Inside the Soundworld of One Velvet Winter: An Interview with Stef Kohler
Stef Kohler, the visionary behind One Velvet Winter, moves effortlessly through the haunted borderlands of sound and silence.
His work feels intimate, spectral, and immense, grounded in a personal search for beauty within decay. Drawing from influences as far apart as Morton Feldman, Deathspell Omega, the Carpenters, and Red House Painters, his music inhabits a rare intersection where slowcore melancholy dissolves into modern classical abstraction.
One Velvet Winter operates as a living organism that breathes the residue of forgotten records and spectral dreams. Each release unfolds like a lost film soundtrack, drenched in atmosphere and suspended time. The textures he constructs are fragile yet monumental, marked by layers of guitar feedback, decaying pianos, and whispers that dissolve into static.
Beneath the surface abstraction lies warmth, a quiet devotion to the smallest surviving embers of life. Kohler writes music that listens back, that waits for stillness to return before it reveals itself. One Velvet Winter becomes a state of mind, it actually becomes a meditation on what endures when time slows and the noise finally falls away.
“Music, and especially dark and heavy music, was a way I dealt with things.”
Let’s get the elephant in the room out of the way first. You cut your teeth in the Dutch metal scene with Defender, a different beast entirely from One Velvet Winter. Can you take us back to those early metal days? What were the core impulses driving you then, and how did that experience, in all its intensity, shape the musician you are today? Were there subtle threads of the experimental Stef Köhler already present, even amidst the shredding?
Stef Kohler: Hi Klemen, Well, first, thank you so much for this interview and the interest in the music of One Velvet Winter!
From a very young age I was already interested in music. I was born in 1971, and my interest in music started at the age of six or seven, exploring the record collection of my parents (which was very small and, to be honest, not very good). In 1978 I saw the movie “Grease” a couple of times, and I really liked the music, especially ‘Greased Lightnin’.’ That song and ‘Rhinestone Cowboy’ by Glen Campbell I just played over and over again (still a huge fan of Glen Campbell). A little later I heard songs like ‘Running with the Devil’ by Van Halen and of course ‘I Was Made for Loving You’ by Kiss on the radio, and that really sparked my interest in hard rock. So, in the early eighties I was exploring and really getting into bands like Motörhead, Judas Priest, AC/DC, Iron Maiden, Diamond Head, Saxon, Raven, Deep Purple, Rainbow, Thin Lizzy, Black Sabbath, Ozzy Osbourne, and many more. I started making cardboard guitars, and with some friends we were “play backing” all the songs we liked. When I heard a live version of ‘Crazy Train’ by Ozzy Osbourne in 1982 (from a bootleg) I was totally blown away by the guitar work from Randy Rhoads, and I knew I wanted something like that in the future.
Somewhere in ’84 a friend suggested that we should take guitar lessons, and so we did. I practiced like crazy, not because I had to, but because I liked it so much. Fast forward to 1986, a friend of my sister’s boyfriend was a roadie for a band called Defender. They were looking for a new guitarist, and he had heard that I played guitar and asked me if I would like to audition for Defender. I was a huge fan of Defender; I had their demo and had seen them live a couple of times. Of course, I thought he was taking the piss out of me, because I had not even played the guitar for two years. But he was serious and asked me to study the songs on the demo, and he would visit me in a couple of weeks. So, I practiced like hell, he came and listened, and arranged the audition. All I really wanted was to meet the guys in Defender, because to a 15-year-old kid it was like meeting the guys in Metallica or Iron Maiden.
I was nervous as hell, but I played the songs with them, starstruck, and I thought that was that. The guys left me in the rehearsal room, went outside to talk, came back after some time, and told me I got the job. I could not believe it, of course.
From 1986 until 1990 it was a roller coaster ride for a kid like me. I practiced a lot, and playing with other people and playing live really gives your skills a boost.
From the mid-eighties on, the musical landscape in metal changed rapidly; so many different styles were developing, and I soon drifted towards the more technical, experimental, and proggy side of things. I started getting into bands like Fates Warning, Queensryche, Cacophony, Watchtower, etc.
Defender started out as a more “traditional” heavy/speed metal band; by the end of the eighties we got a little more technical and proggy. When I got better at playing, I also wanted to explore more technical and weird stuff.
