“A JOURNEY INTO THE PAST”
STEFAN TRAUNMULLER INTERVIEW, DEC. 2016
SEED STOCK RECORDS
INTRODUCTION
The release of this zine coincides with the reissue of the GOLDEN DAWN / APEIRON demo by
Seed Stock records on double LP (SS-15) format, this tape was originally released as Impure
Creations 006 (France).
The interview was conducted as a means of retrospection concerning Golden Dawn and the
rest of Stefan Traunmuller’s musical projects. The photos taken throughout dates from 199395 and are all © Stefan Traunmuller.
Hopefully this interview offers insight into the history of Golden Dawn and other related projects
for people just discovering these works and for the long time fan - M. del Rio
For further information write:
To begin, can you mention which bands inspired Golden Dawn prior to the formation of the
project? What were the factors that made you want to start your own musical projects? What
was the key moment when you decided to start creating music yourself rather than just
listening to music?
For me the fascination for both listening to and creating music came at the same time, at
the age of 13. It came all together, the discovery of extreme Metal, tape trading and my first
humble steps of recording guitar riffs with the equipment of my uncle, who had a cover band
by that time.
An important factor for me was Bathory, I don’t know if I had ever started to write songs
without “Hammerheart”, “Twilight of the gods” and “Under the sign of the black mark”. The
second wave of Norwegian Black Metal with Darkthrone, Burzum, Emperor and then Satyricon
also inspired me a lot, as well as the bands that came from Death Metal but started to play
slower and more atmospheric with keyboards, like Paradise Lost, My Dying Bride and Tiamat.
So my early songwriting oscillated between Black, Doom and Viking/Pagan Metal (although
this term did not exist by that time).
What about Black Metal spoke to
you, rather than say Death or Thrash
metal or Hardcore punk?
What really spoke to me were the
bands that had that mystic aura,
an atmosphere that surrounded
their music, but also the way they
presented themselves. It was the
time when the typical Black Metal
corpsepaint and the black and white
cover artwork with snow, forests,
castles and burning churches
emerged on a regular basis and I
could identify more with that than
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with the “normal” outfit of many Death Metal bands, who rather wrote some gore and horror
lyrics and seemed not so “serious” than the Black Metal guys. Black Metal had this atmosphere
of solitary, majestic elitism and dark occult power. It was more than just music and that was
what I was looking for.
What was the climate like for Austrian BM in the early 90s, were you aware of groups like
Abigor, Summoning, or Pazuzu? How, in your words, did Austria differ from some of the other
European music metal scenes at the time?
I was aware of quite everything that happened, cause I was a dedicated tape trader like many
others. We exchanged our lists of stuff we owned all around the world and copying music on a
double cassette deck was a daily occupation. It was not like today where it is in fact impossible
to discover all new bands and albums that emerge every day, you had a handful of new releases
every month and when there was a new “band to watch”, everyone in the scene was eager to
dig into that. Abigor, Summoning, Pazuzu,
also Pervertum, Trifixion and not to forget
the odd avantgardists of Korova all emerged
at a similar time in Austria and of course
I was aware of them. All of those bands
had a special individualism in their style
which was rarely to be found for example
among German bands. But of course the
Scandinavian scene was the non plus ultra
in every sense.
Golden Dawn was a one man project in the
beginning for the demo era. What was the
main reasoning for this approach and not
creating a full line up?
That was a matter of the fact that my whole adolescence was very retreated. I lived in my own
world and also did not know anyone that would have fit to me on a musical and personal basis.
It of course was a stony path to work on music all alone without modern recording technology
but on the other hand it was a good thing that I did not know about all the problems like loss
of direction, clarity and focus that can emerge when you start to play with other musicians. To
me, making music on my own is still as natural as for a painter or a novelist.
How, initially, were you recording music? Can you describe the process of recording “Lullaby” or
other early material? Doing this all on your own, how were you approaching crafting songs that
are quite layered and complex. How did you consider using keyboards within the composition
of these songs?
The beginnings were indescribably low-fi, I recorded riffs with a cassette recorder, played it back
and recorded a second guitar line or vocals to it with another cassette recorder that stood next
to the first one and the amplifier. Then after a while I got a 4-track recorder and a keyboard,
so I could record 2 separate guitar tracks and played bad sounding drum samples to it on the
keyboard on the third track. Then I did a “mixdown” of those three tracks on the fourth track
and could use the first three tracks again for vocals and keyboards - all in mono. The next step
was taken when I got a little hardware sequencer where drums and keyboard patterns could be
programmed or played on an integrated mini keyboard and arranged to full songs. This is how
quite a lot of music for the first album “The Art of Dreaming” was composed. Keyboards have
always been an essential ingredient for me to get a greater variety of atmospheres in the songs.
