Profile: Zweizz
Name: Zweizz
From: Oslo, Norway
Sounds like: Black-metal influenced IDM or, as Zweizz mastermind Svein Egil Hatlevik himself puts it: Necrotech.
Listen: Sawbeam
Discography:
2004 – Black necrotic obfuscation 7" (Vendlus)
2007 – The yawn of the new age (Vendlus)
Links:
www.zweizz.com
www.myspace.com/zweizzmusick
After the initial black-metal explosion in the early-to-mid 90s, the scene quickly stagnated with legions of imitators and wannabees. A few bands made strides to push the genre forward in interesting new ways, but many seemed content with rehashing the same old "grim" and "kvlt" stereotypes. Things haven't changed much, even now in the new millennium - many of the same names that were making waves in the past are still the same ones going at it today. Svein Egil Hatlevik is a perfect example, both for his work with Dødheimsgard and Fleurety and now with his latest project Zweizz. Many people have been incorporating electronics and avant/jazz textures into black-metal for awhile, but Hatlevik is heading further and further into uncharted territory. His forthcoming album "The yawn of the new age" has potential to break new ground, so I'm excited to offer a first glimpse at what's to come.
Tell me a bit about yourself: who are you and where are you from?
My name is Svein Egil Hatlevik. I come from Norway and live in Oslo. I make music under the name Zweizz, sometimes all by myself, other times I get people to help me. I grew up in a small village outside of Oslo called Ytre Enebakk. I started playing music when I was 14 years old, playing the drums. Some years later I learned how to play the piano. Some five-six years ago I migrated to the computer as my primary instrument.
You've been involved with quite a few forward-thinking/progressive metal acts - what made you decide to split off and do your own thing?
I've played in two experimental metal bands: Fleurety and Dødheimsgard. That is, I still play in Fleurety, but we only meet once a year each Xmas. Fleurety is primarily a duo, and the other guy has been living in India and England the last years, so it's hard to be very active as a band. I quit Dødheimsgard because the other people, primarily the guitarist Vicotnik, wanted to make a completely different kind of music than I wanted. Since Vicotnik is the only remaining founding member of the band, it's kind of hard to challenge his authority as a musical strategist. So I decided we were all better off if I took my ideas and left for another playground. So now I'm by myself, and I think that works very well. I don't have to make the wrong kind of compromises any longer.
Speaking of forward-thinking/progressive music, what other acts do you consider to be your contemporaries or peers? Who else do you think is pushing the boundries of music in positive ways?
My closest relatives are Ved Buens Ende and Dødheimsgard, we go back a long time. Apart from that, there are a lot of bands that I respect, but would seem very irrelevant, I think, when compared to these two bands.
Are there any other artists that you attempt to emulate, either in sound or philosophy? Who or what inspires you to create?
I have a couple of people that have influenced me in the way I think about music: I usually mention Burzum, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Merzbow, Aphex Twin and Eric Satie. I have other influences as well, but somehow I feel that the names in this list really sum up what I want to do with my music.
What tools and instruments do you use? What's your technical process?
I use a lot of kinds of software. The last five years or so, I've been working with Cubase, Reaktor, an analogue synth simulator called SimSynth, Wavelab and various kinds of pretty unknown pieces of software like Mammut, Ceres and Granny. The last three were developed by a guy called Øyvind Hammer some ten years or something ago for Unix, so they are not very widely accessible. (They have been ported to Linux, but I don't consider that being very accessible either.) Most of the stuff I do, I record and process at home, using a fairly usual desktop computer. I used to have this idea that everything I did should originate from within the computer, but (luckily) I trashed this principle. The album that I am about to release within short took me almost six years to make, I needed this time to find a style of presenting my music, a way to structure the sound that I could feel secure about. I used to be very structural in my method of composing music; I would think about music as a sequence of carefully planned events, but after these five years of messing around with the computer, I am confident enough to work in a more intuitive manner; the music is what happens while I'm working, and after a while you reach a point where my intuition tells me that the song is done.
What do you do when not making music? What's a typical day for you look like?
These days I work as a journalist at the Norwegian weekly newspaper Morgenbladet. I write about music, technology, culture and science. A typical day would start with me waking up too late feeling very tired, since I tend to sit up late at night making music or reading or hanging out with good people. Then I go to work, write an interview with some composer or politician or whatever, then I go home and watch the news or "The Simpsons" on TV, then I start doing the things that make me very sleepy when I wake up the next morning.
Lastly, what's the future look like for Zweizz?
I'll be releasing my debut album in January or February. After that I'll do some remixes and a couple of collaboration projects. Hopefully some concerts here and there. And then I'll start working an my second album.