I can tell that this journey gave me a lot of experience. Going back home, I was feeling that my inner self was fulfilled. Any feeling of emptiness I might previously have had was eventually gone within those two weeks. At the meantime, back in school, I kept on being involved with those educational programmes and the clubs, like I used to. The fact that I went to Ireland not only didn't distract me from school, but when I came home I was looking forward to going back to school. On the other hand, often at home, whenever I was daydreaming on my own , I would think of Ireland.
And of course I had already started to create my future. I would study Geology, as I had said. This is something that I hadn't indeed kept as a secret and I was actually a very good student, concerning subjects related to it. Well, I was anyway a good student, because I liked school. I loved school subjects, especially Geography, not only because we could learn geology stuff too, but also because I was constantly dreaming of journeys around the world. So, my Geography teacher offered me that chance. He suggested that I'm sent off to Australia the following year for three whole months as a volunteer for an environmental educational programme. He informed me that everything would be paid and I would stay at my own place in Sydney. Of course you have to know that in High School many classmates of mine were going abroad for six months or a year (usually in the States, in Germany or in London). However they were exchange students and they were hosted by families. In my occasion, I didn't take part in such a programme, as I would stay there only for three months and I would also live by myself. I believe that there was no better gift than that for me. I had always had a great interest for Australia, not only because of its wildlife, but also because I considered it to have beautiful landscapes. What is more I had relatives who were living there and they were sending us pictures every year.
Except for my education at school, I was also involved with music a lot. I had started writing my own songs at home. They weren't anything important in the beginning, but soon the whole thing grew in a very significant point. And the weird thing is that in the beginning I was fascinated on the idea that we could release a second album with my sister. Because, when I started composing, these songs sounded much like those ones that we wrote for our album. However they were inspired a lot from my journey to Ireland, as their sound was too folk, too acoustic....it was a sound that I used to call campfire music, exactly because it brought to one's mind a bunch of young people camping in the woods and while being gathered around the fire singing all together in an uncoordinated way, accompanied by three acoustic guitars. I had even written one song referring to a specific event in Ireland. Vivian had a friend, Bryan, whom I'd met in the village. One night we were heavily drunk and we had walked out of the pub at 3 o'clock in the morning singing out-of-tune, although people might have been sleeping at that time. We were really lucky that we didn't get arrested. Anyway, I decided to write a song about that event, which described on its chorus exactly what we did with Bryan.
Thus, the songs that I started writing were those campfire songs. Soon, though, I realised that the rest of the songs would follow a completely different style. The sound that I had in my mind was similar to those Norwegian doom metal bands, that I used to listen to with my friends. Uaithnia had nothing to do with that* (*And I don't even think that Johanna would like us to play heavy music). And as I didn't want to throw my songs away, nor change them, I was bogged down and I didn't know what to do. That's why, in the beginning, I asked Dina to help me.
We went for a coffee that afternoon and everything she told me was so encouraging.
"The problem with you is that you suffer this low self-confidence", she said "and I don't mean anything condescending. I'm telling you this, so you can realise it and change it".
"And what should I do, then?", I asked confused.
"Do you want to play your music with someone? Go and do it. Anyway Lulu and I can help you".
"Yeah!", I exclaimed. "I will be playing the piano and keys and you will be singing".
Dina laughed. "You fool yourself, youngster. You won't hide yourself behind the keys, so you can't be seen. You will sing with me".
My gaze became dark. "But how am I going to do this live? I can't sing before others, while you..."
"Damn you, Ingrid!", Dina shouted, interrrupting me. "You always keep on disparaging yoursel! Well, we will sing together and you'll make it".
I crossed my fingers. "And you will write music with me".
Dina seemed like she was lost. "But I don't know how to....."
"Hep, what's going on, Dina?", I asked ironically. "I see you have balked at this thought, right?"
Dina looked at me perplexed and then we both cracked up laughing. "Alright, you win", she said. "I'm trying to compose and you're trying to sing. Alright?"
"Done", I replied and we shook hands.
The next day Dina and I decided that we would call Lulu too, who was playing the drums, so as it was natural she instantly agreed that we would work together. She even had a better idea.
"Why not calling Vivian too? Anyway I like heavy music and Vivian had been always playing progressive rock music".
"Hmm, that's a good idea, indeed", I said. "But I'm not completely sure that Vivian will want or will have the time to get involved with a bunch of schoolkids, who have just decided to form a band".
Lulu laughed and told me that there was nothing to lose. So, during that night I phoned Vivian in order to ask her join something that this time I would have in my own mind.