After your time in Defender, there is a significant shift in your musical output. What was the catalyst for moving away from a more traditional metal sound? Was it a conscious decision to explore new sonic territories, or more of an organic evolution driven by different artistic curiosities? How challenging was it to shed the expectations that might have come with your metal background?
After Defender disbanded somewhere in 1990, I was not sure what I wanted to do musically. I was still very much into metal but also became more interested in other musical styles. I really got into progressive music from the seventies with bands like Yes, Rush, Genesis, ELP, and the like. I tried a couple of different new bands, but nothing really worked out. As a person I started changing too. From a very young age I was getting to grips with sometimes very dark periods in my upbringing. As a young kid and later in my teens my mother was struggling with long periods of depression. When I was six or seven, she was committed to a mental institution for the first time. When she came back things would be “normal” again, then after a couple of months things started going downhill again, and the whole process of being committed, coming back, institution, etc. started over again.
Music, and especially dark and heavy music, was a way I dealt with things. It gave solace and direction in a sometimes unsafe place. Defender was a great outlet. We practiced twice a week, hung out, or played gigs on the weekends; it was a great way of coping, although I did not realize it at the time. When I was eighteen my mother was permanently committed into a mental hospital, of course a tragic situation for my mother, but also some relief for my father, my sister, and me.
I am not telling this as a sort of sob story; everyone must deal with difficult situations in their life, and especially when those situations occur in your childhood, at one point or another you must deal with them later in your life. But I guess it explains why I got interested in more dark music as a way to express myself, and that does have an effect on your playing.
When I was in my early twenties, a darker period arrived for me. I was getting very serious, more withdrawn, and at some point I quit my education as a social worker, did not want to see people, and wanted to stay in bed all day. I got diagnosed with chronic depression as well, and I was very scared and worried that I had inherited the same DNA from my mother and that this was it for me. I eventually overcame this first “existential crisis,” got back to school, traveled for seven months in India, China, Russia, and Nepal, and when I got back, I started a new band.
For me, this first existential crisis, which lasted about a year and a half, changed everything in how I wanted to express myself through music.
In the early nineties I slowly drifted away from metal, and I did not really listen to metal again until the mid 2000s. Instead, I started exploring all kinds of other styles of music, a lot of indie and slowcore bands like Low, Red House Painters, Idaho, Codeine, Afghan Whigs, and Dinosaur Jr.
I also got really into psychedelic music from the sixties, starting with early Pink Floyd and of course the Beatles and the Stones. My first trip through India in ’96 and ’97 really opened beautiful vistas for me; I immediately fell in love with classical Indian music from day one. I had a cassette player, some speakers, and bought about twenty or thirty tapes of all kinds of different Indian artists. I especially fell in love with the sitar and took some beginner class lessons in Varanasi in ’97.
Musically I really wanted to play slow, melancholic, and also classical inspired music, something that reflected what I felt inside. I still liked loud music, but more simplistic, open chords with distortion, that kind of stuff. A good friend of mine who also played in this new band was really into classical music, and he introduced me to favorites of his like Debussy, Ravel, Mahler, Berg, Zemlinsky, Schoenberg, Wagner, etc.
I absorbed it all and still do to this day. With this newfound love for classical music, I started exploring the classical guitar, took some lessons, and to this day it is still one of my favorite pastimes.
So, to answer your question, haha, it was a very gradual transformation, slowly absorbing all there is to find musically. It was not hard to shed expectations because to me they came so naturally, but I did become a little estranged from the friends and musicians from the metal scene.
Your previous monumental work, ‘The Leftovers of Hope,’ truly feels like a sprawling, almost encyclopedic exploration of disparate genres. It is five hours of music that ranges from classical guitar to sitars, doom to avant garde. What was the conceptual starting point for that beast of an album? Was it a deliberate attempt to break down genre barriers, or more a natural outpouring of your diverse musical interests at that time?
‘The Leftovers of Hope’ is indeed a lot to take in, but I guess it is just something I had to make. It was kind of a way to get closure and deal with things from the past. Maybe that sounds a little melodramatic, but it is the best way I can describe it.
