Miasma Interview

Here is an interview I did with the band Miasma & The Carousel Of Headless Horses for Vice Magazine. They feature members of bands like Guapo, Chrome Hoof and the Alabama 3 and they are really good.

Miasma & The Carousel Of Headless Horses

Miasma are genuinely scary. Scary in a goosebumps as soon as you hear them kind of way. They sound like a lost piece from Susperia that Dario Argento thought too terrifying for release being played backwards by King Crimson on repeat forever. Somehow they occasionally get lumped in with the ‘freak-folk’ movement. Probably by people who have never actually listened to them before. They are about as close to Banhart as Comus were to Donovan. I.e.: basically not in the same in the universe. Although they are sort of a supergroup made up of members bands like Guapo and Chrome Hoof the music they make together is pretty much like none of those things. They have an EP available now on Southern’s Latitudes label and a forthcoming full length on Rise Above.

Your music is pretty frightening. What scares you?

Sara: Walking around at night in a dark garden and being alone with your superstitions. That is what I think of when I play.

Daniel: Playing with this band live can be frightening due to the complexity of the material. It is rehearsal-intensive music with a high level of technical rigour. Sometimes though after two or three songs you forget the fear and just play.

Orlando: Positivity and space docking.

You like pretty weird onstage. Do you always dress like that?

Leo: Well…yeah. (it should probably be pointed out here that we are sitting in Negril on Brixton Hill and the Miasma guys are all sitting there eating plantain in their Witchfinder general hats).

Daniel: We aren’t trying to be Slipknot.

Orlando: I just don’t really get the whole corpse-paint thing though. We don’t do that. Those Black Metal guys just look like they are in the Rocky Horror Picture show. We thought about dressing up as white minstrels once and capturing the horror of those old Al Jolson clips but that puts you on slightly dodgy ground I suppose.

You are all pretty strange guys. How did you meet each other and decide that this was the music you wanted to make?

Orlando: I met Daniel at the Horse Hospital in Bloomsbury where all these old queers and failed artists and junkies hang out and drink and we had a similar outlook on life.

Daniel: We don’t all agree on influences either. Apart from maybe Sabbath. We’ve had long and virulent arguments about certain Kate Bush albums. I’m more into the Sensual World era but they don’t really get it.