Golem Mecanique is the nom de plume of French multi-instrumentalist composer Karen Jebane. On March 21st Golem Mecanique will release their new album Siamo tutti in pericolo on Ideologic Organ. Karen works within the fringes of contemporary folk (aka La Novia community), microtonal, and early modern spheres, touching upon the ashes and fibres of back metal and the DNA of gothic music, literature, sorcery, and most of all—poetry.
We asked Karen about some releases that have played a huge influence in her musical upbringing.
Photo Credit: Romain Barbot
Velvet Underground and Nico
As a teenager I listened to my father albums. He had a little collection of 70’ bands. He was really into Deep Purple and Black Sabbath and I really enjoyed discovering these bands with him. Then my curiosity and my changing tastes brought me to the Doors, Hendrix and The Velvet Underground.
This album is not a perfect day, it is a perfect forever journey for me. I discovered an intellectual way of making music. Not only making music, but showing visions. I always discover it again at any listening session. As a teeanger it means a lot to be in a safe place and this album was a safe place for me.
Kate Bush – Hounds of Love
My father again! He was a Kate Bush fan and offered me the ‘Babooshka’ 7″! I was 6 years old ! It was my favourite song as some teenager will have Britney Spears’ ‘Baby One More Time’ later!
And Kate Bush became my singing teacher, my music godmother, my star, my life. As far as I could remember Kate Bush was and will always be around me! She is independent, radical, special and unique. She is an unknown entity that taught us all!
My Dying bride – The Angel and The Dark River
I began to listen to metal bands when I left high School for college. I was a goth girl who crossed the road and met the black metal guys! I discovered Mayhem, Marduk, Emperor and was really stunned by this music. It was quite a blast when I was used to Joy Division or The Cure.
I had a friend who was working in a record store and he usually told me about the news bands. He knew me well because I was very fond of unusual forms of music, looking for peculiar voices, literature or poetry influences. Then he told me about this album of My Dying Bride. I did not know the band and entered their realm with The Angel and The Dark River. I felt in love with the voice, the mysticism and the experimental patterns their put in their songs. This album brought me in the middle of a devastated land I had always knew. It taught me the poetry through saturated voices. It taught me that the metal genre is free and we can make it our own. My Dying Bride was at this time something between doom and experimentation and that talked to me a lot about composition and mixing different musical genres.
Dead Can Dance – The Serpent’s Egg
Dead Can Dance obviously! The goth girl has spoken haha! How not to hear their influence on my singing voice, my inclination to traditional patterns, my intention to be something far away from reality.
Dead Can Dance is unreal and surreal. They are the sky and the purgatory. They are the unknown and the blind spot. I think they are the indirect architecture of my beginnings as a songstress: becoming a distant kingdom, a mysterious path, a veiled priestess.
Anne Gillis – Euragine
When I began to create the Golem Mecanique solo project I had absolutely nothing. I had an old computer, a microphone and I worked on Acid Pro. I did not have a recording device or an instrument. I had a Mp3 player that could record and I would record weird sounds of my voices with it and transformed them as tracks with repetitive series and effects.
Then a friend told me about Anne Gillis and that I could be interested in her work. It was in 2007 and at this time she had disappeared and no one knew if she was still in the music field. I discovered Euragine and it changed my life, my view, my work. I began to use tapes as an instrument and making recording sessions of any sound. Anne Gillis and her practice showed me how to go far away from usual way. She showed me the perpetual exploration of invisible.
