Interview: Ville Valo (Finland) About the album “Neon Noir” and the upcoming Australian tour. “There’s something very different about the way the sun looks over there than it does in other parts of the world.”

Ahead of their upcoming Australian tour, the Dark Lord of Love Metal from Finland, Ville Varotaka VV, recently took some time to talk to us about his album neon noir. He talked about his transition from lead singer. he He looks back on his transition to a solo artist, the process of creating his debut solo album, including playing all instruments and vocals, and self-producing during the pandemic lockdown.

Congratulations on your album. This is amazing and I think it’s one of the most beautiful albums I’ve ever heard. Plus, it’s full of songs that I can’t skip. That’s unusual.

Lovely. Lovely. Yeah, that’s what I was shooting for obvious reasons, but yeah, I also feel a connection to the album, because I didn’t have to do that, and for the first time in my career I had to compromise. You know, I was able to work on it by myself and spend as much time as I wanted on the nitty gritty, and that’s what made it so special. It was like some kind of surreal psychedelic meditation session that brought the whole thing together. I was really diving deep into making records and making music, and for old guys like me, being able to find new aspects and new perspectives to what I love the most and what I’ve been doing all this time. It’s very rejuvenating and energizing. I’ve been working on this for the past 30 years or so. So I’m happy with the result and personally I think this is a great new beginning. This zebra can’t change its stripes, but I’m okay with that. I’m okay with having some sort of signature sound, and you know, a lot of people are trying to find a musical or artistic identity, but I can’t escape that, so I’m fine with that.

I think it’s a good place to be, but I don’t want to be locked in, but I think that must be a limitation.

That’s exactly right. You know, as artists we always complain about something, so that’s to be expected.

How long did the whole process take from writing the song to recording it to tape, so to speak?

I started with my previous band HIM. We held our last live performances on New Year’s Eve in 2017 and 2018. It took some time, but I did a project here in Finland, singing songs in the style of the 50s and 60s, old classical Finnish local tracks, with a local classical band. I think this was a complete 180 from the rock world. It needed to be done at that specific time to avoid repeating the same thing or falling into a routine. In the meantime, throughout 2018 and most of 2019, I slowly started working on new ideas. The first song we started recording in 2019. There were a lot of firsts for this song, as I had never recorded anything myself before and ended up doing most of the work myself. So the first song was “Escape from the Sun.” I thought it was just a demo or maybe a little musical sketch for a band I was forming, but it sounded really good to me.

I’ve always loved people like Prince, Andrew Eldritch, and the benevolent dictators of pop culture, like Lenny Kravitz. Is there some kind of really singular vision, or is it going to be a racehorse, an artistic racehorse with blinkers, that gives it a new angle as opposed to doing a band? I just wanted to try it out. I’ve been in a band for 25 years.

So I started working on it around September 2019 and released my first EP with 3 songs the same week the lockdown started. Of course, I didn’t know the lockdown was coming. Because these days I have to upload tracks a little faster and I don’t know when everything will be published. But that was the beginning, and I think the way out of the black hole of the pandemic that followed was to work on music. Music has always been my crutch, a kind of helper when I needed it. Netflix When I became a zombie, rock and roll saved me once again, which is what I ended up doing.

It took a while, and so did the record industry as a whole, but just having meetings became really difficult. When working with a record label and trying to find the first step in a new chapter of your career, it is important to meet. We get to meet people face-to-face and do things like brainstorm, which is difficult to do over Zoom. All of that takes time, which is why the album was released last January. Another reason was that I wanted to release it physically. I wanted vinyl, but due to the pandemic, I think the lines at the vinyl pressing plants here in Europe were about eight months long.

It was a long journey, a long, strange, winding journey, but a good one. The pandemic has also given me time to work on the small details, and the fact that I’m not the best player has given me time to work on the small parts.

You say you’re not the best player, but as I listened to the album, I’ve done this many times before, but I kept reminding myself that all I hear is your voice. It’s not every day you hear an album this rich, all coming from one person, all the instruments and vocals. After listening to the album several times, there was a profound moment when I realized that this was the work of one person. you know what i mean? I guess this was a solo album in the truest sense of the word.

Well, I guess I took it a little too literally (lol). I think it was also about facing a challenge or creating a challenge for yourself. Because it can easily happen that you start doing the same thing over and over again, and in the realm of music, that’s what’s scary for me…My number one hobby is painting and pushing myself. You know, that’s where I find myself and I feel more comfortable when I’m butterflying or tiptoeing a little bit. There’s a sense of impending, not necessarily doom, but you’re standing on the brink of possible failure, so I think that’s exciting too. I would be happy to hear such things. I have exquisite taste, but how to get there is another matter!

