Interview: REPTIEL Discuss Their Newly Released Fifth Album "Down Below World"
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“Ritual musick recognizes music as a type of magick, something that is willed into existence from places deep inside our minds or souls (or maybe even beyond) that we would otherwise not have access to.”
Congratulations to the band on the completion and release of your fifth album "Down Below World"; describe for us your creative process for the development of its 14 tracks, and whether there were songs that were recorded that did not make the final tracklist.
Thanks. It was a long time coming and it’s very satisfying to have it finally finished and out in the world. There is never really a defined creative process for us other than going into our rehearsal space and allowing the songs, sounds and stories to come about via jamming, singing, chanting, imagining and vibrating. Somehow the songs, story ideas and lyrics emerge this way. Sometimes ideas or tunes get stuck in our heads and one of us will work out the lyrics at home or bring back to the rehearsal space a part of a song, a new riff or a plot twist. Or sometimes we will collaborate on lyrics or the story over email or text. But the bulk of the 14 tracks were composed together in the rehearsal space.
And no, there were no songs recorded that did no make the final tracklist.
"Down Below World" is the third in your series that began with "Hobbitozz … A Land That Never Was" and then "The Planet of Progkp"; was it difficult to pick up where you left off in 2018, when you started writing for this project?
No, because we already had written the first song, “A Really Deep Groove (Aleph to Bet),” which describes the main characters in the Temple of the Avian Aliens after the ceremony in which Sine becomes Aleph Adept, which takes place at the end of the previous album, The Planet of Progkp. “A Really Deep Groove” is about an earthquake that strikes the temple and splits it in half, and Sine and the Spirit Usher fall into the deep groove/crevasse that opens up. So we knew the story would be continuing inside the planet.
We also had written the first part of the second song, “It’s an Alternate World,” which is a reference to the song “It’s a World” on The Planet of Progkp album. So everything just flowed from there.
How did you come up with the overall story for Sine and his transgalactic guide the Spirit Usher back in 2015, and have there been any other SciFi/Fantasy, Psychedelic Prog Rock projects that have inspired your work?
Really, the whole thing was inspired by the made-up word Hobbitozz (which reminds me of the first line of Genesis, “In the beginning was the Word”), which came from a discussion in our rehearsal space about Black Sabbath, The Lord of the Rings and a hobbit version of Ozzy Osbourne.
The word Hobbitozz had a magical effect on us. It seemed we had discovered the name of a fantasy world or distant planet. Then the characters came to us: Forest Boy, the Woodland Witch, JackOh the Green, the Druid of the Wood, etc. The songs and story soon followed, continuing for three albums so far. It is unclear when the story and the songs will cease to reveal themselves to us.
Aside from the above mentioned inspirations, some others during that time were Patrick Rothfus’ books in The Kingkiller Chronicle, David Lindsay’s classic science fiction novel A Voyage to Arcturus, and Jon Anderson’s LP Olias of Sunhillow. Aside from Jon Anderson’s masterpiece, I would cite Warp Riders by The Sword, which is more metal than psych/prog, but its SciFi/Fantasy concept and Dan McPharlin’s amazing artwork have long inspired me.
Tell us about the incredible accompanying album artwork that is featured on the Libretto page, and how did you connect with the artists who provided their illustrations?
Thank you for noticing the artwork and asking about it and for referring to it as incredible. I also think it’s incredible. I’d also like to point out that in addition to the artwork on the CD digipak and the accompanying libretto booklet, there is web page that includes more artwork for all the songs on the Down Below World album (cubby.net/ccr/dbw). I’ve done this for each of the albums in the Hobbitozz/Progkp/Down Below series: ask artists to illustrate a song or songs from the album. This time around the artists are all people I’ve collaborated with in the past. A few of them (Doug, Rani, Tristy, Chris and Cyane) have been collaborating with us since before REPTIEL, when we were all part of the Cubby art collective here in San Francisco. Doug, Rani, Daniela, Anselm and Cye have contributed artwork to all three of the Hobbitozz/Progkp/Down Below albums. Dru, who did the cover, is the newest collaborator, but he also did the cover art for our Cubby Preachers 6 project (released two years ago on Cubby Control Records).
I love these artists, because not only are they very talented and create unique work, but they do it for the love of creating art. The way it works is I provide them with the lyrics and the storyline, provide them with unmastered versions of the songs, ask them to pick a song (or songs) that they’d like to illustrate, and leave it up to them to interpret in their own way. They never cease to amaze me.
With "Down Below World" now released, what's next musically for the band?
We actually have a sort of punk rock/post-punk side project we’re preparing to record. We’re not sure yet what we’re going to call it, but look out for it on Cubby Control Records in the next year.
As for REPTIEL, we have composed a prequel to the Hobbitozz/Progkp/Down Below series of albums called The Broadcaster, which is about a band that starts receiving strange radio signals through its amplifiers in their rehearsal space from an entity called The Broad caster, who is perhaps from another dimension, or from across space and time, and who provides instructions to the band to write songs about a distant world in order to save that world from destruction. But there are forces that don’t want the band to achieve its goal.
We haven’t yet begun recording the songs, but plan to resume rehearsing them soon and preparing them to record soon.
Back in 2009, as members of various Bay Area based bands, what led you to come together and form REPTIEL, and how would you describe the concept of "ritual musick" when creating new music?
Three of the members of REPTIEL (myself, Alec and Jason Y.) had been playing in The Druggles, so when our lead singer fled San Francisco in 2009 to live in an aluminum foil-lined cave in Saguaro National Park outside of Tucson (read more about that here: http://cubby.net/ccr/spacegodpills.html), The Druggles’ drummer also left the band. I had played in The Cubby Creatures with Jason G., and I knew he was no longer playing drums with Thee More Shallows, so I asked if he’d be interested in playing with myself, Alec and Jason Y. Alec suggested the name REPTIEL, which he saw in a dream, and here we are 5 albums later.
I alluded to our creative process, or the lack of a defined creative process, in the answer to the first question. But we do have means by which we stimulate creativeness, a process which we call “ritual musick.” The addition of the “k” in Crowleyian terms differentiates the practice from other types of music that are meant purely for entertainment.
Ritual musick recognizes music as a type of magick, something that is willed into existence from places deep inside our minds or souls (or maybe even beyond) that we would otherwise not have access to. I am not at liberty to convey the entirety of the rituals but I can say that they involve manipulating sound waves and vibrations; altering our minds in order to discover the stories imbedded in the substances we have ingested; finding ourselves in states of ecstasy or torment; chanting nonsense and singing in tongues; interpreting the visions received and converting them to music, sounds and lyrics that are able to be comprehended by other human minds.
Read our review of the “Down Below World” album HERE
Stream and Share “Down Below World” on Bandcamp
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