From the mid-nineties onward I was still not at ease with myself, struggling with depression and anxiety. There were a couple of long periods where I had to quit work, stayed home, was chain smoking, and was just lying on the couch the whole day. Then in 2009 I was committed into a psychiatric hospital for some months. I did still play of course, that kind of kept me going (I wrote parts of ‘The Leftovers of Hope’ while I was in the hospital), but I did not really know how to focus and get something done. After I got out it still took me a couple of years to get my life back on track. I lost my job, I was living together with my then girlfriend, and that also fell apart. I was very lucky to have a good friend (Bart) whom I also played with in Defender, and he gave me a job working with plants and flowers, which was exactly what I needed at the time. Working outside a lot, getting my hands dirty, and just doing some physical work. I still work there, now also coaching people who cannot work regular jobs. Slowly I came out of a depression that had lasted for years. I went back to live with my dad for some time, and he was also very supportive and patient with me. From 2013 onward I started writing like crazy, still focusing on melancholic pieces, but I was also trying to find a way to deal with all the dissonance I had experienced, literally and especially mentally. What I wrote basically became part of ‘The Leftovers of Hope.’ Especially disc one and two of the album are very dark, psychedelic, experimental, and dissonant, reflecting the periods I described.
I started schooling myself in home studio recording, and all those years I focused on getting the album out that eventually became ‘The Leftovers of Hope.’ I wanted this album to encapsulate my musical explorations, feelings, and developments from the mid-nineties onward. I had already recorded a classical guitar piece called ‘Im Abendrot,’ which I dedicated to my sister who passed away in 2003 from a brain tumor. I wanted that to be on an album; it had been lying around for years, and I thought that was a shame. There were also some other recordings I had made with previous bands or by myself that were collecting dust. For example, we made some recordings with Jos Duyst. He sang in some projects, and we became friends. Unfortunately, Jos took his own life in 2017, and to pay tribute to him I really wanted some of the songs on which he sang to be included on this album, among them ‘Day Is Done’ by Nick Drake, who was one of our favorites. I guess that in the end I just wanted all this music collected on one album so I could look back on all these years and feel that eventually something good had come out of it.
Of course, things were not all bad during those years. Before you think I am some sort of miserable person who suffers from the “tortured musician syndrome”.
I played a lot and started studying classical guitar in the nineties, and I still do to this day. I also went on a couple of trips for some months to India, took sitar lessons, and bought a couple of sitars. My interest in classical music is still very much alive today, as is my interest in all kinds of obscure psychedelic music from the sixties and seventies. My roots have always been hard rock and metal, and my interest in metal slowly returned in the mid 2000s. So on ‘The Leftovers of Hope’ you will find an amalgam of classical (guitar) music, metal, Indian classical music, experimental and avant garde stuff, psychedelia, slowcore, etc.
So, I guess it was a natural outpouring of musical interests and personal things.
Both ‘The Leftovers of Hope’ and now ‘Jesus in Dystopia’ are incredibly ambitious, lengthy releases. What is your creative process like when embarking on such vast projects? Do you map out the entire journey beforehand, or is it more of an organic, evolving process where themes and sounds reveal themselves as you go? And how do you maintain creative momentum over such extended periods?
I guess it is a combination of both things. Most of the time I start with writing pieces for classical guitar, then I take themes and ideas from those pieces, and they will develop into electric pieces, or I combine the two. The process usually develops quite naturally for me. Thematically there are always threads that lead the way, so I do map out some things beforehand, but they change constantly depending on where those threads lead me. Thankfully the creative momentum is kind of always there; one idea leads to the next and so on. I guess it is also my pitfall, and although many ideas or sketches do not make it, as you have noticed, I have some problems with keeping things short hahaha.
But that is the way it is and the way I like it. I am not making music for commercial purposes. If one or two people like what I do, that is great of course, but the premise is always: “What would I like to hear?”
One Velvet Winter is mostly a solo project. What do you enjoy and find difficult about working alone on such detailed music? Does it help you share your vision more clearly, or do you sometimes miss working with a band?
One Velvet Winter started out as a solo project and it kind of stays “my” project, but over the last couple of years I worked a lot with some good friends of mine, Jos and Tim, who both also play guitar and have written music for ‘Jesus in Dystopia.’
But indeed, I enjoy working alone, especially when I am writing and practicing classical guitar pieces. Writing and studying them takes a lot of time. I work four days a week, and I live alone with my cat, and most of my free time (evenings and weekends) goes into music. I really love to dive deep into all kinds of details. For me that works best when I am alone and not distracted.
