You are from quite a remote area of Russia, and to me the music has quite a ‘distant’ atmosphere, is this a geographical thing do you think? What influence do your surroundings have on your music?

Karelia is not that remote, actually. It takes one night in a train to get to the capitals – Moscow and Saint Petersburg. And it’s just a 4 hour ride to Finland! However, we all feel a bit distant here. To some extent, it’s just Finnish / Karelian mentality – a frozen loneliness vibe. Of course, the surroundings influence our art a lot. It’s always cold, winter begins in early October and the snow melts only in April. Summer is just rainy, with a week or two of sunshine. They say our republic is “the land of forests and lakes”. Two of the biggest lakes in Europe are located near Petrozavodsk and Sortavala. The lonely, lost, rainy moods come from the surroundings, probably. The troubled atmosphere of The North. Wet mossy woods filled with mushrooms, berry swamps… Anya comes from Kazakhstan, she moved here when she was 8. And she’s still getting used to this place. A pretty radical change!

Your music for me brought up images of Buddhist Meditation – is this something that interests you, or is making music your form of meditation?

There are millions of ways to “get somewhere”, to get high, so many levels of deepness, many ideologies and prisms of understanding. We are very far from Buddhist meditation, even through Buddhist imaginary and music may inspire us quite a lot from time to time. But it would be stupid to not notice little shadows of deep understanding / feeling when you’re approaching any personal art, honest and pure self-expression. And especially if you create it yourself. There were moments Ivan cried onstage and there were moments we both were in slumber, it felt that time doesn’t exist. Lots of times we were lost in our sounds. You may call it meditation, concentration or any other word one feels like using. You know it when you feel it. And if you feel something – that’s the best compliment or regard we can aim for.

The final part of the tape adds a sort of mysticism to the UK, which was very powerful for me, as up until then the music for me conjured up images of distant desolate empty Russian frozen landscapes, but then the juxtaposition of this with the UK place names, sort of inverted the whole thing and added a magical air to what might otherwise be mundane (to me as someone from Britain). It gave the whole tape it a sort of twist: was this what you intended by including this?

America and UK are so mystical if you’re a foreigner! You wouldn’t believe! Ivan knows a lot of people who construct their whole personal life according to some images they’ve invented or accepted – images of London or Edinburgh or Manchester! He tried studying English language and culture at university for some time. Pronunciation exercises like this were essential part of his life. And a little bit of private everyday experience always adds to the overall experience of getting to know someone. That was the initial idea of using that fragment. And yes, it gives a pretty weird twist to the whole tape. Don’t know if that’s good or bad.

Anya, I noticed a similar sort of vein (in so far as meanings being not always obvious) in some of your art, with lots of images within images. Are the two mediums for you very interlinked?

Pretty much everything is self-expression: cooking, talking, all the things I do! Music and drawing are just two things I devote much more time and effort. There’s something very important in both music and visual art for me – when I’m at it I feel protected. I feel that no one can influence me without my will. I can share my energy, I can borrow some of others’ but only if I want to. This is my own. My deep personal space.

Is music something therapeutic for you?

Of course!

Maybe a bit of a probing question, but what is it about each other that you find particularly conducive to creativity?

Our relationship works in a harmonic way; we fill each other’s weak places and support and share the strong qualities. We’ve worked our a way of synchronising feelings, aspirations… Not talking about playing music at all. Actually, Love Cult was intended as a punk / noise-rock duo. I guess the outcome is that synchronisation, harmony and common ground we talk about.

How do you create the sounds? Are you pieces carefully planned, or just an expression of a burst of inspiration?

No planning, never. If there’s a spontaneous need to make music we’re doing it. Plug in, form some minimal musical shape, make loops, then sing and play endlessly around it. Sometimes for 10 minutes, sometimes for many hours. We record everything straight to tape, live, one channel. Then we just listen to the tapes and decide if there are moments we’ve reached some unknown, eerie territories. In a live setting that’s exactly the same, except for a moment that we know beforehand two or three sounds that work good together.

What inspires you?

People and their vibes, smells, colours, atmosphere, air, temperature, everything around. Tiny hints of other lives / realities, different places, spaces, moods.

Love Cult is a musikal duo from Karelia performing tiny handcrafted drones, sharp noises, wordless mantras, spacey guitar loops and broken folk songs. Relaxation/concentration music for wanderers, lovers and dropouts. Many things at the same time with no clear message, just a feeling of open space and loving arms. Also described by friends as “swirling blissful dripping psyche dream”, “beautiful, revelatory, mantra-like”, “eternal soundscapes of ancient communication” and “solemn white magic”.

