I’ve set up the best equivalent yet of the time we live in, and I have to admit I pleasantly surprised myself. It rarely happens that a voice comes out of me that I don’t even know myself, or that I can only give out in the greatest intimacy. Like I said, I don’t treat myself as a singer but as an interpreter of emotions and texts. First I’m a poet, that’s what I expressed myself through first, and everything else follows.
Rockline: Home In The Zone is an introspection we can feel as a baring of your pain in solitude. It’s what happens after relationships between people, in the solitude of your own home, in the safe shelter of your own world, where you’re alone with your thoughts and feelings. With the electronic record, as I understand it, the whole thing heads more toward emphasizing the strong masculine figure of the modern woman and feminized men?
Aphra: You could put it that way too, but there I was mainly calculating with other layers. To put it very simply: if 1 + 1 equals 2, that means solitude. If 1 + 1 is one, that’s dependence, but also courage and total surrender, and if 1 + 1 equals zero, that’s death, annihilation, nihilism. Like when you’re so madly in love and at some point you look up at a sky with no stars left, because you’re running on some dopamine. The stars we look at are mostly the past, dead, yet we see them as present and glowing. Which means love is a state of a kind of doping that always conjures up an approximation of the truth. Igor and I wanted to pour exactly that into the record. In this time of great in-betweenness, the latter shows that a person has to fuck up their own existence and force human society to restructure. I believe humans were originally androgynous, and through all these eras and epochs the same human seeks, through wars, just a kiss on their naked skin, which is my interpretation of the poet Simon Jugovic Fink, a very good friend of mine. For humans to come once more to a state of merging with themselves, the goal is for a person to find within themselves that other, that Other. Aloneness and complete aloneness are the key. After all, the greatest fear we carry within us is that a person gets annihilated and belongs to Nobody. How do you package this philosophy in a warmer way? In a way that people can bump into my music? That’s it!
Rockline: I really like the concept itself, because we very often seek confirmation of ourselves through the mirror others hold up to us, but this time you can be in harmony with yourself, and it’s not even necessary whether you like yourself or not. It’s a state in which you simply exist and are what you are. What’s the record called?
Aphra: Sun Powder.
Rockline: When does it come out?
Aphra: It’s already on Soundcloud, where a raw mix is up for listening that isn’t fully mastered, and Igor and I are also working with Sebastjan Duh. A new track will soon officially see the light of day, and all of you who are curious and brave are invited to listen to the new aspects for yourselves.
Rockline: Let’s go back to the collaboration between you and Marko. How will the symbiosis unfold going forward, given that Aphra Tesla Operating Systme has been through many metamorphoses and there’s still plenty to come? What’s the next step in this more organic rather than synthetic sense?
Aphra: Marko and I are preparing a new project where only piano and vocals will be present, minimalistically, with the emphasis on micro-time, and the whole thing will be almost a little sacral.
Rockline: Tory Amos style?
Aphra: Not at all! (laughs)
Rockline: When will we be able to pick and enjoy these fruits?
Marko: No need to rush, since the work with Igor has to be lived out and wrapped up first.
Aphra: The Spirit will finish the one with Igor anyway – the Holy Spirit – and I’m the kind of person who often creates several things at once.
Marko: Because of dopamine …
Aphra: Yeah … (laughs)
Rockline: I know you’ve got mental and physical preparations ahead of tonight’s gig, and you have to get into your inner zen, calm down before heading on stage, make peace with the audience and with your own expectations and projections. What are we going to enjoy today?
Aphra: Something edible, I hope, right?
Marko: Definitely!
Aphra: It’ll be toxic for sure!
Marko: We just won’t be treating anyone to salmonella! (laughs)
Aphra: There’s no salmonella in it, but maybe something else … I wanted to say one more thing. I’ll soon have a literary evening in Maribor. The date isn’t known yet, and in April my new poetry collection will see the light of day – after 20 years I’ve published something again. Rimbaud is back! It’ll be called Srebromes, or Srebrno meso, Silver Flesh, and I leave the explanation of the name to people’s own interpretation.
Rockline: Here you can have the coolness of silver and flesh as something warm.
Aphra: Aphra Tesla is silver flesh and that’s that!
Rockline: I wrote poetry myself for a long time, and I can feel that quiet note of reading between the lines much more easily. Two or three words can hit hard and brutal here – the word can become flesh, and silver flesh too. To close, a final thought that you offer to all your interlocutors, to readers on the other side of the screen.
Marko: I’ve said so little in this interview that I don’t know what else to say or add …
Rockline: Then fill in what wasn’t asked and would be worth sharing with the world …
Marko: Should I say something nice or something ugly? Something nice? I’d wish, and I’m not saying it isn’t there, that there could be a lot more of it and in greater abundance, for people to support living things more: life, live musical expression, gigs, poetry readings, and for not everything to exist only on the internet and on some dead media. That’s exactly why I like that Jure’s anniversary tonight is marked by liveness, by performances on stage without pretense, that he put in the effort and got all this equipment, and I think, actually I feel, that the next 15 or 20 years will be marked by this trail. I think it’s right to support living things, because I perform live a lot myself and I see and follow what the situation is like and how the audience’s patience and attention, the animation, are doing … I hope people will be more patient in the future and will follow more, go to more gigs, and even when something is a bit harder to listen to, try to find something good in the whole thing. If the thrill isn’t there in the first few seconds, don’t give up, but give a chance to the one who’s presenting and giving you something more complex. A bigger challenge can give deeper pleasure, not just surface thrills.
Aphra: I’d say something more down to earth – life in our country is like constantly listening to the ticking of a bomb that never goes off. I suggest people be as crazy as possible!
Marko: And listen to yourselves and your inner spirits!
Aphra: Don’t be ashamed that you were ever ashamed, and I ask each of us to ask ourselves individually where this hostility and envy in us humans comes from, toward that eternal Other that people can’t digest and understand, which is sad, and to bring about a change of the world for the better. Thanks for this interview and everything.
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