"Well, I might eventually believe in telepathy", said Vivian laughing, who by the way is the only person I know, in whose mind there is no single space for any kind of illiberality or superstition (Well, as the years went by, I started becoming like that too, and some idiots call me an anarchist and an atheist pig). "This noon Bryan had come at home for lunch and while we were talking about music, suddenly Tracy said: Ingrid, Bryan and you should form a band of you own. And a few hours later, you called only to say what I had in my own mind in the first place".
I laughed and I told her: "Pure coincidence. Or not" But then a thought came to my mind and I exclaimed: "You're right! How could I forget. Bryan plays the bass".
"And has an amazing voice", she interrupted.
"Splendid!" I exclaimed. "Then we will have three female voices and a male one. And I have even started writing music, as you know. However there's an issue".
"What?"
"The songs I've written sound a bit heavy, that is in a doom metal style. I know you have never been involved with something similar, however this is the style of music I've been into these days".
"Alright then", she said uninterestingly. "Do they include growls and screams?"
I burst out laughing. "I said Doom, not Death. Can you imagine us screaming? No, just think that they will be slow and heavy guitars, that make you feel like you escape from reality".
"Aha! Like getting stoned", she said giggling.
"Eh, something like that".
"I'm in for that!", she said. "You can come to Ireland during the summer, so we can record music".
"No", I said sharply. "You should come to Norway".
She didn't say anything, but I added:
"This is how I would like the band to start. In the Northern lights. If you don't mind".
"Of course not. For sure, I would come".
"Great! And as far as your stay is concerned, you will stay at my place. And you can bring Tracy along, if you like".
So, Bryan and Vivian with her daughter, would come in early July and the five of us, along with Lulu and Dina, would go on composing our album, now as an official band.
****************************
As I said before, the five of us would start our newborn band: Dina, Vivian, Bryan, Lulu and me. However, during that time, something unexpected happened. Some evenings I used to visit my aunt Kati, in order to see her, but for another reason too. Kati was a piano teacher and thought it was a good idea that I would watch her lessons, in case I needed to teach in the future. A student of Kati was a black-haired girl, almost five years older than me and her name was Lydia. For some reason, this girl seemed to me a bit weird, but I didn't know why I was under that impression. For sure she seemed to have a very high self-confidence, but Dina also had a self-confidence and she wasn't the same.
In order to make you understand, when the lesson with Kati was over, Lydia used to come in the kitchen and we would treat her fruits, tea or porridge. Then, she would start a conversation, however I was under the impression that the discussion was going forward only from my own side, although she was the one who started asking. And this was something I had always hated. I am used to being the one who starts a conversation and lets others talk as long as they like and I'm usually the one who makes questions and the others keep on talking and talking. Of course, I don't like talking too much and then with Lydia I felt like I was obliged to do this and honestly I was feeling too uncomfortable. Dina would do the same, but I wouldn't feel so insecure, because for me it was a sort of friendly psychotherapy.
At some point I told Lydia that I had my own band and that we were going to record our songs in the summer. Then the weirdest thing happened. Lydia asked me in a complete apathy: "Can I join your band? I'm a singer". I was somehow taken aback by what she asked, thus I told her "Err, look. We already have a singer with a soprano voice. So I don't know...." I blushed, because I was telling her indirectly that we had an incredible vocalist in the band and any other voice was inferior. But Lydia wouldn't put it off. "It doesn't matter. If I join, there will be a contrast between the voices. What is more, my voice isn't that bad". Then I felt so embarrassed and accepted her under the term that she wouldn't force us change our music style, but be compatible with that. So, she joined the band in a comletely unofficial way -- without the others' permission and of course without an audition. Fortunately the other members accepted her almost with open arms (otherwise I would kill them) and she also had a good voice.
So, now we were six persons and then we started working. However, during the next two months what I did wasn't only write music. I had school indeed, where everything was going perfect. For some weird reason, I really liked solving maths exercises, without it being compulsory for school. It gave me a feeling of escape from reality and from everyday problems. I know that numbers and equations is most pupils' nightmare, but they would excite me.
On the other hand, I really liked reading literature and Poetry. Even though I loved the Romantic era, I was mostly drawn to dark realism. I used to read Poe, Whitman and Dickens, when I was coming back from school and very often I would carry my books along to Elvenes lake. Even though I was interested in the context of what I was reading, very often I was in afterglow only because of the words themselves that were in the texts. I wanted to do something like that too, that's why I started writing Poetry that contained a lot of images and metaphors, in a similar style as what I was reading. I was feeling like I was fully in flames, when I was reading this kind of Poetry and a pain would strike me in the lowest part of my stomach. It was what I myself used to call jokingly an artistic orgasm, because it was exactly what I was feeling. This is what I could feel with several kinds of art. Two examples are the solo part of Comfortably Numb and of course The Great Gig in the Sky.
