‘The Imprecation Of Anima’ by Codex Serafini | Interview | Album Premiere
Exclusive album premiere of ‘The Imprecation Of Anima’ by Codex Serafini, out June 23th, 2023 via Riot Season Records.
Invoking many styles of psychedelic rock from the recent human musical history to open the minds of their human audience to the other world, and higher plane.
After releasing two EP’s, ‘Serpents of Enceladus’ in 2020 and ‘Invisible Landscape’ in 2021 Codex Serafini embarked on their most immersive journey so far creating what would become ‘The Imprecation Of Anima’ an exploration of the self, the duality of the human existence. The album is heavy, much heavier than their previous output and the albums longest song, ‘Animus in Decay’ is longer than either of the bands previous EP’s.
It snakes and weaves an epic motif through the wilderness of the sometimes barren lands of the unconscious, focusing the mind with its almost heavy metal mantra and using this to open up the third eye to the realisation of our mortal existence. The whole album is a pilgrimage into one’s inner self and it’s relationship with its own shadow in its truest form, two parts coming together as a whole.
“A years worth of jamming”
About a year ago we premiered a track from ‘Invisible Landscape’. Are you excited to have a brand new album out soon? Would you like to tell us how much work went into it?
We couldn’t be happier or more excited to have ‘The Imprecation of Anima’ coming out. It was a lot of work, but work that we enjoy doing and getting done, there was probably a years worth of jamming and writing that took us to the place where these four tracks where ready to be recorded, 3 days in the studio where things are getting perfected as a group and then multiple days after with overdubs, editing and mixing choices, things that are artistic choices as well as technical or aesthetic ones. And then maybe 9 months for mixing and mastering, there was a lot going on with the band and outside of this sanctuary we call Codex Serafini.
Would you like to talk a bit about your background?
The thing that makes creating art which includes music is taking in different ideas and concepts, we all have a very varied background when it comes to influences and experiences. That is what makes the process fresh and fun. There are individuals that have studied music and art and those that have had a more hands on approach playing in bands, these different points of reference come together in a melting pot in the studio, and sometimes sound good, those are the ones we end up gravitating to and coming back to.
When did you decide that you wanted to start writing and performing your own music? What brought that about for you?
We think that it would be fair to say that everyone in the Codex family, which is getting larger every year has those experiences of growing up listening and playing music where that felt like their calling, something that was bigger than themselves, a place that make them feel connected to the world they were inhabiting or a world out of themselves, somewhere safe or more than themselves, our own spiritual realm.
“The urge to play music with other people has always been a high one”
What led to the formation of Codex Serafini?
The urge to play music with other people has always been a high one, those moments of clarity where ideas collide and converge, something, somehow comes from nothing and becomes its own entity is fascinating and exhilarating and one of these meetings of minds and instruments was so freeing that there were no barriers and anything seemed possible that those meetings kept on happening. So out of the ashes of someone else’s projects came the formation of one that we could truly call ours. A collective rather than a group.
‘The Imprecation Of Anima’ seems to me your most thought out album. Am I completely wrong here?
No, whilst the other releases were very thought out and the concepts fine tuned there was three years between writing the first EP ‘The Serpents of Enceladus’ and this album. So we grew as a project and as musicians and we felt that after writing and recording two EP’s that the next step was a full length, so there was more thought that went into what that might be, not only what it would sound like, but what it would say and a piece of art, how we would present it and how it would be consumed. Would we expand on the idea of the first EP that was 1 continual piece split into 5 movements or like the second EP where the 4 songs live in their own worlds just brought together by a common theme.
Can you share some further details how your latest album ‘The Imprecation Of Anima’ was recorded?
Performing as one unit as an extension of one another is very important to the vision of Codex Serafini, to ebb and flow and go where the music demands of us rather than to set ourselves boundaries, which will bring the music to life and propel the creativity of the project as a whole rather than one instrument dominating. So it’s always been important to record together in one space. We used a wonderful space Campbell Road Studio, which is sadly no longer there, and it felt more like a sanctuary for our process than a recording studio, it was our home for 3 days and there we set up our gear, all our amps pointing out from the drums so that we could tweak our gear and still see the other members. And then we played.