I feel like I’m getting old by saying this here, but I was a teenager in the 80’s and my first band was Duran Duran’s New Romantic era. I think they were my first love, and that was the beginning of all my love for music and bass guitars and things like that. I hear they are similar. I don’t know if it’s for you. As an example, Zener Solitaire reminds me of Duran Duran’s Secret Oktober. It has the same kind of edgy, slightly menacing aesthetic. Also, I hear “-ha” throughout your song. I don’t know if it has anything to do with your tastes, but there are a lot of things that remind me of my teenage years. Perhaps that’s why there’s such a connection, but I don’t know how much it intentionally influenced you.

Often because it connects me to the past and what I value most. In the ’80s, all the things you mentioned, that was probably when I was first introduced to the world of music by Thriller. And I love Aha, I love Morten Harkett’s voice and the sense of soaring melancholy. I have always loved. It’s actually very ’80s, very New Romantic-ish, but I also like guitar-oriented bands like the Chameleons. I also like the Killing Joke stuff and the synthesizer stuff they did in the mid-’80s. is what I grew up with, and musically speaking, I’m still trying to find a balance between the Depeche Mode influence and the Black Sabbath influence.

Sometimes I like physically intense music. It’s music that violently shakes the bell-bottoms, but the sound pressure makes it flutter. But at the same time, I also like music to be subtle, a little quirky, and flashy. It was his cool 80’s stuff, like Culture Club and Adam and the Ants, and one of my favorites of his was Nick Kershaw. He only had a few songs, but he was huge, and songs like The Riddle had lyrics that were very similar to Duran Duran. It’s so surreal, so weird, and for me the best music is his three-and-a-half minute world. It really takes you, it gives you a new perspective on life in general at that moment. It’s an escape from reality, but it’s also an escape to the core of who you are as a person. Because it doesn’t matter how old or young you are or what kind of person you are, you are a delicate flower when you listen to music. The music you love opens up something for you. And you’re probably a little bit more childish than you would be without the music. Well, I do listen to that stuff, and it’s a very important influence on me musically.

That’s something the other members of HIM didn’t really like. They were more metalheads. That’s why I think the new wave guitars in particular are very similar to Echo, the Bunnymen, and Joy Division. I love the haphazard, the quirky, the dark and rustic – what if it was a combo? There’s something very sensitive and sincere about it, but at the same time there’s a dreamy, mystical, poetic vibe to it that’s semi-liberal bohemian, and I love that combination. If you add a little bit of Charles Bukowski to it, it becomes quite complete.

You will be touring soon in March and will be coming to visit us after being away for up to 10 years. There was a time during the pandemic when touring seemed like something that was all but going to go extinct for me. So I’m very glad you came. You toured for a while with this album. Do you have a favorite song from the album that you would like to perform live?

No, I think the great thing about touring with a new band, debut album, new music, etc., is that we’re playing HIM tracks back to back, so we’re playing half and half. There are a lot of older songs, but what really sounds and feels cool to me is how the songs work with each other. There’s a song like “Tear Off the Butterfly’s Wings” and then you play “Heartful of Ghosts” and it’s again completely different from the past. It’s been such a journey for me, both musically and emotionally. It’s so new that it feels like past, present and future combined in a little package with a velvet bow, and there’s something really beautiful about this combination. And the fact that I’m not trying to do that. A lot of people start their careers solo and want to denounce their past, but that’s not what I want to do. I wrote most of HIM’s songs and sang all of them. There will be some musical similarities with the new one, and I have no intention of changing that. This is a great feeling for me because it’s like a transition period from moth to butterfly, I’m trying to find myself and it still feels fresh.

You know, I requested to be able to travel to Australia and New Zealand as well. It wasn’t something that was recommended to me, but I said I wanted to do it because I wanted the tour to feel like a full world tour once the album came out, and if I didn’t get on a plane, it would feel like a world tour. It doesn’t feel any better. i’m so excited. I am confident that everyone is healthy and everything will be fine. You know, there’s not a new rapid pandemic happening right around the corner, but yeah, it’s amazing. I have always loved visiting Australia. I’ve done Soundwave Festival several times. It was always fun. There’s something very different about the way the sun looks from over there than it does in other parts of the world. It is unique to the Australian sun.

Don’t miss your chance to rock your bell bottoms with VV in the Australian sun! Dates are:

Wednesday 13th March – Power Station, Auckland
Friday 15 March – Northcote Theatre, Melbourne
Saturday 16th March – Sydney Metro
Sunday 17th March – Tivoli, Brisbane

Tickets can be purchased here

Header image credit: Jonas Brandt

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