1) Gothic has been around for quite some time. How did you guys get together, and how did you go from death metal to the particular music you are playing right now?
(JMJ) This is actually one of the most difficult questions I have ever had to reply to. Well, Gothic Multimedia Project’s current and hopefully definite line-up is the resulting harvest of a progressive process, the music, represented by me, being the first but no longer the most important stone of this process in chronological order, followed by the graphic art and the programming, respectively embodied by David Bosch and John Ruin. The long and tortuous path from our “free death-gloom metal” roots to our current dark-avantgarde style is only a part of a more general progressive and radical transformation from the old Gothic status as a musical band to the current Gothic entity as a multimedia project. To be more precise, this obscure transformation is the painful reflection of a deep spiritual evolution and I mean the term “spiritual” as “human” and not as “religious”. A long and disquieting travel through the human darkness, enlightened by our inseparable inner demons.

2) Gothic is not a band, but a multimedia project. Can you define multimediaproject to our readers?
(JMJ) A gloomy and avant-garde ensemble expressing its art through music, poetry and graphic art at the same time, indivisibly and jointly by means of contemporary information technology. Music, poetry and graphic art are then the different faces of a single black diamond wrapped in the dreary cobwebs of technology. As I use to say, this particular peculiarity of the Gothic Multimedia Project will become way more evident and radical in our next works...

3) Gothic is not something that will perform live easily. Are there plans for any live performances?
(JMJ) If you mean concerts or things like that, my and our reply is always the same: no, we’re not interested in this old-fashioned way of performing. We guess there are more suitable ways of performing for a project which is supposed to be the avantgarde of the underground dark art movement, still preserving our misanthropic need of isolation from the “outern world”. Something very weird, dreary and shocking will happen some day. We aim to create and not to follow and if, as someone told us, this would mean we’re oozing pretentiousness, I can say: yes, we are.

(JR) We aim at building innovative multimedia experiences by means of music, poetry, graphics and computer science. This means that we are not interested in common representations schemas of our work (i.e., live concerts). From the first moment the actual incarnation of the Gothic Project came to be, it was clear that live performances would never be able to represent our "inner world", whose pale glimpses are to be shown in the next future...

4) Grim has been released two years ago. Are there plans for new music/art/video/et cetera?
(JMJ) Yes, of course. Since the release of “Grim” we have been working on our next opus. It will be a revolutionary work in the multimedia art field and on the other side it will push radically further the existing boundaries either of music and of art. But I have to shut up because in this context there are many looters ready to exploit new ideas from creative artists and so I could say no more than what it has been already said to our fans in our official website, sorry. Anyway I can tell you that it will be worth the wait, even if it won’t be released earlier than two years. It’s a too complex work to be released light-heartedly and so we want to take care of every detail in order to release something shocking and professional at the same time. We do realize that the extreme avant-garde contents of our future work will cost us an even greater loss of support but we are ready to afford that. We’re going toward an artistic suicide and we do know the price of that will be very high. By the way I think provocation and self-destruction are two “congenital” characteristics of the Gothic Multimedia Project: we don’t look for praises but for art self-realization. That being said, if some praises will come, they will be welcome, of course.

5) You have founded your own label/organization called Theatre de la Mort 08. Can you elaborate on that?
(JMJ) It’s properly a dark avant-garde multimedia art movement which is proposed to be the new lunatic asylum of the lost souls, the new hermitage of art heresy where the artists involved raise no walls among word, sound and image as combined and complementary forms of expressions. At the same time it’s the independent label which will release Gothic’s future works. To find out more about that, I advise you to read/watch/listen to the Manifesto of the Théâtre de la Mort 08 on Gothic’s official website

(DB) The Manifesto of the Tdm 08 is meant to be a kind of final result of the Gothic Multimedia Project’s researches in the field of the avant-garde art. It expresses our deep need, coming from years of art studies, to involve those artists who can share with us a common vision of art in some way. As far as the graphic art is concerned the Manifesto is a challenging endeavour to probe into those contemporary art tendencies which set themselves the ambitious target of going beyond the sheer painting or illustration in order to reach that dead end where any experimentation is over.

(JR) “Theatre de la Mort 08” is far more than a mere label or organization, in the common sense of the term. It is a philosophical and working framework which will constitute the basis of our future work. It provides liquid bridges between different art forms, actually music, poetry and graphics. In other words, it can be thought of as a multi-agent, multi-cultural and multi-media system where different souls coexist in order to build a microcosmos of total art.

6) In the beginning of CD1 you hear a woman's voice chanting 'Are you Gothic?' is that a astiche on 'Are you Morbid' from Celtic Frost?
(JMJ) I love provocations, especially when they hit the mark... Anyway I can reveal you that the female voice you heard comes from nowhere... pure digital existence...

7) I described Grim as an opera in two acts. Can you recognize that description?
(JR) Of course "Grim" can be classified as an opera divided into two acts, and this is true for several reasons. Nonetheless, after some time, you will start to recognize that there are some common and secret ideas underlying the main music and conceptual flow. I would like to spend a couple of words about the "third" act, i.e. the Grim multimedia CD. The multimedia CD - which was born as a funny side effect of the mastering process - represents one of the main steps towards what will be a real revolution within the next work. Even in its simplicity (and, in a sense, triviality) it embeds all the main ideas leading our artistic research: communion between art forms, use of new technologies, artificial experiences and interactivity.

8) I also described Grim as a soundtrack to a very dark movie. Is that also something you can recognize?
(DB) Yes even if “Grim” is meant to be something more: it’s the soundtrack of our very lives and, particularly, of a certain vision of life. We gaze at the “darkness” as a reality which is endlessly inside us and not something you can look at from the outside in order to feel “negative emotions”.

