Arabafenice
Asphixiation

I discovered these two characters thanks to the vast network. In fact, due to some strange coincidence, I had met Xslayer a few years ago while on vacation. Alternative characters and at first glance "bizarre." So, between one bit and another, I managed to find their work and get a short interview:

- I believe that the Arabafenice are first and foremost two absolutely controversial and contradictory characters, what can you tell me about that?

- "Well, I can tell you that you're right. Bullet Ballet and I met at the beginning of '98 on the vast network, and we instantly realized we were made for each other. An immediate friendship blossomed between us, based on beer, esotericism, and mental phases. In 2004, we self-assigned roles within the project: I started composing, if you can call it that, and he handled the phonic aspects and neurotronic phases. So, nothing major, in my opinion, we're just a couple of damn neurotics trying to express their mental liberation, or perhaps the opposite, through music. Whether we succeed or not is another story. Then look, if I have to tell you personally about myself, I'll just say that I'm a crazy freak and my craving for success is absolutely contemporary to my desire to remain in the shadows. I'm schizophrenic, manic-depressive, troubled, and quite a jerk."

- Which artists influence you the most?

- "Well, look, the artists that have mostly influenced us range from '70s underground music to noise, from drum&bass to synth-pop, and so on. There are really many types of music that have, in some way, infected us. This doesn't mean that we necessarily make stuff of this genre or at the level of the artists we listen to, also because we wouldn't be able to, but simply that we've been quite struck by a certain kind of work that then somehow creates your personal vision of music... and this emerges a lot during composition. Of course, all this holds true if we're talking solely and exclusively about musical art, but one must consider the fact that we're not influenced only by that."

- I know that you and Bullet Ballet, not to mention other collaborators, rarely meet. How do you proceed to complete a piece of work? How does one of your songs come to life?

- "I must admit that in this regard, we're very far behind, since, as you said, Bullet Ballet and I always have a hard time meeting for various reasons. This greatly impacts a lot of our work and perhaps doesn't allow us to give that additional touch we've been seeking for some time. In any case, we're working to overcome this obstacle. The fact is that any of our tracks is born via the internet: I lay down the idea and pass it to Orna [Bullet Ballet], who takes care of developing it according to his personal vision, and then sends it back to me, and I, in turn, add more... and so on until we have something concrete. At the end of this process, we take care of the effects, compression, mastering, etc., etc. All things we really need to work on since I don't think I'm exaggerating by defining this phase of our production as absolutely scandalous... our sound quality definitely needs improvement."

- What kind of equipment do you use to produce your music?

- "We use very little, actually very few things. Mainly a PC, a keyboard with aftertouch technology, a MIDI controller, an electric guitar, an acoustic guitar, and a mixer with just a couple of channels. Before creating a real lab of our own, we'll need to get much more from the technology we normally use since, for now, we are not much more than enthusiasts in the field."

- What do you expect from your work?

- "Absolutely nothing."