Tell us about your gear, amps, effects, pedals…
So far drums haven’t had any effects used in the studio, but we have experimented with that, delays picked up by vocal and sax mics sound wonderful, but too chaotic for now. Vocals and sax both use a combination of effects to compliment the performances of those individuals as well as cementing them into the aesthetic that the rest of Codex Serafini are trying to create. The bass tones and effects have evolved over the five years that the band has been playing together, adding new effects and pedals into the mix, with a Big Muff, an overdrive, some chorus, a fazer, some clever bass boosting magic and a couple of delays. The main thing that has changed in the set up here is those pedals have changed order and are now in two separate pedal chains and use two amps. This means some cool effects can be used and a clean or very dirty sound can be produced at the same time. If this sounds like a lot then you might want to take a look at the guitar players pedal board, which at one point had 17 pedals, and some of those do multiple things, so much to say that people often compliment us on synth or organ sounds or sample they can hear, which are actually just clever manipulation of alien technology and a gibson guitar!
How important is improvisation for the band?
Improv is very important to the band, especially in a rehearsal, this is where ideas grow, and become more than the sum of their parts, it where the songs are essentially crafted, they often start from one phrase or rhythm and everyone adds in bits until somehow it has different sections, often leaving us wondering where these came from, did they appear of their free will, or did they somehow will themselves into existence, leaving clues for us to follow. Often long passages and extended jams are just a springboard for a new idea and sometimes they become a song. That is very exciting to hear and be a part of, then sharing those with other people is the next step, through recording and playing live, this is sometimes where the real magic happens, seeing the effect it has on the audience.
Are any of you involved in any other bands or do you have any active side-projects going on at this point?
Yes, there are people involved in NINIT, Jungfrau, HumourJail and Exploder to name a few.
What are some future plans? Are you planning to play some shows?
The future’s looking good so we plan to play lots of shows and get to some places we haven’t been to before as well as get back to some of our favorite UK places and venues, we are playing at Where Else? (Formally Elsewhere) in Margate on the 23rd of June to celebrate the launch of the album with extended family of Halfmeltedbrain Records own TRAPS (The Red And Purple Songs) and back at The Green Door Store, Brighton supporting Tokyo tribal psych act Kuunatic on July 14th. Further into the summer we return to Kozfest on the Axminster showground in Devon July 28th which is amazing and has Black Helium, Helicon and Luminous Bodies amongst others and then will be at The 19th Dream of Dr Saronicus Festival of Psychedelia in Cardigan, Wales on the 5th Aug and Space Chase Eclipse in Cannock, UK Sept 2nd.
Let’s end this interview with some of your favourite albums. Have you found something new lately you would like to recommend to our readers?
As there are a few of us we tried to pick two albums each, these include older albums and influences as well as some newer finds and contemporaries we look up to, we hope people will find something new they haven’t heard or rediscover something older they had forgotten about.
‘A Senile Anima’l by Melvins, ‘In Black and Gold’ by Hey Colossus, ‘Ummon’ by Slift, ‘Beyond the Mirror’ by The Oscillation, ‘Audio Noir’ by Bossk, ‘Pillars of Tiamat’ by Memnon Sa & Miser, ‘Genog’ by Smote (March 2023), ‘Liminal’ by Petbrick (September 2022), ‘Oil of Every Pearl’s Un-Insides’ by SOPHIE (2018), ‘Of Natural History’ by Sleepytime Gorilla Museum (2004), ‘Illuminations’ by Buffy Sainte-Marie (1969), ‘Master of Reality’ by Black Sabbath.
Thank you. Last word is yours.
We would love to connect with more people through our music and we feel the best way is through our live performance. So hopefully see some new and familiar faces very soon and in the meantime if you enjoy the album then you can get it from Riot Season Records and come and see us live soon.
Klemen Breznikar
Codex Serafini Facebook / Instagram / Bandcamp / YouTube
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