1. Why did you name your band Gothic? Don’t you or didn’t you expect a whole lot of trouble when you choose this name, because for a lot of people Gothic is a lifestyle?
(James Jason) Oh, first of all, if I should care about what people think, mean or want about/from us, I’d have never dared to create a bold project like Gothic. Secondly the term “Gothic” is actually something more than a lifestyle, black clothes and some nasty make-up: it’s a deep mark of darkness and grief you have to bear and grow forever inside in the most hidden folds of your soul. Back in 1989, when Gothic uttered their early mournful wails, such a word was absolutely unusual in the heavy/extreme music universe: I myself thought “Gothic” as a historical, architectural and literary term but not at all as a musical one. After us, the famous Paradise Lost album (1991) drove three bands to choose this same moniker between 1992 and 1994, but we were already a solid, mature band having its own special and pretty inimitable identity. Finally, according to my personal “weltaanschaung”, “Gothic” represents a way to feel and I couldn’t change it only since nowadays it’s a trendy word: my/our deepest emotions are not for sale, sorry...

2. You transformed from a death-gloom metal band into a more avant-garde/ electro/ jazzy experimental band. When did you realize that the death-gloom metal wasn’t enough to express your feelings and why did you decide to create the music you make nowadays?
(JJ) There are three peculiarities which distinguish Gothic from all the other bands: firstly, Gothic are a dark avant-garde multimedia project of music, poetry and figurative arts (drawings, video and programming); moreover, we don’t aim at being signed under any label, reaching success, making money and so on because, after 15 years of activity, we are still faithful to our early self-promises: to preserve the sombre purity of those inner demons who still represent our main source of inspiration from music biz’s corruption. They, just they condemn us not to repeat ourselves; therefore not only every Gothic release was, is and will always be different from the previous one but the same goes for every single song which can’t be even remotely similar to another track featured in the same album. Please, remember that Gothic embodied many musical/artistic visions already before the release of Grim: grindin’ death-gloom metal mainly performed by keyboards instead of guitars (1989-1991), death-doomish-punk metal (1991-1993), doom metal performed by synthesizers (1993-1994 !), gothic-speed (1994-1995), art-dark rock (1995-1997), gothic-prog metal(1997-2000), and tons of neoclassical, free-jazz, hard-groove, techno-jungle, experimental, etc songs/riffs/arrangements with some hints of dark psychedelia here and there. That means we have changed musical/artistic approach release after release so far, constantly but without any rational plan, and even often drastically, as proved by the shocking transmutation from Fleeing the Rainland (2000) to Grim (2004). We have finally landed at darkwave’s marshland with our last album, Grim, mainly because of the deep change of Gothic’s lyrics, which are no more metaphorical tales, but hermeneutical poetries expressing the glooms inside the contemporary human being...

3. About “Grim”, your latest release. Why did you decide to make “Grim” such a massive product (2CD, video, bio, lyrics, pictures)?
(JJ) “Grim” is something more than a mere musical album: it’s a complex collection of songs, plays, sounds, poetries, words, drawings, images, informations and different suggestions: it’s the final product of that unholy Trinity of imagination (poetry), hearing (music) and sight (pictures and video) combined together by the hallucinated seal of our lunatic creativity by means of modern technology (programming). Gothic are now a 100% multimedia project and no more a “simple” band, even if this distinctive feature will be more and more extreme, and then evident, in the next future. As David Bosch would say, we have been becoming more and more unable to distinguish the different expressions of art for some time, therefore we aim to create total art where our different artistic perceptions can melt in a unique, inimitable expression.

4. There was one thing that really annoyed me, the long empty space in the end of both CDs. Why did you decide to put those ghost tracks on both CDs, doesn’t it ruin the feeling that both CDs belong together?
(JJ) Annoyed or maybe distressed, you meant? The most distressing sound in this world of the living is just the silence ‘cuz it’s too painful to listen to (for the most people): it recalls the void of the oblivion better than any other existing sound... The silence means “absence of life”, exactly like the black colour means “absence of light” and, then again, in one word: only... pure... death... But there’s a more subtle and important reason for that long silence between the last numbered track and the ghost track in both the Acts Grim is composed by: I’m talking about the meaning of the numbers 75 and 90, where you can listen to “Feed my Frenzy” and “Am I... ?” (the two ghost tracks). That’s only one of the 6 mysteries scattered in Grim. The others concern respectively a visual detail featured in the Forlorn video, a message inserted in Feed my frenzy itself, the hidden meaning of the background noise in “Integrationsstatus: Negativ (?!?), the real meaning of ”... Poichè... la Morte... è sulle colline…” (=”As… Death… is on the hills…” - too grievous and dreadful to be revealed...) and, finally, the real role interpreted by the two actors in “Noir (Czarny)” (=”Black”). It’s up to you, now...