The name Golden Dawn is obviously a reference to the English esoteric order from the late
19th century. What was the inspiration for the project title? How central was mysticism and
the occult to your project’s origin?
When I took the name, I was aware of Crowley and his esoteric order but it was not the main
reason for using Golden Dawn, to me it was a description of a state of enlightenment that a
shaman or sorcerer reaches after a life-long search. In the beginning I also dealt with Norse
mythology but topics of shamanism and witchcraft had always influence on my lyrics.
Besides GD and Apeiron you have many musical projects. Why was it necessary to create all
these different entities and not release everything under the GD name?
To a certain degree it was a lack of focus but also a creative process that led me into different
directions. When I felt like doing pure Doom metal, simple riff-based Black Metal or Ambient
music, it was obvious that I could not use that under the name Golden Dawn. Golden Dawn was
the combination of all those influences and should have a certain complexity.
Apeiron seems more obsessed with dreams and
the subconscious. What are the driving themes
behind this project? Are these recordings made
for meditation or attaining a different mind state?
Yes, some of this music was made for meditating
and lucid dreaming. I was influenced by shaman
techniques to open the doors to other other
worlds and the inner self, whereby my personal
approach to this were dreams and attempts to
control my dreams.
Apeiron, for the most part, leaves behind
conventional metal instruments and delves fully
into keyboards and ambient music. When you decided to make this departure, what were your
intentions as opposed to composing songs with guitar, drums, etc?
When I got my first keyboard and later some extra synthesizers, sound modules and a multieffects unit, I was instantly fascinated by the possibilities of sound synthesis. I listened a lot to
early synthesizer pioneers like Jean Michel Jarre and loved to discover new sounds and effects.
Sound design and improvised performances were the pillars of this music rather than concrete
riff structures. I am doing a lot of meditation music until today, most of it just for myself.
What response did Golden Dawn receive in the 90s through the distribution of your various
demos? You were in contact with Impure Creations in France (a productive tape label from that
period) was there any other labels or distributors that were integral to Golden Dawn early on?
My first steps were just tape trading, spreading out flyers and putting a few ads in fanzines. Also
a few reviews and interviews followed quite soon, as the scene was still rather small and also
demo bands got some attention. I sold the first demo “Lullaby” to very few people personally,
some additional copies were made through tape trading. The Golden Dawn / Apeiron split tape
came a few months later and was distributed by Impure Creations. I remember that they also
offered me to release a Golden Dawn CD but at that time I did not know much about where
and how to record an album in a studio. Another label that distributed some of my demo stuff
was Chanteloup Creations, also from France, they sold the demos Apeiron - “Stardust” and
Vanitas - “World’s end” (some kind of weird Industrial Metal, already produced on a computer),
both recorded in 1997.
The music of Golden Dawn and Apeiron seem like projects full of fantasy and mystical
symbolism. Why was the motive to create music of introspection rather than music that
engages the external world?
Because for me the inner world was the key for any experience in the external world. The magic
principle “as above, so below”, so the analogy of above and below, within and outside, spirit and
body, led me to that idea that starting with an inward journey (in dreams or in meditation) can
also reveal mysteries of the outside world. Also I was a very very retreated young man with
little interest in meeting people, so it was natural for me to concentrate on my inner worlds.
In 1995 GD was featured on the “Various – A.B.M.S.: Norici Obscura Pars” compilation on Dark
Matter productions. How did this come about? What was your relation, if any to the other bands
featured on this compilation?
Ray from Pazuzu got hold of the “Lullaby” demo and wrote me that he saw potential in my
music and that he planned to assemble songs of Austrian Black Metal bands for a compilation.
He and Martin Schirenc (Pungent Stench, later Hollenthon) were about to start Dark Matter
Records as a sub label of a commercial label in Vienna. So I was invited to this label’s studio to
record the two songs “Way of the sorcerer” and “Enigma”. When the compilation was released,
my songs got good response and so it was decided to sign me on Dark Matter Records. The
compilation tracks had drum computer, the drums on the debut album “The Art of Dreaming”
were played by T.T. of Abigor. A.B.M.S. stood for “Austrian Black Metal Syndicate”, a cooperation
of Austrian bands that were connected by the same spirit with the aim to support each other.
