Exclusive! Interview With Ganesh Rao.

Hey there fellow Djentlemen! 

After dicking you around last week with the promised but not delivered interview with AOS, I am pleased to present to you an exclusive interview with my featured artist this week. The one, the only, Mr. Ganesh Rao. Sorry it's so late but I have only just got in from work. 

Enjoy peoples! 

Hey there Ganesh! Thanks for taking the time to talk to me. Firstly for all those people who haven't heard of you before, give us a rundown of what you do?

Hey Tim, thanks for this interview. I really appreciate what you're doing with this blog and wish you the very best. Well, I make ambient metal music and develop conceptual visual pieces.

You released Empyrean earlier this year, which might i add was awesome. Which came first, the music or the video idea?

Thanks! Actually, they both developed side by side. Most of the visual ideas came to me in several separate dreams. I took these concepts and developed them, then wove them together to create an abstract visual piece. Later I developed a musical theme that captured the mood and emotions which I had felt in the dreams. The aim was to recreate the dreams and have everyone experience it. Once the music was locked in, it helped see things clearly, and it guided the artistic decisions during production, filming, and post production work.

Could you explain the meaning of the video?
This abstract piece is really intended to evoke feelings and emotions like as if it was your own dream, rather than being understood. I think 'understanding' involves logic and facts, where as 'feeling' involves a higher degree of subconscious effort. Each person will 'feel' it differently based on their own personal experience in life, their memories, their cultural backgrounds and their state of mind. And everyone is able to experience these feelings and extract a meaning from them internally. It's like walking through a maze without a map. It's exciting when you don't know where the exits are. It can be fun or frustrating, but that leads each person to ultimately find a unique pathway to the exit. And the pathway that each person chooses is absolutely valid and correct.

How did you go about filming Empyrean? What was the creative process?

The creative process was that of experimentation and trial and error. Once I had a rough concept, I asked my friend Jonny Greenwald if he'd be interested in the project, and he agreed to work with me. He brought with him his amazing photography, storytelling and technical skills and together, we developed the piece further. We had never done anything of this proportion before, and that led us to spend a lot of time in the studio experimenting and testing different ideas, constantly failing and learning new things from our failures. It took us about four months to prepare for the actual shoots. However, once we had done all the preparation, we became extremely confident and experienced in dealing with the technical challenges involved in such projects. Filming it became a very natural task and everything moved ahead very smoothly.

You released Empyrean as a solo artist, are you also part of a band?

I've been in a few bands before and played some small gigs. Unfortunately I was never part of a group that I felt matched my wavelength. I ended up either suppressing or stretching myself to match the expectation of the other members. It was fun and educational while it lasted, but I started to feel frustrated as I couldn't freely do the things that I wanted. So I've decided to stay a solo artist for a while and exhaust my inner creative spirit. It's a very cathartic process and extremely rewarding. There's no one to tell you what to do and you just go by your own instincts and learn from your own mistakes.

What can we expect in the coming year from you?

More experimental music attempting to blend Hindu music with ambient metal. Maybe audio/video podcasts on updates regarding my video album.

It has surfaced you are producing a "video album". Could explain what that will consist of and why you decided upon it?

Yes, the debut music video album titled "Forbidden Circle" will be ready by May 2012. It's an album entirely drawn upon dreams and the subconscious. It will have four, maybe five tracks thematically linked to Empyrean. There will be a video piece for each track, and Jonny has agreed to continue working with me on all of them. Quite a few artists have agreed to collaborate on this, although we haven't started production yet. Igor Omodei and Matthieu Romarin from Uneven Structure have agreed to contribute ambiences, heavy riffs and vocals. David Maxim Micic and Jakub Zytecki will bring face-melting guitar solos to the mix. Grayson Cain will lend us his prowess in industrial ambiences. Tom Still from Invocation will share powerful riffs. And Patrick Browne of Dawn Heist will add deep vocal sweeps. I'll soon be setting up a Kickstarter page where people can contribute to the project and make it happen. Contributors will get several interesting rewards including limited edition DVD/BluRay, t-shirts, behind-the-scene access, source tracks and mix-session files, concept artwork, posters etc. I really hope we get a lot of support, because making videos like Empyrean is extremely expensive!

Who are your influences as an artist?

I feel my ambiences are largely influenced by David Gilmor, Steve Wilson, Air, Buddha Bar. My guitar inspiration include Steve Vai, Dimebag Darrell, Michael Amott, Mattias Ia EkLundh, Fredrik Thorendal, Keith Merrow, B.M. Sharp. Melodic and compositional influences I'd say Prem Joshua, classical Indian music, movie OSTs, I really enjoy following music that has a strong narrative element. Visually & conceptually, I love and adore the works of Darren Aronofsky, Adam Jones, Mark Romanek, David Lynch, Tim Burton, James Jean, Salvador Dali.

Are there any plans to go on tour with the music you have written?

Someday, yes!

Finally, is there anything you would like to say to the readers?

Follow your intuition. It's been working all day everyday your entire life to give you the ability to make the best decision. And dream as much as you can, it's the best drug, and no one can stop you from using it.


Big thanks to Ganesh there for taking the time to talk to me! 

Make sure you head on over to Jonny Greenwald's site as he helped make Empyrean possible!  Link is HERE. And check out the official Forbidden Circle Facebook page HERE.

Was originally going to post this tomorrow but thought fuck it. Hope you enjoy reading! Good night folks.