Present yourself to the readers
Offerings to Odin is the collaboration between myself and Stephen B. We are from Denver, Colorado and have been friends since roughly 2008. We actually met in college in a choir class and decided to work on music around 2012. I have been going to goth clubs and listening to industrial music for a very long time, and Stephen is a very good composer and well versed in music theory. We both really enjoy eclectic electronic music so I proposed that we start making music together in the genre that I was most excited about (electro-industrial). The idea behind the music is to make something accessible and danceable, but that had a more organic sound and multiple layers. I am the vocalist.
I'm Stephen Bailey, a composer, producer, improvisor, and educator. I'm half of Offerings to Odin. In the band I do a lot of the arranging and composing, some of the mastering and mixing, and when we play live I make the music and visual elements of our performance happen.
What’s the story for HOC VOLUERUNT ?
We had a lot of material that had started to be developed after we released our first album, but that we knew wasn't going to fit on some of our future releases, which we've planned to be more conceptual and thematic. Rather than just releasing a series of singles, we wanted to make a home for some of these songs that would place them in a larger context. Basically most of what we had already was really heavy, dancy songs that we enjoy a lot playing live, so we started fleshing out the rest of a record that would compliment and fit with those.
“Hoc Voluerunt” is our second album, the follow up to our initial offering, “Ravenous.” I’m a huge fan of the HBO series “Rome” and one of the episode titles is “Hoc Voluerunt” which is Latin for “They asked for it.” This turn of phrase was said by Julius Caesar after his victory over Pompey Magnus, his closest political rival. Pompey had created his army and was challenging Julius Caesar, so Caesar obliged him and crushed his army. I liked it as a title to our second album because it works on a couple different levels. I had fans asking me when we were going to put out another album, and on a more esoteric level I feel that the world as a whole is begging for destruction. The current way of operating is outdated and we, as a species, need to find a new way of living, if we are going to sustain life on this planet.
Who composes ?...How does it work in the duo ?
When we first started, I think I had a lot more experience with production and composition than Svipal, so a lot of the first album was composed by me. But since then, he has really blossomed as a producer and composer and that's meant that we've altered our process as the dynamic of the duo has grown.
Aww…thanks Stephen.
At the moment, raw compositional ideas are often generated individually, and then edited, tweaked, and fleshed out as a pair. Many times one of us will have the very beginnings of an idea and not quite know how to get from there to the larger structure of a song. The fact that so much of our work is done collectively is really important at those times. The result is always better than either of us could have done separately, so the whole ends up greater than the sum of the parts.
Right…we both compose the music in tandem for the most part. Often I will come up with a hook, or a bass line and then present it to Stephen in a very stripped down form. He then fleshes out the idea and we both get an equal say in how the song takes form. Other times Stephen will present a great idea that he has created and I will tell him what I like, or don’t like about it and we’ll go from there. There are some songs that are more Stephen’s and some that are more mine, but we both end up doing a lot of work composing the music. Then comes the mixing, which is also done together.
Who writes the texts ?..What are they talking about ?..How does inspiration come ?
I fucking suck at writing lyrics. I sometimes offer input if I have an idea, or a better rhyme or something, but Svipal is definitely the person who takes ownership of lyrics.
I write all the lyrics. There isn’t one particular theme for my lyrics, but there are some things I try to emphasize with the songs. I generally have pretty cynical view of humanity and I find that as a civilization we have fucked things up pretty badly. We have destroyed our environment, we have stifled creativity and tried to take the wonder out of the world by explaining everything. I feel that there is very little mystery left because we have placed too much importance on the rational side of our brain and not enough time is spent just enjoying the simple pleasures in life. I think that we feel out of touch in a very profound way with each other, with ourselves and with nature. A symptom of this out of touch feeling is that we have to constantly be on our phones, or connected to the internet. It’s scary to be alone with our thoughts and so we try to fill that void with vapid entertainment or we follow some stupid celebrity and try to emulate them. I contend that we are not weak or powerless, but instead we humans are capable of amazing things; the caveat is that it’s up to us to realize this potential. It’s this dual view of humanity as a loathsome shuffling horde and individuals as powerful god-like beings that make up a lot of my lyrical content. I also like to write songs dealing with the old Norse myths and trying to retell them as best I can. I often will put a modern spin on these old stories to give them a new layer of meaning for us in the 21st century.
Why the name OFFERINGS TO ODIN ?
Recently Odin has ended up with really negative racial connotations. A bunch of shitty Nazis have coopted the name and used it to represent hate. That's bullshit. We don't support or represent that. For us, and the real way that Odin is represented in Nordic culture, it's about rebirth and sacrifice to become empowered in life.
Very true Stephen. I can’t stress enough that we in no way support or condone any of that Neo-Nazi shit about racial superiority. I am of Norwegian descent and have been interested in exploring my heathen roots for some time now. I was raised as a Christian, and grew up in the church, but I felt that this kind of slave mentality and morality wasn’t working for me and was detrimental to my spiritual growth. I was excited to learn about the gods of my ancestors and the strong, cunning, and wise nature of Odin. I particularly love the story of Odin hanging on the Yggdrasil tree for 9 days and 9 nights in order to gain knowledge of the runes. He was a sacrifice of himself, to himself. This really struck a chord in me and informed me that in order to attain higher knowledge and wisdom, you have to sacrifice something of yourself. So “Offerings to Odin” is essentially cutting away the useless and cancerous parts of my life in order to be the person who I am destined to be.
What are your personal musical tastes and your influences ?
I've always had really eclectic tastes. Almost anything that is experimental and emotive/expressive tends to appeal to me. Lately I've been really interested in a lot of newer minimal techno, experimental, and intelligent dance music. Some examples: Amnesia Scanner, Vessel, Giant Swan, Clark, Deru, Lorn... Ultimately, I was classically trained in composition, so it's hard for me to escape thinking about music in those terms and bringing those kinds of processes and influences into any of the music that I write. Specific composers that are heavily influential on my thinking are George Crumb, Kaija Saariaho, Henryk Gorecki, and Morton Feldman. I think that it's incredibly difficult to intentionally separate the ways that the music we listen to shapes pur creative output, so, apart from some situations in which we're going for a specific sound, our output is really the collected history of our musical lives.
I like lots of different kinds of music, but my tastes usually tend towards electronic or somewhat obscure. I cut my teeth on Skinny Puppy, Bauhaus, Joy Division, and The Cure. I also grew up a huge fan of Sonic Youth and smaller bands like Sebadoh and Dinosaur Jr. What I listen to is largely dependent on the time of year and mood I am in. During the summer I find myself listening to more punk rock like NOFX, The Dwarves, Fugazi, and Screeching Weasel. During the colder months I gravitate towards stuff like Death in June, Der Blutharsch, Chainreactor, Nachtmahr, Wardruna, and FGFC820. As far as musical influences go, I would say that I am heavily influenced by bands such as Psyclon Nine, Alien Vampires, Project Pitchfork, and Wumpscut. Lately I’ve been listening to a lot of Headless Horseman, Ben Frost, and Lustmord.