Later your work on Dark Matter drew the
attention of Napalm Records, when they
reissued your “Art of Dreaming” CD. How
did this come about, and how did this
affect the trajectory of Golden Dawn?
After the release of “The Art of
Dreaming”, things got worse and worse
for the label. Martin and Ray more or
less stopped working for the label owner
as this guy was an unreliable confused
person who never fulfilled his financial
obligations and left us with empty
promises. I already was in his studio
again for recording the second album,
but the recordings got more and more
complicated with him not appearing at the studio for hours and letting some assistants doing
all the work. In the end the second album “Sublimity” was almost done but never finished.
Napalm Records already spoke with me during that time but the mentioned studio guy blocked
all negotiations with unrealistic financial expectations. That was an enormous set-back for me.
Some years later, the cooperation with Napalm Records was finally realized with the re-issue of
“The Art of Dreaming” and the album “Masquerade”, but this album was a big mistake in every
sense as I worked with totally inappropriate people and also lost myself in some gay Gothic
and Power Metal influences. With the turn of the millennium I also started to set up my own
recording studio and lost the focus on my own music.
Napalm records to the rest of the world seemed like the main representative and producer of
Austrian black metal with well known releases from Abigor, Trifixion, Pazuzu, and Summoning
(- my mistake, see below for correction - ed.). Do you think this was still the case when GD
joined their ranks?
Well, as I said, the Austrian scene has always been quite individualistic. Napalm Records only
released Summoning and Abigor, who were quite closely connected and shared some of their
members in the beginning, as far as I know. Pervertum, Trifixion and later Werwolf were on
Lethal Records, another Austrian label that vanished as quickly as it came, as it was another
rip-off label. Napalm was the only Austrian label with a serious economic fundament. I am still
not sure how they managed to become as big as they are nowadays, because their choice of
bands/styles did not (and still does not) follow clear motives - when I was in their roster, they
already had a lot of Gothic Metal stuff, later they also signed bands like Monster Magnet and
Grave Digger. But maybe that’s the secret of their success, a broad variety of styles and a good
sense for trends. However, they were a pure Black Metal label only in their very beginnings
when the success of Abigor and Summoning for sure helped them.
Golden Dawn has seemed to remain the center of your universe and has been your most
consistent project over the years. How has it changed? Did you accomplish what you set out
to do over 20 years ago?
Actually it was the center of my universe only in the 90ies. Later I concentrated on my own
studio and producing other bands. I had various projects and played certain roles in other
bands, ranging from producing to being studio or live musician or arranging/composing stuff.
I still do that but fortunately I found my own creativity again, mostly through Rauhnacht, which
is my main project since a couple of years. I call the style “Alpine Black Metal”, it is very
atmospheric, sometimes folky and is rooted within traditions, myths and tales from my region.
I don’t feel that I really accomplished anything so far, it is very hard for me to be satisfied
with what I do, on the other hand this is what drives me and makes me continue with music. I
changed my personality quite a lot during the last 20 years, so it is natural that also my music
reflects this change. I don’t feel that need for fast, weird and progressive stuff the way I used
to, so the music I do nowadays, as well as me as a person, is more coherent and focussed
compared to earlier times.
From your perspective, how does Black Metal look in 2016? Do you still follow any current
bands? Do you feel any of the same spirit now as you did in the early 90s?
To be honest, I don’t listen to current bands and I am connected to Black Metal only through
the bands I produce. What I really dislike is how many of those hipster Post Black Metal bands
sound, they are just copying each other and listening to just 5 seconds of their albums often
makes me instantly stop with a “aha, another bedroom production” thought in my mind.
Then you have some really serious bands that represent chaos magic and nihilism, which some
of them do really well but this is not the attitude I have nowadays. From a musical perspective,
90ies Black Metal was not that ultra-negative,
there was still some kind of beauty in darkness,
a feeling of desolation but also power and
magic put into music. Today, many bands are
really capable of handling their instruments but
are lacking atmosphere, which can to a certain
extent be explained through thechange in
recording methods. 20 years ago you still had
analogue recording, no copy/paste of riffs and
endless triggering/editing sessions. I think that
the (theoretical) perfection of digital recording
is poison for a genre like Black Metal, which
has always lived from rawness and desired unperfection. Of course there are still good bands
around, but personally I don’t have the time to
find them within the big mess of uninspired
copycats. Who I used to like during the last couple of years is for example Wolves in the throne
room, Agalloch or Evilfeast.