Polish graphic artist Aleksandra Waliszewska, 33, is the owner of a genuinely thrilling style.

Her drawings and paintings show us a studious mix of what seems like a visible influence of punk poster art with more highbrow aesthetics (the religious phantasmagoria of Goya comes to mind), plus heaps of beautifully muted colors and folk scare delivered through teens seduced by decidedly evil-eyed animals and men facing brutal ends.

It also belies diverse transitional states of basic emotion that somehow create the illusion of a more complex, multilayered narrative – even though you’re staring at a single panel. Imagine an obscure frame taken from Bosch’s ‘The Garden Of Earthly Delights’ as filtered through Raymond Pettibon’s jittery line and you’ll start to have and idea of what she’s up to.

Waliszewska lives and works in Warsaw, where she spent most of her childhood. With over 20 individual shows in the bag, she seems a little taken aback about telling us where all the abyssal gouache-colored snippets in her work come from, but what’s the point to it, really, if we can look at her drawings and feel a more than honest chill?

The eerie atmospheres you create in your work sometimes verge on the disturbing, especially the ones that depict pubescent characters in some sort of libidinous interaction with what I see as decidedly evil-eyed animals. I wonder if some of this stuff comes from folklore / ancient myths you’re familiar with or is this imagery just something more abstract you happen to be attracted to?

The imagery that you could be referring to is partially connected with depictions of codemned men on medieval paintings. However, my versions lose that directly religious aspect of it.

How would you describe your own work?

I think that putting name, or pigeonholing any art can only be harmful to it, so I refrain from doing so.

While at it, why, in your work, does nature seem as if it’s rebelling against itself?

I didn’t look at this way but this might be a valid observation.

What do you think draws people to your stuff?

I can’t really tell as I have no direct insight into what people could think, but I can only deduce it has something to do with fascination with sex and violence.

What / who would you cite as major influences over your work?

I love pre-modern art. It is an endless source of inspiration for me, a true bottomless well of ideas. Looking at some picture throughout the years, I can continue to find new elements in it, discover new qualities that I didn’t notice before. My real favourites would be Hans Memling, Enguerrand Quarton and Nicolas Poussin. I have definitely less interest for modern art.

As an artist, do you wait till inspiration strikes or is your working method more steady and labor-intensive?

Each day, I work about 5 hours. I don’t wait for an inspiration to strike me, when the ideas are not very precise I tend to paint self-portraits. I can paint up to 2 works a day.

There seems to be a big deal of attention put into the ‘mise en scéne’ aspect of what you do. Do you have any links with theater or acting?

I’m not not very interested in theatre, I mostly went there with some school groups and that was obligatory. As for acting, me and my friend were recently involved in amateur SF movie where I play one of the key roles. I have no idea whether this is going to be ever finished

I see a really strong sense of sublimated storytelling in your work, as if some of your drawings catch a ‘frame’, an insightful glimpse out of a longer, more complex narrative. Is that the case? Do you too see it as a bit of larger picture? Are you familiar with the work of Raymond Pettibon at all?

I’m more interested in depicting states of emotion. Narratives tend to arise by themselves, they kind of evolve by their own will. I know several works by Raymond Pettibon. When I was a teenager I made a hand-done copy of his Sonic Youth cover on a friend’s t-shirt.

Could you tell us a little about “Nagana”?

“Nagana” is a part of the series called “Brownocalypse”. This actually originated after I accidentally stepped into a container with rouge anglois paint. I had large amounts of this paint and I really wanted to use it as fast possible. “Nagana” is in a way, an unsuccessful work as I wanted to paint a girl stricken with a fist on her face. It turned out more as she’s being grabbed by her nose. Nevertheless, I like it.

How important a role (if at all) does music play in your work? What music do you listen to or are into at the moment?

As a teenager I was more interested in music than I am now. It is mostly audio books, radio broadcasts and interviews that I’m listening to at the moment. My boyfriend is a musician, so he takes care of the music aspect in our home. Still, I like to play Big Black at full volume every now and then. My boyfriend jokes that I’m undergoing my “rebellion period”.

