1. To start things off, could you tell us a little bit about yourself outside of the music and how you ultimately found your way here?

Oh, that’s a complicated one! First of all, thank you so much for having me. I would say I was always very interested in music and also in everything that was a bit odd and dark. I grew up learning how to play the piano, listening mostly to pop and later hip hop music. It was only around 17/18 years old that I started listening to rock music and only in 2023 that I really started listening to Black Metal, thanks to friends who exposed me to it. Black and Doom Metal were a revelation for me and combined everything that I had always looked for in art and music. Only with Black Metal did I gain the courage to try to write my own music, far away from expectations and perfectionism.

2. Now that we know a little more about your background, can you tell us about Celestielle and what this project means to you personally? And when someone experiences Requiem for the first time, what do you hope they take away from it?

Celestielle really is my heart project. It has done so much for me, I don’t even know where to start. First of all, I started writing and recording this project completely on my own, in private. Only further into the process did I start to show my recordings to a few other people. It was an act of self-sufficiency to know that I had done all of this by myself. It was the first thing I ever created knowing that this product was the depth of me. Second, with Celestielle I created a figure that is bigger than me. A mother figure that might be more brave than I am in daily life and helps me embody emotions that are bigger than me. What I really hope people take away from this EP is a feeling of rage, catharsis, release and courage.

3. You’re the composer behind all of the music on Requiem. I’d love to know a little more about your song writing process. When you sit down to create a track, where does the process usually begin? Do you start with a riff or chord progression, a lyrical or conceptual idea, or does it tend to develop differently from song to song?

Since this was the first time I had ever seriously started writing music, it was just a natural process of trying things out. I started out by writing guitar riffs without knowing what the vocals would bring yet. I didn’t write this with the intention of making it a big deal and going on stage at some point. It was just for me. I wasn’t even aware that I would choose clean vocals at that point. With the vocals and lyrics, I mostly just sat down and improvised melodies, almost speaking gibberish. Later, I would see if anything sounded like words and bring some sense into it. Pretty quickly, I came to the conclusion that REQUIEM was supposed to be a concept EP based on patriarchal issues and things that were happening around me at that time. I felt furious, hopeless, just angry at the world. Celestielle helped me encapsulate that rage in a form of metaphorical violence.

4. I’d be keen to know a little about the guitars you used to record Requiem. I’m a massive fan of how punchy and prominent the power chords are, and I’ve been playing along to them recently. What was your guitar and software setup for achieving that sound?

Thank you so much! Well, I am not really a guitar nerd when it comes to gear and all that, so I kept it simple. Besides CRUCIFY HIM, which I played on an Ibanez Gio guitar, I recorded everything on my beloved Ibanez Jiva Jr. For the sounds, I used the Neural DSP Gojira preset on the default setting with a bit of extra reverb. The rest is the magic of Julian Hirschmüller’s work on the mix and master!