I started One Velvet Winter as a solo studio project because my musical interests and influences are very broad. In a band it is very uncommon to have all those styles combined, because you will always have different opinions and tastes. I do not play live anymore, so I do not have to worry about “Can we pull this off live?” This way I can really focus on what I like to make and combine everything that interests me.
Of course, I miss playing live sometimes, the energy, the interplay, the volume. It is great, but for me it is more important to keep creating and to get all the music and ideas out of my head. And apart from that, over the years I developed a bad case of stage fright, and I do not really feel comfortable with being in the spotlights, so I am quite happy with the way I have given things shape for now.
Let’s get into the new opus. ‘Jesus in Dystopia’ – the title alone is loaded. What was the initial spark, the core idea, that ignited this philosophical and musical journey? Was it a single event, a culmination of observations, or a more abstract meditation that led you down this path?
In 2018 and 2019 I started writing the classical guitar pieces which are used as interludes between the electric music. I was and still am very interested in all things religious, spiritual, and occult. I consider myself an “agnostic nihilist.” I think our lives are pretty pointless (in the grand scheme of things). We are terrified by the idea that everything will end, so we invent all kinds of things to deal with this brutal fact. But you never know; I like to keep the “door open,” hence the adjective “agnostic.” I mean, there very well could be something supernatural. I do not know.
So, I came up with the idea of Jesus returning to earth, and after seeing what humans are capable of, He decides to become a nihilist, seeing no point in “saving them.” Initially the title was ‘When Jesus Nearly Drowned,’ which became a song on the album.
But then, in 2020, of course Covid happened.
The concept of the album stayed the same, and now Jesus also observes all the absurdities that are displayed before Him because of Covid.
The album talks about “big data, manipulation, fear, and the need to control.” How did you turn these heavy ideas into the music across the five CDs? Did you use certain sounds, instruments, or methods to create a feeling of a dystopian future?
I used a lot of dissonant chord structures to create a feeling of unease. That was kind of the base of some of the most dystopian-sounding parts or songs. On pieces like for example ‘Hexakosioihexekontahexaphobia,’ ‘God of Numbers,’ or ‘The Kali Yuga,’ there are very dissonant chord structures in some parts. Maybe the most dystopian-sounding pieces are the ones I called ‘The Kovid Kvlt.’ There you also find a lot of soundbites from “talking heads” in the media spouting fear. Apart from the dissonant chords, there are a lot of keyboards, “found sounds,” and psychedelic sound effects in the songs which can create a truly dystopian atmosphere. Most of the heavy guitars are tuned pretty low, which of course also adds to the oppressive and heavy feel on the album.
The idea of Jesus in a dystopian world is very powerful. Is Jesus shown as a real person, a symbol of hope or resistance, or maybe an ironic contrast to the control you talk about? How do you see His role in the story you created?
Well, conform to the Covid storyline, Jesus returns as a black bat (the classical pieces) where He soars over the world and observes. Then in a lot of the songs you can hear what He has to say about what He encountered during His flights. According to the story on the album, He came back because after His slumber for over 2000 years, people are screaming out again, begging for His help. So, this time He decides to go back and see for Himself what is going on. Pretty soon He finds out that there is no hope for mankind and decides to become a nihilist Himself.
‘Jesus in Dystopia’ is called an “absurdist journey.” How does absurdity show up in the music and story? Is it a way to cope, a critique, or something else, given the serious themes you are exploring?
I guess you could say all of the above for me and some of the guys who worked with me on this album.
The absurdity of course shows up everywhere; Jesus, the omnipotent being, deciding to become a nihilist is of course absurd in itself. Although I respect everyone’s beliefs if they do not try to impose them on others, it is also kind of a critique on institutionalized religion and the gullibility of people. That kind of was my starting point for the album. There are also the more philosophical musings on absurdism as represented by Albert Camus. In his book The Myth of Sisyphus he focuses on the fundamental conflict between humanity’s innate desire for meaning and the universe’s apparent meaninglessness.
When Covid came along, I was just amazed at what was happening to people in general and especially friends around me. As you can tell, I was and still am very critical of the official narrative, so for me this album was a way to deal with the anger, disbelief, frustration, and all the absurd situations I encountered. So, it was definitely a way to cope and of course a sharp critique of the narrative.