Diego Gerlach is a Brazilian writer, visual artist and comic creator. Under the moniker Máfia Líquida, he creates (in collaboration with Brazilian designer Felipe Oliveira) the ongoing sci-fi comic series GAHAFAW and some wicked poster art, described simultaneously as ‘Graphic answers to unasked questions’ or ‘Cyanide treacle for the brain’. And all you cats can dig it at: http://flickr.com/diegogerlach

Gemma Williams grew up in Crawley, Sussex, left after school and has since lived in York, Scotland, Sardinia, Brighton, Devon and Brighton again. A ‘keeper of bees’ among other things, you might argue she’s a bit on the cuckoo side of things, and although I can’t offer evidence to the contrary, please note that the reason you’re reading this is that she creates truly beautiful, ethereal folk music. “I sang at school in the choir on and off; I found music at school pretty frustrating as I could never express the sounds from inside accurately – I had clarinet lessons but just about scraped a Grade 2.” She goes by the alias Woodpecker Williams and I’d be lying if I wasn’t to admit that 1) I thought it to be a man’s name at first and 2) it immediately reminded me of Walter Lantz’s immortal, annoying creation the Woody Woodpecker in all its laughing-mad glory.

Woodpecker Wooliams is now releasing the Sleeping Under Dark Suns cassette on My Dance The Skull- two tracks that render the world in dark, magic-infused, bee-influenced (but of course) tones and once are over leave you kinda “O wow that was –”

Photo by Lucy Goodayle.

Right. Are you really a practicing magician?

Haha! A magician! I’m a whizz at card tricks…. No… I imagine you’re referring to the ‘shaman business’ but I’m kind of on a shamanic sabbatical at the moment. I haven’t seen any clients for a while now- any magic in my life is being redirected though music for the time being, mostly.

I asked about it because I’m really into thinking about the relation between the way art is created today and what is usually perceived as magic.

Ahh, I see. I’d say there can definitely be an aspect of ‘conjuring’ in creating good music- making successful sound-magic would be something to aspire to. I’ve been reminded recently of someone I saw play years ago, Damo Suzuki from Can, and he (these days) just rocks up to a venue, meets local musicians there and improvises with them on the night (he sings). I saw him twice in a row in Scotland and it was utterly awesome. He came across as a total magician and with no obvious cues, just orchestrated the band into some kind of musical trance. Awesome.

That’s what I meant and what I felt when I listened to your music. I suppose it’s the idea that art became more a matter of intuition and empiricism than a trade that could be taught and passed through in terms of the ‘Golden Ratio’ or music scales. What does your art aspire to? (Quite a broad question — I guess I wanna hear about what sort of subjects [if any] you have in mind when creating music]).

Hmm… What does my art aspire to? [I hope I've understood your question?] I guess on the one hand, it’s not really trying to aspire to anything, or rather, it presents a challenge for me to try not to try. Things work out best when I can be most relaxed, or most ‘in the moment’. I’ve got some totally inspiring women friends who bake incredibly, sew magnificently, make household-y things out of what might otherwise be considered scraps. So my approach is fuelled by that spirit of making. There are a handful of albums I’ve heard over the years that have kind of gotten in and alchemized me, or really fizzled in deeply and changed my character just a little bit. To be able to express sound in that same potent way would be the greatest success or prize in my mind, but even the practicing and stumbling along the way is like a kind of personal meditation. I don’t want to make it sound like making music for me is some kind of ego-centric process; it’s like the amazing gooey cake that my friend might make. She puts in her time and effort and love and the act of stopping and stirring or measuring is an act of therapy for her, but everyone else gets to share the yum and the joy at the end.

Do you work in any specific way?

I’m all for chance and circumstance weaving their ways in. Vocal parts I do sometimes re-record over and over- but that’s more about giving the sound time to come out or be born fully- like chiseling away at a sculpture. Singing is the thing I love most but it’s the hardest for me. I want to be as honest and unaffected with the singing as possible (trying to be a hollow bone) and that’s not always so easy to do. Instrumental bits I usually slap down in a frenzy and leave them in whatever (ahem) “creative” mess they’re in.

How did the place the recording process took place in affect the general feel of it? Apart from you, who was involved in the process?

I recorded it at my home in Brighton – a tiny little sea-side studio flat in a Georgian terrace. I started making music about a year and a half ago in Devon in a completely atmospheric live-in studio in an 800-year old cottage with incredibly thick stone walls. That place definitely had a lot to do with the sound… I was concerned that recording here may leave everything a bit flat, but I think that for me music is tied more closely to personal process than to place, so the experience of me trying to settle back into a busy city life that felt a bit alien probably got infused more into it than the building itself.