9) On your website I read that Testing Vault has joined Theatre de la Mort 08. What can Testing Vault add to your movement?
(JMJ) Testing Vault is a very challenging noise-industrial project from Italy, embodied by SAinT-dANi HAHAHA and experimenting with new noises, haunting drones, sick dialogues from old and obscure films. Furthermore Testing Vault has a very interesting visual side expressed through engravings which seem to come from a Dostojevskji’s nightmare... another frenzy fragment into the gloomy eye of the Théâtre de la Mort 08...

10) In my review I also described Grim as a Gesamtkunstwerk. Do you think that Grim would be categorized like that?
(DB) Yes, of course. That was our intention, at least. The concept of art we’re continuously looking for is the sublime union of all the art forms, including emotions, silence, gloom.

(JR) This term usually refers to performances encompassing music, theater, and visual arts. The Theatre de la Mort 08 Manifesto clarifies our vision of art: a philosophical and artistic revolt aimed at reaching the concept of "Gesamtkunstwerk", but in a new perspective. The novelty of our vision - which will be evident in the future - takes into account not only the superimposition between the different forms of art, but above all what is achieved by making them communicate and cooperate in order to conceptualize a common idea. In other words, we emphasize on the non-linearity of the process of combining different experiences, ideas and arts using information technology.

11) Some time ago you guys were putting together a kind of Anthology of the older Gothic material like Fleeing the Rainland and the older demo's. How is that work coming along?
(JMJ) The work is turning out to be more demanding than what we expected but we’re quite satisfied with the results we have gotten so far. We have totally re-engineered Gothic’s first three demos, “Into the Gothic Gloom” (1989), “Into the Deep Tartarus” (1990) and “Into the Cave” (1991) and we’re currently working on “Whispers from the Grave” (1992). The resulting sound is not that bad, on the contrary fairly good. You have to know that the original sound was not much better than that you can hear in the original demo of “Pure Fucking Armageddon” by Mayhem (with all respect to Mayhem, of course). Then the work to be done was huge and in this field John (Ruin) ‘s support has been of fundamental importance. Anyway this is not at all an Anthology: it’s supposed to be what we call an “Anti-box set” comprised of four cds, each one independent from the other still biographically consequent, whose “old” content will be in some way adapted to the multimedia essence of the current Gothic project.

(JR) The reengineering process is quite complex and demanding. Of course we are aware that it is not possible to achieve crystal clear sounds on recordings which are inherently "poor" in sound quality and low-fi. Anyway, its importance is manifold: first af all, it is a mandatory gift to the Gothic Project and to its fans in the world; second of all, it gives justice to the demos themselves, which can now reveal their evil nature with respect to the Gothic's history; finally, it is a necessary step towards the understanding of what Gothic will exhibit in the future.

12) You recently signed a deal with Rockdetector for the distribution of Grim. Yet on the other hand you don't want to commercialize your music. How do you see signing such a deal, which is meant to spread your music and, forgive me the expression, sell it.
(JMJ) Well, first of all we should start using the more comprehensive word “art” and not “music” (which is only a part of our work) when we’re talking about the Gothic Multimedia Project. Secondly, I thank you for this question because it gives me the opportunity to shed some light on this controversial topic: we have to distinguish the concept of “art content” and that of “audience”. I don’t think that an avantgarde content can’t be restricted to a close “élite” of enlightened people. Ok, Gothic’s art won’t never be addressed to huge masses because it’s something radically different from the so-called “mainstream” but it can reach many open-minded persons. How ? It’s evident that a web-site is not enough to such an ambitious aim. And then a distribution agreement which can preserve Gothic’s vital originality and spread Gothic’s art worldwide on the other side can be ONE of the keys to approach a wider audience. This is essentially the purpose of the deal with Rockdetector. It’s a great challenge to us. Avant-garde neither for an élite nor for all but for a wide number of open-minded people, still preserving Gothic’s distinctive characteristic: we make “art” only for ourselves and not in the wake of the trends of the moment.

(DB) We all agreed to sign this deal because we longed to make Gothic art known by all those who share our vision of the art. We’d like to set up an intellectual circle, an open (minded) circle I mean, and stimulate some form of debate about the essence of the art without losing our anti-commercial attitude. I think there’s no contradiction in this sense.

13) Would you consider working with a renowned producer, thus giving up a part of the sound of Gothic, but keeping the experimental character?
(JMJ) I can’t see how we could give up a part of our sound/art and keep our experimental character at the same time...

14) One of your inspirations is Tom G. Fischer of Celtic Frost. You have heard some tracks of their upcoming release Monotheist. What is your idea about these new songs?
(JMJ) Mind-blowing. I’m sheerly stunned because Celtic Frost have laid down the law in the extreme heavy metal once again, good sixteen years after their last proper album. And it’s not an easy thing to do, especially when you have already given so much fresh and new music to the world like that they released in the 80’s. No other band like Celtic Frost has managed to re-invent itself album after album, again and again, never resting on its laurels. In this respect I learned two great things from Mr. Fischer: first, change is synonymous with life; second, be a leader not a follower.

14) Anything left to say to our Dutch audience?
(DB) I’d like to thank the Dutch ppl for the attention they paid to our art during all this time, hoping that their support could go on when we’ll release our next works. As for me I’ll be open to any opinion, positive or negative, from any of you, since even any constructive criticism can help me and us all to grow, artistically speaking.

(JR) Your attention for the Gothic Multimedia Project is kindly appreciated. We are sure that we will reward it in the future with a shoking and revolutionary piece of art.

(JMJ) Over these years I found out that the Dutch people particularly and the Gothic Multimedia Project have a common characteristic: open-mindness. That’s great of you. Keep on this way, folks, and thanks for your support!

[Taken from: ROCKPORTAAL.NL - http://www.rockportaal.nl/]