:ŁŚ Magazine: Natural Darkness - an interview with Veenstra

Veenstra, a band from South America that sounds like one of the amazing Icelandic collectives creating thick music with many layers. Unbelievable sound. I had a pleasure of talking with them and asking about them being so dark in the country of the carnival, about Ana, the main character of their newest album and what she found out about her life, and about their concert tour in Amazonia. Obrigado Lorenzo and co.!

ŁŚ: First, the name. The Internet knows some people of this surname - Johanna Veenstra, the missionary, Johan Veenstra, the poet. Are you named after one of them? Or is it something even deeper?

V: We never did proper research on the name Veenstra, and maybe we should've. Back in 2011, Lorenzo and a friend began writing film scripts together and agreed on signing them under a single name, a pen-name. She came up with François Veenstra. Later that year, Lorenzo recorded a few songs and asked her to use the name for the project.

You describe your music as “sounds of forest, city, sea and beyond”. Is that where you get your inspirations from? What does it mean to you? And what lies “beyond”?

That phrase rests there in our description since the early days. It was, in the beginning, very literal. The first three albums were each largely influenced by and had their concepts orbiting around, respectively, the sea, the forest and the city. Our recent work does not literally relate to those this, but our lives immensely do. "Beyond" us and the music is the listener, which is the one who ignites and populates this world, makes it hers/his and chooses how to perceive it.

Phil Elverum

What about your musical inspirations? What bands did/do influence Veenstra so you make such a good music?

Foremost, The Microphones / Mount Eerie (the work of Phil Elverum) in the early releases. I have no clue as to how he does it exactly, but through his music he told me that I didn't need any expensive equipment, just the will to have it done, and that's invaluable. As more members joined, individual influences were mixed in and a more complex sound was put together. Some guitar parts conjure the alien ambience from groups such as The Antlers. We also explored experimental mixing techniques and vocal harmonies influenced by Sufjan Stevens.

Your music is thick of mystical atmosphere, the one that I would rather connote with Scandinavian countries music. Brazil is for many people the country of samba and carnival. How is it you make so “northern” music there? Do you actually see it this way or is it just my European point of view?

In Brasil we are constantly bombarded with North-American/European music and many of us end up having, for most of the time, little value for what is produced in our backyard. Even when we do take notice of real Brazilian music, our ears are very used to foreign sounds - and this shows in our compositions. On the other hand, on our last trip through deeper parts of Brasil, we began having more contact with our own culture, and so we think that from now on our sound may end up having less of that European flavor and being more consonant with our surroundings.

Map of the Limbo

“Map of the Limbo” is already your fourth album if I count it right. But the previous ones were released over three years ago and they were supposed to create a trilogy. Is “Map of the Limbo” a continuation or more like a new beginning for Veenstra?

It’s both. It still carries several themes and scenarios that are similar to those on the previous albums, but, for the project, it’s a completely new beginning. On "Map of the Limbo" we worked collectively for almost three years, rehearsing, recording and producing it by ourselves, as opposed to Lorenzo alone in his bedroom for a few weeks. The only thing Lorenzo did by himself were the lyrics and the first general concept for the album. We feel that this is actually Veenstra’s first album, as it makes more sense now that it functions as a group rather than a solo project.

The album tells the story of one person. Or does it? Can you tell us who is Ana?

Ana is someone who is unable to accept that life is not simple, thus she’s always running, feeling that she needs to first find her "true self" and have all the answers before being let out into the world. Those answers do not exist here but are said to exist somewhere else, so she leaves. She then explores this new world, which is chaotic and boundless, at times beautiful and others violent.

What’s the lesson here? Do you really think there’s nothing like the map of limbo? People really have to trust their choices? Their paths?

Lorenzo: Like all other Veenstra stories, the characters are modeled after a period in my life, so I’m criticizing myself. I was once like Ana, someone who thought of human relations as a huge drain, that the way the world is made it bound to fail, that the answers were somewhere else. I’m only able to write about it because I’ve lived through and came out of it.

The atmosphere on your album is unbelievably dense - a bit dark, a bit sad, a bit epic. How do you create it? Is it something that comes naturally? 

It comes naturally and is a byproduct of the time. When creating this album we resonated, as a group, in dark, slow, building atmospheres, even if individually we weren't like that. Also, we carefully crafted the songs so the narrative and music talk to each other. Since the narrative is dense, epic and at times kind of horrifying, we had to deal with that when composing the “soundtrack”.

The band in Plácido de Castro

You have told me that you’d just had a turnee round “remote areas” of Brazil. Can you tell something more about it? My imagination’s running wild I must admit but you didn’t have gigs in Amazonia, right? Or?

We played in Rio Branco and participated on an ayahuasca ritual with the Huni Kuî tribe in Plácido de Castro, both in the state of Acre; and also played Porto Velho and Ariquemes, in the state of Rondônia. Both of these states are considered part of Amazonia. Other than that, we played in Cuiabá and Campo Grande, both near the Pantanal, the largest wetland in the world. As for the experience, we found that touring these less obvious places was the best decision we’ve made as a band. It made us grow immensely (as a group and as individuals) and instigated us to keep supporting our culture and people.

You can read more about "Map of the Limbo" here. Don't forget to check out the band's Facebook and Bandcamp!