Well, “Sleepers”, the first track , was a solo effort. Inspired, I’m sure, by the honeybee, but just me on the sounds. I think there’s some French radio in there too so better give credit where it’s due. For the second track (“Eurydice’s Lament”) it began with a drone created by the lovely Talvihorros. I came up to London to record with him one day and I fell in love with it, so the track kind of got built up from there…

Did I get it right? When you say “Inspired I’m sure by the honeybee” do you mean kinda like exactly what you said?! Can you tell me a little about it?

Yeah – I could ramble on for reams about the honeybee. I’m totally in love with her. I’m a city-girl now (by circumstance rather than choice!) but I’ve got a hive which I keep in the local park kinda hidden out of the way: The park-keepers were well up for it as it only helps in pollinating their flowers. The life of the bee is amazing- a matriarchal community of makers! Their lives are spent in a series of dedicated tasks to keep the hive as a whole running. They excrete all kinds of wondrous potions and unguents and do the sex-work of the flower kingdom. Magnificent! But seriously- I think it’s the mixture of relentless work tied in with care and effortless making that sets them up as a benchmark of an artist’s standard.

Do you work in any other media apart from music?

I made everything for the album that I released; it was so much fun! I crocheted, inked and embroidered for it. But to be honest, I always get frustrated by feeling like I’ve got butterfingers or I don’t have the skill to exert what I want to. I’m a baby at everything really, so I’ve been focusing mostly on music lately.

Way I see it, folk music tends to be attached to a way of looking at nature in search of clues about what being human means. I also see a strong element of magic involved in the sort of folk music being created in recent times. Agree/disagree?

I wish I knew more about the history of folk music. I’ve got a friend doing a PhD in the history of folk and I’m sure he’d fervently disagree! I know what you mean though and yes, you seem to be able to observe a trend for ‘folk’-based music that’s supported by a lot of other various artworks, often by the musicians themselves, and a lot of symbolism from the natural world. If there’s a proliferation of magic around I may be missing it as I’ve been trying to live the boozy, city-girl life for a little while now and keep my eyes shut!

Would you say you’re part of some sort of community (like-minded people feeding off each other’s creative juices) or do you tend to create in an isolated setting?

Well, I was living with a musician who’s worked as The Diamond Family Archive and King James (amongst other names/ bands) in Devon, where I started, and we shared a very small communal space. I used a lot of his instruments for the recordings there and he had very strong, clear ideas about what made valuable ‘art’, which will have influenced and inspired me, I’m sure. He was part of establishing Woodland Recordings who are now spread loosely between England and Germany. Woodland’s since been run by the other co-creator who plays as The Great Park, and he’s booking a little German tour for me this summer. That label was (and is) a real inspiration so it’s really exciting for me to be getting involved with them in this way.

Since returning to Brighton I’ve discovered a real community of musicians! The Wilkommen Collective is a group of musicians who diverge into various configurations for different bands. The rings of connections kind of radiate out from there, though and I’ve been lucky to meet a network of delightful people – many of whom are becoming real friends – who will call you up to come and sing on something for them, or you can call if you want a bass-part or a drum beat, and who all support gig opportunities for each other. It’s really lovely and I feel very lucky to have that on my doorstep.

Any thoughts on the fact the release will be cassette-only?

Well, I’m pretty excited… I think I love tapes. I’ve started using a dictaphone live. I like they way they age. A few people have mentioned to me that they don’t have tape-players anymore and so will find it a bit frustrating being limited to only this one format, but I kind of understand why DIY labels are starting to do it: Beyond the aesthetic aspect, there’s also the fact that it’d take a lot of effort to burn off a tape and share music, which encourages people to part with a few pounds and spend on burgeoning new labels sweating it out to make things work.

What really appeals to you about the music-making process?

The sex and drugs, groupies and copious amounts of money.

Well, that’s it. Thanks a million.

Diego Gerlach is a Brazilian writer, visual artist and comic creator. Under the moniker Máfia Líquida, he creates (in collaboration with Brazilian designer Felipe Oliveira) the ongoing sci-fi comic series GAHAFAW and some wicked poster art, described simultaneously as ‘Graphic answers to unasked questions’ or ‘Cyanide treacle for the brain’. And all you cats can dig it at: http://flickr.com/diegogerlach