After the release of "Not Wanting Is Power" in December 2014, I took a long break from making music. I had been meaning to try my hand at writing for years and something had recently sparked my interest in the subject, although I do not recall what it was. I spent all of January 2015 writing a short book that largely consists of autobiographical narratives mixed with social criticism and existentialist drivel. It was an interesting experience and I am glad that I managed to finish it. It was even fairly well received by the few people I showed it to but ultimately I found writing extremely unrewarding in comparison to making music. This alcoholic told me that he was shocked by how much the book reflected his own life and thoughts, although he objected to some parts being "too heavy". I am not an addict, mind you, although I had been drinking a lot in December and January.

It was not until March 2015 that I tried my hand at making music again. At first I attempted to continue where I had left off but I struggled with the microtonal tuning that I used to use. Once again, I ended up returning to my plain equidistant D2 tuning. The mix I ended up with is very different from my previous works. The structure of most of the tracks is simplified and features more repetitions than was the norm. I consistently used high-pitched vocals this time.

The most radical change is the use of multiple languages. Some of the readers might already be aware of my keen interest in linguistics. All previous Voidcraeft releases featured English lyrics, whereas this one has French, German and English ones. French really was a first for me. As it turns out, French is great for singing because it is not as restrictive in the way you distribute syllables. I struggle more with that in stress-timed languages such as English and German. The last time I made music with German lyrics was in 2008.

The French lyrics were derived from a collection of interviews with the infamous Emil Cioran, released by Gallimard. This was the first French book I have read in entirety. It was a bit repetitive and I understood only 80 percent of it but it was enjoyable nonetheless. The German lyrics are comparatively poorly written and were conceived from skimming through Friedrich Nietzsche's posthumous fragments. I read a lot of Nietzsche during my teens but I have not really revisited his works since. "Formlessness" and "A Disconnected World" are based on "Politics of Experience and the Bird of Paradise" and "The Divided Self" by the delightful R.D. Laing, an alcoholic psychiatrist and abusive father who wrote a lot about the subject of mental illness, in particular psychosis. I also read Georges Bataille ("Visions of Excess"), Fyodor Dostoyevsky ("Crime and Punishment", "Notes from Underground", "The Idiot"), Jean-Paul Sartre ("Nausea", which also inspired the title of this release), Osamu Dazai ("No Longer Human"), Ernest Becker ("Zen - A Rational Critique") and William Barrett ("Irrational Man") during that period. I doubt that any of them are going to make it into my lyrics any time soon, though.

I am currently reading Young's insane Literal Translation of the New Testament, in combination with Koine Greek parallel texts. The next release might very well be entirely written in Biblical Greek – just you wait and see. That would certainly be a riot of kvlt.