Through fear and suffering people will obey, and because of this they want to be guided. Then they will do the most horrible things to people who are critical of the narrative, because it is the so-called “right thing to do.” With Covid I saw that happening within a few weeks. That is powerful and very scary stuff.
Your guitar playing is praised for being both “dazzling” and rough. How do you use the guitar in your songs? Is it for melody, texture, or maybe like a character in the dystopian story? What gear did you use to get those different sounds?
For me music is the most important thing in life, and I am glad I got and took the opportunity to play guitar. When I was young, I wanted to become really good and focused a lot on playing fast. In the eighties I listened a lot to all the great guitar heroes like of course Randy Rhoads (who is still my favorite guitar player), Uli Jon Roth, Marty Friedman, Jason Becker, Eddie Van Halen, Frank Aresti, Vinnie Moore, Al Di Meola, and many others. Of course, I never became quite as good as them, not by far, but they were and still are a great inspiration. In my own playing I try to reach the limits of what I can play, not all the time of course, to keep things interesting. But I guess melody in solos is a very important one for me, not just playing a lot of notes, but trying to tell a story maybe.
When I write classical guitar pieces, I try to work with recurring themes but played differently. Since I started listening to classical music, my approach to guitar playing and writing music in general changed a lot. I do not necessarily think in “song structures” all the time, more in themes and leitmotifs. That is probably why a lot of the pieces I write nowadays are quite long. When combining classical and electric guitar, you can come up with something very interesting and maybe something different in the end.
In both the albums you will find a lot of themes and leitmotifs returning on different tracks. I really like to write thematically because if you have one idea, melody, or theme, there are hundreds of ways to approach them. That is what I really like to do, and that is probably why the albums are so long. Commercially that is probably not the smartest thing to do haha.
In the nineties I also started listening to a lot of indie and slowcore, and I guess that also changed my approach to writing and listening. There you find much more simple structures, and it made me realize that you do not have to play technical stuff all the time to keep things interesting; creating a mood or atmosphere is just as challenging as coming up with some difficult chord structures. For example, I love the guitar style of Neil Young, very rudimentary when it comes to his guitar solos. A good example would be his solo on ‘Like a Hurricane,’ absolutely beautiful.
I am not a big gear nerd, but I love the strange sounds of some of the stomp boxes I acquired over the years. I do not really care too much about the brands, etc. If it sounds good, then I am happy. For most of the heavy guitar parts on ‘Jesus in Dystopia’ I used the Mesa Boogie Caliber 50 amp that I still have from my Defender days. Nowadays there are also some really good plug-ins that you can use for some nice guitar sounds. I am not a purist where everything must be analog.
Both ‘The Leftovers of Hope’ and ‘Jesus in Dystopia’ come as detailed box sets with lots of artwork and booklets. How important are these physical parts to your art? Do they add to the music or give a new way to understand it?
The artwork and presentation are very important. To me this is inseparable from the music. In classical music you had this concept of “gesamtkunst,” which aims to synthesize multiple art forms such as music, drama, poetry, dance, and visual design into a single, unified aesthetic experience. The presentation definitely adds to the atmosphere of the music and certainly helps to understand it better. After the music is finished, I spend a lot of time and effort creating something to present the music with.
After putting so much into ‘Jesus in Dystopia,’ what is next for Stef Kohler and One Velvet Winter? Do you feel relief, or has this project opened new paths? Are there new themes or sounds you are thinking about, or are you just letting this big work settle for now?
There was certainly relief after ‘Jesus in Dystopia’ was finally finished. Although my views alienated me from some people, it was something I just had to create to deal with this crazy period. And it also opened some new paths indeed. I started working more with Jos (Commandeur), who also co-wrote some stuff on ‘Jesus in Dystopia.’
The last two years or so we started working on a new album together, which is about 90 percent finished, and it will be called ‘Thirteen Parched Scrapings at a Mausoleum Portal.’ This time we got the inspiration from old seventies and eighties horror movies and the writings of H. P. Lovecraft and Thomas Ligotti. There is a lot of horror soundtrack inspired stuff on the album, combined with heavy, doomy, and psychedelic music. We hope to release this album next year. It will probably be one vinyl album and one CD in one package.
With some of my old Defender friends I am also working on a more progressive metal album. Remco (the drummer) is currently working on the drum tracks, and most of the guitar parts are already recorded. Simon, the singer of Defender, will sing all the songs. This year Hammerheart Records released a reissue of our 1987 album City ad Mortis with some extra tracks from that period but recently recorded. This time it will be a more progressive album recorded with the same guys.
