INTERVIEW: Daemonia Nymphe

DAEMONIA NYMPHE have been making waves with their beautiful sound inspired by Ancient Greece. Their works have misunderstood by some, appreciated by more, but loved by most that have come across them. In November they decided to re-release their 2013 album Pyschostasia. We caught up with them to chat about the inspiration behind their sound, future works and why they decided to put one of their much-loved albums back out into the world just five years later.

You re-released Psychostasia in November what sparked you wanting to re-release the album?

Daemonia Nymphe: Psychostasia is a very special album for us; we composed most of the music when we moved to London and that is why it has so many influences from northern Europe. For example in the music video of the track Selene’s Awakening Horos ,which was filmed in an old boys club in east London, we were dressed with top hats and old smoking suits, the music is actually a waltz and it has a Tim Burtonish-Danny Elfmanish atmosphere to it; although the title is Greek, the theme is actually universal. It’s about the psyches, the souls and their place in our world. The same album includes a completely different composition, Hypnos capturing the sound of a solo ‘ancient’ Greek Kithara accompanied by female vocals and female whispers in ancient Greek. So, there is a wide variety of sounds in the album. Based on the music of Psychostasia, we did four theatrical performances in 2013 at the old boys club and a show called Psychostasia The Performance at the Riverside Studios in Hammersmith the following year. After some years of performing live around the world and composing music for another play (Macbeth at the National Theatre of Northern Greece), we returned to the same concept this year with Psychostasia II the Ritual at the enchanting Asylum Chapel, where some new pieces were added, although the core was again the music of that album. Our O2 concert was based on the same concept as well. So, naturally it was time for this work to return to the surface again and be rediscovered. Psychostasia is the weighing of the psyches, the souls, the unanswered question about the afterlife, the journey of the psyche.

This release comes with three new bonus tracks, were these tracks written for the album and discarded ideas or fresh ones that have come to life?

Daemonia Nymphe: They are new pieces that were composed during the many different performances that we did, based on the Psychostasia album/concept.

In the past couple of years artists of your niche style are coming to light a little more. Why do you think this is and do you find you are finding more success now than when you previously started over two decades ago?

Daemonia Nymphe: It’s hard to tell; when we started, our music was not easily perceived by the press, because what we were doing could not be easily defined, since there were no bands at the time that were doing something similar. The audience, however, was very supportive even at our very first sold out show in Thessaloniki/Greece.

Your sound is authentic to Ancient Greek music, and obviously a lot of research has to be done. When it comes to exploring different eras of Greek history is there a period that stands out for you more in terms of influencing your sound?

Daemonia Nymphe: Our compositions are contemporary works and not an attempt to recreate authentic ancient Greek music (if something like that could be possible). We have researched ‘ancient’ Greek music and have performed fragments of it (sometimes along with other researchers as well, such as Professor Stefan Hagel in Austria), but this is another activity that is part of our additional interests which also inspire us to create our main work. Of course when we talk about ‘ancient’ Greek music, we need to define what exactly we mean by using this term; what kind of music, secular, religious , music for theatre etc and which period of Greek history are we referring to. There are quite a few fragments of ancient Greek music found, but only one is actually complete and happens to be the most famous of all; it is called Epitaph of Seikilos and it was found in Minor Asia carved on a tombstone by Seikilos who composed this song for his diseased wife Euterpe. It is a very beautiful melody which praises life, it states “while you live be happy, don’t be sad at all, life is short and demands an end”. The Seikilos Epitaph is the oldest surviving complete musical composition, including musical notation, from anywhere in the world.We perform this piece often in our concerts, even more when I am doing solo concerts exclusively with ‘ancient’ Greek instruments. As far as DAEMONIA NYMPHE are concerned, our sound is influenced by ancient cultures, the Greek civilization and most prominently the archaic and the classical era as well as contemporary music of the west and the east, even pop and rock music.

Do you find that exploring the past so heavily and using it to create music has shaped who you are in modern society to have different outlooks?

Daemonia Nymphe: We explore the past as much as we explore the contemporary society of the places that we live in, the same way as we combine the ‘ancient’ Greek instruments with the traditional, the modern and the contemporary ones. Our music is shaped by our identity which is not only defined by our birth place, our mother tongue and our place of residency but also by our everyday experiences and the people that surround us, who happen to be citizens of the world.

A few months ago you played your largest UK show, what was that like for you?

Daemonia Nymphe: It was absolutely amazing, the venue was great, the audience was really engaged and the sound was fantastic. There were nine musicians on stage, two dancers and one puppeteer and it all worked beautifully well. The dancers had plenty of props including swords, masks, candles, chains and puppets just to name a few. Peter Ulrich (ex-Dead Can Dance, This Mortal Coil) joined us for a few pieces and Dessislava Stefanova (founder of the London Bulgarian Choir) sung with us for the first time live on the Psychostasia tracks that we recorded with her in the studio. We played music from all our albums, it was magical!

Your sound and performances are theatrical, when writing music do you have the show and imagery in mind?

Daemonia Nymphe: We always wanted to have a theatrical aspect in our shows and it’s something that we achieved when we moved to London. We were lucky enough to meet Anastasia Revi and her Theatre Lab Company, a family of actors, actresses, lighting designers, costume and scenery makers. Then of course we met wonderful musicians, dancers and artists. Everything that you see in our live performances is a product of our long term collaboration with all these wonderful creative people.

If there is something you want to encourage people to learn about through your music, what is it? For example, a specific period of history, spirituality, etc?

Daemonia Nymphe: There isn’t really anything that we want people to learn through our music, this is not our goal and it never has been, our music is open to interpretation by the audience. It is not didactic, it is music written for different aspects of our every day lives. We write music for sleep, dreams and death (Hypnosoneirathanatos) , for the unity of two people (Hymenaios), for earth and it’s flourishing(Thracian Gaia) and so many other themes such as Psychostasia the notion of the afterlife.

You can find your music at the British Library now, what was it like to hear you’re part of the collection there?

Daemonia Nymphe: We were pleasantly surprised to find out that the British Library wanted to include our music in their collection; after all it is one of the largest libraries in the world (if not the largest). We were told that our music would now be part of the British archive collection, as music that was conceived, created and recorded in the UK. This also reminded us that something like that would rarely happen in Greece by a similar constitution.

What can we expect from you now?

Daemonia Nymphe: There are many albums on the way, different projects that we have been working on. Two albums will be released in 2019 which may not be main DAEMONIA NYMPHE albums but are based on our music. One of them will be released for the first time by an English label. The other one is a project based on our composition Witches’ Lullaby from the Macbeth National Theatre production. It will be an interpretation of that piece by female voices of the world. We are very happy to have the fantastic voices of Australian Louisa John Krol, Japanese Hatis Noit, English Stevie Jo, Spanish Priscilla Hernandez and British Victoria Couper, Rey Yusuf and Bethany India in this album.

My second solo album will be released as well based on improvisations in ‘ancient’ Greek instruments with the contribution of American, Australian, Italian, German, Japanese and English artists. We have already started composing new music for our next album which will include special guests that we cannot name yet but will announce very soon. We are performing in Belgium on the 21st of April in Antwerp at the Black Easter festival and we return to Greece after more than ten years with two concerts, in Thessaloniki at the Principal Theatre Club on the 15th of February and in Athens at the Gagarin Club on the 16th of February 2019.

For more information on DAEMONIA NYMPHE like their official page on Facebook.