5. Different poets for “Grim” inspired you, can you tell us more about that?
(JJ) My poetic language belongs to the “splinters of gloom I cry deep inside myself day after day (=night after night)”. Very general landmarks of this hermeneutical style I use can be found in the “Ermetismo” (early ‘900 Italian school of obscure poetry), in the new Anglo-American free association of words, in the poetry of the “crepuscolari” (late ‘750 Italian school of poetry of pain), currently combined with a more and more strong influence coming from those different expressions of “the avant-garde literary movements”, first above all the post-futurist movement, though my poetic roots lie in the most claustrophobic lines handed down to posterity by the “cursed French poets”. Having been said that, of course when I’m writing, my only real influence is simply “James Jason”.

6. You have done a lot by yourself concerning Gothic, are you happy with the band situation that you have now, or do you prefer to work more alone in the future?
(JJ) I am absolutely satisfied with the current line-up, really the best ever in Gothic’s history. I can count on a terrific degreed designer, David Bosch, and on an awesome sound engineer, John Ruin, who’s also a genial professional programmer: they both have artistic visions very close to mine and their support has been and will be more and more essential in order to realize my greatest ambition so far: to make Gothic an avant-garde multimedia project in the darkwave field, known and appreciated worldwide. Besides that, nowadays I’m lucky enough to have the stable support from one of the most talented guitar-hero I have ever met: Davy Jones, jazz-guitar teacher and academical concert artist, as well as old Gothic member...

7. What are your plans for the near future? Are you planning a tour or do you prefer to work on another release in the studio?
(JJ) My early choice to make Gothic a studio project without any live appearance is dictated at the present time, as well as it was in the past, by two sorts of reasons: the halo of mystery and darkness around the “Gothic entity” we want to keep unsullied in its grim purity and the crude fact that we’d need many musicians, actors, maybe even dancers (in homage to the Japanese culture of the avant-garde ballet) and, generally, a massive outfit in order to perform the very complex multimedia art of Gothic. And, as always, I’m not really prone to compromise by nature... We’re currently taking care of the re-engineering process of the previously limited released Gothic demos from “Fleeing the Rainland” (2000) backwards to the terrific “Into the Gothic Gloom” (1989): that ‘cause we don’t want at all to forget or deny our past, as we were told by some old fans, but, on the contrary we intend to show to the “outer world” from where we started when we had not absolutely any kind of outfit and technical means to express ourselves and who Gothic had been before they became a darkwave avant/garde band. At the same time we have begun the long and distorted path that will lead us to release our next album not earlier than three years... there will be nothing similar you’ll be able to listen to until then... in few words, it will represent a shocking re-vo-lu-tion in music’s history and so a real artistic suicide for the Gothic project... the existing boundaries of darkwave and avant-garde music will be definitively swept away!

8. How is the situation in Italy for experimental music? Are there a lot of venues to play?
(JJ) I’m not very interested in the Italian experimental scene because I feel to belong neither to any kind of nation nor to any kind of musical movement. I recognize there are many worthy experimental musicians/artists here in Italy but I sincerely don’t know whether the current situation is better or worse than elsewhere: I prefer to keep Gothic an entity apart from every national scene and from any musical branch. We are simply a project, not an Italian or a electro-goth project, if you understand what I mean. At most, we could say we are currently part of the overall darkwave European movement but, again, I’m not so sure if we’ll be remaining in this artistic “port” for a long time: Gothic are a perpetuum mobile and just EVERY change of artistic/musical direction is possible, so...

9. If you had one wish for Gothic, you would wish that?
(JJ) I’d wish people and medias could finally appreciate our brave, willful choice to keep Gothic an “unsigned project”, independent from the music biz in the truest sense of the word, not thinking about it as a fault or a blemish of ours but, on the contrary, as one of our major highlights...

10. If people are interested in “Grim”, where and how can they order it?
(JJ) Everyone who wishes to grab the “Grim” album should simply email us his/her data (name, surname, address, zip code and country) at order@gothicdimension.com. You can choose to pay (7 euro + postage) either by bank transfer or by an old fashioned registered letter. Of course we’ll immediately take care of forwarding you our bank or postal data.

11. Something you always wanted to say, but never was asked…
(JJ) “Noir” (Czarny), the “play-track” acted in French, is the first part of a concept trilogy dedicated to the different colours of mankind’s inner demons; this trilogy aims to be the musical/theatrical answer to that renowned film trilogy (“Trois couleurs”), written and directed by Krzysztof Kieslowski (1993-94), one of my major artistic influences. That proves, once again, the deep multimedia essence of the Gothic project. Thanks a lot for your support and my darkest greetz to all those (very many, indeed) Dutch goths who, both in art and in music, aren’t afraid of changes.

[Taken from: GOTHTRONIC – http://www.gothtronic.com]