During that time I had also discovered books with a philosophical content. I was mainly searching for legends of Ireland, however the books I found were related exactly to the opposite topic. They usually had to do with faith in supernatural beings -and not necessarily with god-, crystal therapy, astrology and other hobbies of an occult nature. Don't ever consider that I was into those hobbies. On the contrary, those books were more or less philosophical and would explain WHY people resort to such kinds of therapies, instead of searching for the real magic of science. As 25 % of my genes were of Greek DNA, I was clearly aware of what it was like to have faith in superstition and magic, as I had seen it on people around me during those six years of my staying in Greece. What is more, my mother, who had studied evolutionary biology, taught me not to have faith in anything, but be able to judge things if there is enough evidence for them to be true - I suppose that this was the reason why I became an atheist. The paradox, however, to the whole thing was that I loved mythology and fantasy stories. But this doesn't mean that I ever believed them. For those I thought it was like you open a small window in your mind, in which you imagine dragons and witches on a broomstick. Indeed, one of our first songs was referring to psychedelic experience and was talking about blue circles, enormous monsters and flights above towns on a witch's broomstick during the night. I have always considered that it's not a paradox that one who reads book about scepticism on religion could be reading at the same time books of religious content. Because even the Bible is a masterpiece for Literature. I was even reading these days two books at the same time: Carl Sagan's The Varieties of Scientific Experience as well as Dante's The Divine Comedy.
While I was involved with all these, in July I expected the guys to come to Kirkenes, in order to see what we could do. However during that month I wasn't thinking of music as much as September's schedule. And indeed I would leave off for Australia, as I had planned with my teachers. In the beginning, I was thinking of saving money, however my parents said they would be responsible for the expenses. Anyway my stay would be paid from school. Then I didn't have any problem yet, as I hadn't ever lived on my own abroad, so I didn't have any experience. I thought it would be like a small excursion. And I was so naive, in order to understand that things wouldn't be as simple as that.
In the end of June, I was diving into a programme on the net, called Spotify, in which you listen to any kinds of music that you liked. Those days I was mostly listening to doom metal and specifically Agalloch and Bathory. I didn't like Norwegian black metal, because the majority of the musicians who performed it were Neo-nazis. A change in my life came, when my sister Johanna and I went to a record store. She wanted to buy some Kate Bush records, so I could wander around the building. As it was expected, I was looking at the shelves with psychedelic and progressive rock. I wouldn't buy anything, as mum had millions of vinyls, however I liked looking around. My eyes fell upon something called World Music. Then I thought Could they have combined psychedelic rock with traditional music? The band's name was Goat. I examined the album for a long time, believing I could get something out of its content. However, I heard a male voice behind me: "It's progressive rock and indeed from Scandinavia".
"Where from?", I asked.
"From Sweden and it's a very extraordinary album. Buy it and you'll remember my words".
"Alright, thanks", I replied.
Eventually I went home having bought the album, being ready for a big and a pivotal change.
This was Goat's debut album under the title World Music, which was released at that time. The album started with a heavy sound like a mixture of doom metal and stoner rock. Then it went on with some psychedelic rock with Hammond Organ sounds, combining tribal African and Oriental sounds with traditional percussion, woodwinds etc. However I had the greatest shock after I heard the singer's voice, who doesn't reveal her identity to the audience. I suppose I hadn't checked out any of the band's members, who wouldn't either reveal themselves, apart from Kristian Johansson, so this experience was so unprecedented for me. I'll get straight to the point. I said that the voice was female. But not a random female voice. She had nothing that all the other singers had, who had spent 15 years in music schools in order to acquire the perfect technique, which after all seemed to me too flamboyant and exaggerating without anything special. All of these singers would sing in the same way. This specific nameless singer of Goat had a crystal clear transparent voice - you could listen to something straightforward, without small jewels and other bullshit. Of course, this woman had a completely powerful voice, which would hypnotise you and she was also doing her vibratoes and her falsettoes, but everything sounded so natural, without her struggling to get that perfect voice.
But while listening to that music, I could realise that Goat were so different! They were trying to combine psychedelic rock with Scandinavian metal and in addition they had many atmospheric elements, but there was a great difference with them and they had something that I had never heard until then. I listen to bands with a psychedelic or progressive rock sound, old bands like Pink Floyd, Genesis, Van der Graaf Generator and new bands like Porcupine Tree etc. Jefferson Airplane was the only psychedelic -in a way- band that I had ever heard, which featured a fronwoman, but they had a more classic rock approach and had blues rock tendencies too. Goat's singer is the only woman, I had ever heard singing in a psychedelic/progressive rock band. And I really loved this childish style of her voice. I had never ever heard of any band like that, even though I knew that before 2010 there were of course psychedelic bands with these kinds of vocals. But Goat was the first band of this kind that I'd ever heard!
