Otehi
Otehi is an Italian outfit spreading far beyond borders of doom with various of influences coming from psychedelic to desert kind of vibes. Their first EP Noisy Spirit was recorded in the same year as the band was born – 2011. After one year of meditations and sacred practices Rise of the Elements EP was created, and two more years took to release their full-length work Dead Chants and Forbidden Melodies. This shamanic band is something different, something that this world needs – to experience, to feel through. We came in contact with Otehi collective spirit and they answered a few questions about its inner processes.
Who and when have formed Otehi?
The band starts in brand new mood in March 2011 in the Italian stoner/psych music panorama. The trio (Macej “Wildhand” Mikolajczyk; bass/voice, Domenico “Mastino” Canino; guitar/effects/voice, Vito “Vitus” Zito; drums) approaches to a dirty and granitic sound, sometimes clean and amniotic after has been experimenting in different Roman undergrounds. In 2012 Corrado ”Victor”’ Battistoni joined in the band.
With the new drummer ‘”Victor” we produced two albums – Rise of the Elements split album and second concept album Dead Chants and Forbidden Melodies.
What does “Otehi” mean? What’s its relation to music?
OTEHI is a shamanic word from Lakota language (sioux), the sacred tribe on this planet… the nature, and all the human rituals for the Earth, the contact with the universe… this is our music for us! The music like a ritual for the true contact with our life… this is the concept!!!
What was your prime impulse to create such music?
Make a music for us is an expression… the psychedelic music (heavy and lysergic) is the way to enter in a unique collective trip, who play and who listen! Make a sounds with the body, the heart and the spirit is our mission!
It seems that your début album ‘Dead Chants and Forbidden Melodies’ has a concept…
Dead Chants and Forbidden Melodies is our second concept album, this work born for our necessity to research a different kind of psychedelic rock, looking a new mood. In this album the lyrics are short but contain intense and various messages, the sounds and the composition, among to Noisy Spirit, and become more lysergic and dilated.
The composition of Dead Chants and Forbidden Melodies was long and hard, written between 2012 and 2013, but released in September 2014. We wanted to work together with same artists for flute scores and female choirs and artwork.
Your musical influences stretch from old hard rock to doom and post metal and there is strong evidence of native music. What did you have in mind when you compose these songs?
We made an album where we imagined the music from another world, disappeared and occult, a dead music, where the Otehi become a channel for to bring it to this world.
I guess that ‘Dead Chants and Forbidden Melodies’ is kind of spiritual, meditative experience. What sort of emotions did you put into music?
Make music for us is the process of creation in a ritualistic sense. We put in it our most recondite emotions also linked to our dead, the longing for loved ones who is no longer with us; but with us still living in the memories of time spent together. It is love for life in the end.
Album’s songs are really good and have this driving energy and dreamy psychedelic atmosphere. Where did you record it?
We record in independent studio in Rome, where we were able to soak in the work unhurriedly.
What can you tell about organizational side of Dead Chants and Forbidden Melodies? How much time did you spend in studio? It was released as a limited CD edition?
We spend two weeks in studio for record and mix all songs, the master has been done at later time, cared for by friends in Glasgow. Yes, Dead Chants and Forbidden Melodies is out on limited edition CD by the Italian label NEVRASSE Records.
You’re currently working on your new album. Will there be any difference between your last one?
We are still working on the new album Garden of Gods to release it later in 2016. It will bring in granitic sounds of our matrix, new vocal arrangements; by binding to the concept of land as a mother’s life to state of misanthropy that emerges from the human conditions and the human being’s position in the world.
Garden of Gods will be another concept album, where the “Gods” concept is dilated, where the Earth is the center in the human world!! Stay tuned for more news about this new fucking album!!!
Thank you!!
Interview by Aleksey Evdokimov/2016
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