Over the last two years I have also been writing new classical guitar pieces which I am currently practicing. This will probably be a more experimental album where I will eventually cut up and combine the classical stuff with experimental electric stuff. First, I must master the pieces, which I am working on currently. At the end of the year, I will be heading back to India for two months to travel and intensely practice the music of ‘The Lost Art of Twilight,’ which is currently the working title. When I come back, I hope I can play them well enough so I can record them.
I have also been working on and off on a more traditional indie and slowcore album, which is about 75 percent finished.
So, still a lot to do and a lot of work in progress. Never a dull moment.
If you would visit me, what records would we play? Surprise me!
That’s a tough one, so many great albums I could mention… I’ll give it a go. This list will be in no particular order, since my “top 10” albums change from day to day… It actually became a list of over 30 albums (!?) and I really had to stop myself there, this is so much fun to do! I could go on and on.
Here we go, some of my favourites…
Red House Painters: ‘Down Colorful Hill’ (1992)
A gamechanger for me, this one, very morose, sparse and dark. This album made me want to dive deep into the so-called “slowcore” scene. I picked it up in ’94.
Ozzy Osbourne: ‘Diary of a Madman’ (1981)
Very well known of course, one of my favourite albums of all time, all killer songs and the guitar work of Randy Rhoads was and is a huge inspiration for me. We did a cover with some of the Defender guys of “Diary of a Madman,” which ended up on the first One Velvet Winter album.
Codeine: ‘The White Birch’ (1994)
Just a masterpiece, so slow, so sad and melancholic…
Cold Sun: ‘Dark Shadows’ (1970)
A very weird and psychedelic record, it has that 13th Floor Elevators Texan feel, but to my ears they take it up a notch. Fuzz guitars, strange song structures and that autoharp!
Riz Ortolani: ‘Cannibal Holocaust Soundtrack’ (1980)
The movie made a huge impact on me when I was in my teens, still does… But the music, oh man, this is so beautiful at times and of course dark and scary… But the really beautiful music with those horrible images, wow, what a find… When I bought the reissue on vinyl some years ago, it kind of sparked the fire to record some sort of horror soundtrack myself.
Kenn Wannberg/Rick Wilkins: ‘The Changeling Soundtrack’ (1980)
Another fantastic movie and soundtrack, very eerie at times with those strange choirs and of course the spooky melancholy which is almost there the entire time. I listened to this a lot when I was writing and recording ‘The Leftovers of Hope.’
Ruth White: ‘Flowers of Evil’ (1968)
Absolutely love this strange album… The poetry of Charles Baudelaire’s Flowers of Evil recited over some strange bed of moogs, synthesizers and found sounds… very spooky, and a huge inspiration for ‘The Leftovers of Hope.’
Carpenters: ‘Ticket to Ride’ (first released as ‘Offering’ in 1969)
I am a huge Carpenters fan, love all their albums but this one is very special to me. Karen Carpenter is my favourite female singer; the melancholy and depth in her voice is something I have never heard in any other female vocalist.
It still has that late 60’s vibe, doesn’t have the big hits and you can even feel a hint of psychedelia still there… Absolutely beautiful cover of Neil Young’s ‘Nowadays Clancy Can’t Even Sing.’
Paul Williams: ‘Someday Man’ (1970)
To me an absolute masterpiece of baroque pop, every song is so good. Paul Williams was the guy who co-wrote some songs for the Carpenters. This album has that Carpenter/Bacharach kind of melancholy to it that I love so much, maybe the “perfect” pop album?
Stan Hubbs: ‘Crystal’ (1982)
“A committed stoner retreats to a cabin among the California redwoods and commits to tape a psych-sludge masterpiece” is what I read somewhere. I love this album so much, it’s so weird but also so beautiful. Not weird in a “strange music” sense… But the deadpan vocals of Stan combined with the female vocals are just out of this world.