I spent half of my day listening to the album and the rest half of the day writing music. I even played the record to Monica and she adored it. I knew that the guys would be here for the recording sessions in a few days and I wanted everything to be ready for my part. And the rest of the songs were clearly influenced by Goat and of course, as you can see, this is how we started getting inspirations from neo-psychedelia. So our debut album would be partly doom metal, partly psychedelic and partly campfire.
It was the 10th of July, when Vivian came to Norway, but not with her daughter. She only came along with Bryan and said that her daughter would spent her vacations somewhere else. Well, I suppose I failed to talk to you about Bryan. To start with, he is my best friend forever. Bryan had an origin from Yorkshire and was living in Ireland back then. This guy was so motherfucking cool and had also this motherfucking cool Northern English accent, which I have, fortunately or not, acquired too, after living for eleven years with someone whose accent is exactly like this. Bryan had reddish to greyish (nowadays greyish to white-ish) hair, was a bit chubby, surely much shorter than me and had a lot of facial hair. Nowadays, he resembles more to Santa Claus. And of course, he's the typical guy from Yorkshire, who can make you roll on the floor laughing, since he walks in the room. Just remember that incident in Ireland where we were singing drunk. Bryan had a lovely soul! You need to try very hard, so as not to love him. So, Bryan became our bass player. Vivian hadn't ever travelled to Scandinavia and described Kirkenes to me as the Poet's world. Of course, it was absolutely natural for me to agree with that and I was even excited that we were starting on the same spirit.
This debut album is the only one, where I wrote all music exclusively on my own. And this happened, exactly because I had started writing, much before we decided to form our own official band. What I mean is, that this was supposed to be my own personal work, which we eventually decided to record in relation to the band. I knew there were several bands, where there was only one songwriter, however I always wanted to work with others as a team. Of course, each one of us would write on their own personal space, but in the end we would show our songs to each other so there would be a diversity of tracks that each one of us would have written. On the other hand, they asked me this: "Because we know how much you love Poetry and Literature, you had better write the stories and the lyrics".
In the summer of 2012, before we went to the studio, we found a name for our band: Alexandria. And this was of a great importance. Since always I was passionate about the sea peoples, because my dad was also involved with the history of cultures. At home he had lots of books about cuneiform, the Babylonians, the Sumerians, the Akkadians and all those wonderful ancient cultures. One of my favourite stories was the most ancient ever written epic poem: The Epic of Gilgamesh. What is more, I always keep saying that I love history and archaeology. And my favourite culture has always been the Egyptians. They had Alexandria, which in antiquity was considered to be the centre of the cultures and sciences. Just think of how many scientific books written on papyrus, would have been saved nowadays, if the library hadn't been burnt. So some years before I had written a Poem about the kingdom of Alexandria. And this Poem is the origin of the band's name.
My friend Timo offered himself to sing in the album with us. And indeed, Dina, Lydia and me were the ones who sang along. (Except, of course, for Brightest Room, which was this particular song where I would sing out-of-tune along with Bryan. And we managed to sound exactly like that particular night. Only that it seemed extremely uncomfortable for me to sing like that, in front of an audience). That's why the album sounds so differently, because I had a soft voice, while Dina's voice had such a huge depth. Lydia had a good voice too, but not that loud and much often I wasn't really fond of the way she sounded on her vibratoes. Anyway, the feeling was good indeed, although it was somewhat weird when you had to open your mouth. However I was feeling like the singer of Goat, as our voices were a bit similar. I can't ever compare myself with her, because she's a titan. We just both had soft voices.
Now many of you are aware of the fact that my trademark is the way, which I sing with. Well, I have to say that I consider myself to be a composer and instrumentalist and not a performer. What this means is, in case I don't sing solo in a song, that I start singing in an unconscious way. I am always focused on my keyboards and of course, I really enjoy the song. So, when Dina was singing in the band, more or less for me it was as if I were listening a song from the stereo. This means that I would sing, as if I were listening to a song on my own: I would join wherever I liked, whenever I liked and if I liked. In the beginning, the others had freaked out, because I would be singing sometimes half of the whole verse, half of the whole chorus or just the first chorus. Of course, in case I was singing a song completely on my own, I wouldn't omit anything. At first, when the others realised I would join however I liked, they wouldn't be able to continue the song, because they had rolled on the floor laughing. However they had slightly started to get used to it, as the audience would too, because this was something I would....do live too! Exactly because (as weird as it might sound) I'm NO performer and if I could be given the chance, I wouldn't even introduce the songs during live concerts. But things don't work like that, when you are before an audience.
This is how the six of us started this splendid journey in the East.
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