Justen O’Brien and Jake: ‘Time Will Tell’ (1978)
Another gem from the seventies; some sort of spacey, lounge rock record. Very DIY but it sounds very good. Hard to describe the feel; very melancholic and world-weary at times. The guy isn’t the best singer, but it works so well to my ears. He has a bit of a Scott Walker seventies feel to him…
Trouble: ‘The Skull’ (1985)
An absolute doom masterpiece, I bought this album when it just came out and it cemented my love for doom metal. Although this is nowhere near as heavy as what doom metal would later become, to my ears this is still a very heavy and very emotional record, one of my all-time favourites…
Idaho: ‘Year After Year’ (1993)
I almost dare to say that this is my favourite album of all time. I heard this for the first time in 1996, and it made such a huge impression on me, I still listen to it regularly. It is so hauntingly beautiful, dark and sad, hard to describe. A lot of beautiful feedback guitars, fantastic songs and then that amazing baritone of Jeff Martin.
Kit Ream: ‘All That I Am’ (1978)
Wow, what can I say about this album, I must have listened to this at least fifty-plus times. Jello Biafra described it as follows: “The most deranged rich person do-it-yourself album.” Kit Ream is rambling, shouting, burping, sort of singing over some loungey backdrop. Nothing on this album works, yet it all works for me, and not only in a haha-funny way. Wish I had this on vinyl, I burned a CD of it because I really needed a physical copy of this one! Kit Ream kind of got me inspired to explore all the DIY, “outsider,” and “real people” music that is out there.
The Shaggs: ‘Philosophy of the World’ (1969)
The story of the three sisters who couldn’t really play but went into the studio anyway because their father wanted them to do so is very well known by now, I guess.
This is sort of the holy grail of “outsider music” (although to me that is the Kit Ream album) and is listed almost everywhere as the worst album of all time. And of course it makes me laugh at times, but I do genuinely love this album a lot. It is just so strange and “out there”…
Psychotic Waltz: ‘A Social Grace’ (1989)
One of my favourite metal albums of all time; it’s strange, psychedelic and very progressive. The guitar interplay between the two guitarists is just fantastic, technical but so tasteful. This album has had an immense influence on my playing and on writing music.
Miles Davis: ‘Big Fun’ (1974)
Basically, a compilation of takes from the ‘Bitches Brew’ and ‘On the Corner’ sessions. I love the previous albums just as much as this one, but I guess this is the more “atmospheric dark one,” such a beautiful album with lots of sitars and psychedelic influences.
Deathspell Omega: ‘Fas Ite, Maledicti, in Ignem Aeternum’ (2007)
This must be my favourite black metal album, it’s so misanthropic and evil. The guitars on this one are out of this world to me, dissonant, chromatic and very technical. I don’t understand how anyone can play this! It’s not full throttle all the way, there are sinister ambient/orchestral interludes and the songs themselves have a lot of variation.
Sunn O))): ‘Monoliths and Dimensions’ (2009)
What a monster of an “ambient drone album”… Just incredible, with one of my favourite “voice artists” Attila Csihar (Mayhem, Tormentor). The typical Sunn O))) drone guitars are there, but this time with choirs and classical instruments, absolutely amazing stuff. This one was a pretty big influence on ‘The Leftovers of Hope.’
Imperial Triumphant: ‘Vile Luxury’ (2018)
This is definitely something else, one of my favourite bands of the last years. Experimental, avant-garde, jazz-black metal is the closest I can get. Especially the song ‘Chernobyl Blues’ with the terrifying screams of Yoshiko Ohara (Bloody Panda) is just amazing.
Todd Tamanend Clark: ‘New Gods: Aardvark Through Zymurgy’ (1977)
This must be one of the strangest records I own. I love this one so much, and it’s hard to describe; maybe an evil Elvis fronting a sludgy fuzzed out basement band? Lots of very strange and psychedelic sounds from all kinds of synthesizers.
Mastodon: ‘Crack the Skye’ (2009)
I just had to include this one, a progressive metal masterpiece… I love all the albums by Mastodon, but this one is very special to me. I guess it’s their most experimental and progressive one. Fantastic riffs, great song structures and even some psychedelic flourishes here and there…
Morton Feldman: ‘Rothko Chapel’ (1971); ‘Triadic Memories’ (1981)
Feldman is one of my favourite classical composers, I can’t really think of any other composer that sounds like him. A lot of his music is very slow and meditative, but not in a “new age” kind of way; it can be very dark, complex and dissonant.
An amazing meditative work is the 1971 ‘Rothko Chapel,’ a tribute to his friend, the painter Mark Rothko. The title is based on the eponymous chapel in Houston, Texas. It is a meditative, ecumenical centre and/or prayer room with paintings by Mark Rothko on the walls.
‘Triadic Memories’ is a lengthy piece for solo piano, with lots of spaces in between, allowing all the overtones to breathe… A huge inspiration for me while writing ‘The Man in Blue Suite’ of ‘The Leftovers of Hope.’
Bobby Callender: ‘Rainbow’ (1968)
What an album this is; sitar drenched and complex Eastern-inspired psychedelic rock and folk centred on the incredibly intricate texts and vocals of Bobby Callender.
Valentin Silvestrov: ‘Bagatellen und Serenaden’ (2007)
This is such a wonderful and meditative classical album, very melancholic and intimate, a perfect album to play on a rainy day, listen and just stare out the window…
Fifty Foot Hose: ‘Cauldron’ (1967)
A truly strange psychedelic masterpiece! Sounding like maybe a very psychedelic Jefferson Airplane, with lots of home-made synths, oscillators and other strange devices, an absolute favourite…
Aribert Reimann: ‘Lear’ (1978 recording with Dietrich Fischer Dieskau)
I love opera music, especially the more modern stuff by composers like Alban Berg, Arnold Schoenberg, Alexander von Zemlinsky, and Stockhausen.
This one is even more contemporary; I have this one on CD and I saw it in Amsterdam somewhere in the 2000’s. Very, very dense and dark…
The idiom is dodecaphonic and prevailingly dissonant and harsh, more so than any other opera which comes to mind; or harshly beautiful, depending upon your ears. Reimann builds massive climaxes using microtones and clusters; if you give it some time, very rewarding, especially when you experience it live.
Igor Wakhevitch: ‘Hathor’ (1973)
‘Hathor’ evokes an occult ritual soundtrack that takes you on the darkest journey through sound that you could possibly imagine. Choirs, spoken word, synths, percussion, a dark and wonderful trip…
The Free Design: ‘Kites Are Fun’ (1967)
This is such a wonderful baroque/sunshine pop album, the vocal harmonies are very intricate but so stunningly beautiful and original… I must play this one every few weeks.
C.A. Quintet: ‘Underground’ (1968)
A gloomy underground psychedelic masterpiece as far as I am concerned, hints of Western Ennio Morricone here and there, horns, fuzz guitars and a hazy western doomy atmosphere.
Franz Liszt: ‘Via Crucis’ (Reinbert de Leeuw, piano version 2012)
This version for solo piano by Dutch pianist Reinbert de Leeuw is absolutely amazing. This is one of Liszt’s last pieces and in contrast to his earlier work it is very tranquil. Also, one of the first pieces of music that seeks to find the limits of tonality.
Arnold Schoenberg: ‘Die Glückliche Hand, Erwartung’ (1910’s)
Schoenberg was my introduction to modern classical music, or even to classical music in general. These two pieces are two of my favourites, both short operatic dramas. Very dense chromatic music, not for the faint of heart, I guess. I immediately fell in love with his music the first time I heard it; so original, so strange, experimental and at times very dark.
Scott Walker: ‘The Drift’ (2006)
What can I say about this album? Dense, blocks of sound, psychedelic, dark and unsettling… I am a huge Scott Walker fan, I love all his albums, even the soundtrack and country ones, but this one made such an impression on me… This one was such a huge inspiration for me…
Mickey Newbury: ‘Looks Like Rain’ (1969)
One of my favourite albums of all time. It’s hard to choose between this one, ‘Frisco Mabel Joy,’ and ‘Heaven Help the Child,’ but I’ll go for this one, because it’s the weirdest… Kind of an outlaw country concept album, very sad and sometimes pretty psychedelic too, even some sitar here and there! Such a perfect album, I listen to it quite often…
Nick Drake: ‘Five Leaves Left’ (1969)
Of course I had to include this one, another gamechanger this album. I heard it for the first time somewhere in the early nineties, when a colleague of mine lent me his box set on vinyl. The orchestration, the songwriting, the melancholic atmosphere, his vocals, but of course the amazing guitar work on this album is just timeless…
That was quite a long list! I hope I could surprise you a little bit…
Thank you again, Klemen, for this opportunity!
Klemen Breznikar
Headline photo: (Credit: Stef Kohler)
One Velvet Winter Instagram / Bandcamp
