“This is not about mass marketing music for mass produced mind sets.
I would rather starve by creating what I want than to be told by someone who
doesn’t understand me nor my art, that something isn’t up to his specs.” 
These are the words of Roy Khalidbahn, a musician that has been promoting 
for years the Illbient in Latin America.
Love him or hate him, (and most people seem to hate him) it is almost 
impossible to ignore his brutal honesty. 
I had the chance to exchange some questions and answers with one of 
the oh-so-rare people in this world who can openly speak their minds 
without concern over what it will do to their image. 
The results are what follows here:


P: Tell us something about your music career…

R: Ah, the dreaded bio. Where to begin? How can I talk about the bad things 
without sounding bitter? How can I speak of the good without bragging? 
And how do I make it all sound interesting? Well maybe I'll just tell you 
my best recalls. At worst you'll get bored… 
There was a point in my life, being already very interested in communications,
where I thought music would be the most efficient way of communicating with
a greater number of people. A record is literally a record, a document. So
a record’s just as much of a piece of propaganda.  For me it was an 
opportunity to talk to people and share my ideas.  
That's pretty much how it all began.  I knew what I was doing, but I can't 
tell you what kind of music it was, because it really wasn't the type of 
noise that can be described in words. This experiments, eventually took 
the form of music tracks. 
Without more intention, my "music" started playing on the States, 
and from there on, I became part of the band Two Three Times. 
I remember releasing our first LP “The Land Of Fire” on a friends' label 
(Golgotha Communications Ltd) in the Chicago’s scene. 
Briefly after, a bunch of people in the Occulture underground, started to 
become interested in my early work, and I released a couple of demos as 
KhalibahN.
I remember everything being surreal, and then, in November 2002 I hooked up 
with a roundtable of great musicians and together, we record 3 songs in 5 
days with no label support. We loved the result, and after a few calls, 
Venoma was alive.

P: What do you feel is the most important thing about your music? 

R: I hope it’s originality. I have been accused of not following the typical
song format. No apparent hook. Lack of verse-chorus-verse-chorus, etc. 
I’m somewhat happy with that. I don’t want to be the same as everyone else. 
If I happen to write a catchy song that is “radio worthy”… well, that’s great
but it just hasn’t happened yet. 
And if I ever do write a catchy, hooky song that is “top 10 worthy” then the 
same people that accused me of not having hooks will accuse me of being a 
sellout. 
I listen to everyone’s opinions but it doesn’t mean that I have to take them 
by heart. What matters is what comes from deep inside of me. 

P: As a propaganda tool, there must be a philosophical, or even ideological 
background in all your works. What can you tell us about that? 

R: Yeah, for that explanation you will need a lot of tapes, time, and good 
will! (laughs) Seriously, the background is as simple as this: you can't grow 
as a musician if you don't evolve as a human being. 
For example, last year I evaluated everything I had previously thought, 
and embraced the emptiness of life. I drunk myself in a sort of house-made 
Zen paradigm and I let go of everything I once believed and now, it feels 
like I'm doing a really bad impersonation of myself.
That’s why I decide to remake or destroy the documentation of my oldest work. 
In May I'll turn 25 years old. That’s good timing. 
A quarter of century is a childish division of time, but which isn’t? 
Looking to the past, I see that most of my previous work is a documentation 
of the dissolution of reality lines, my abstraction from meaning, searching 
for it in the wrong places and filling empty spaces with garbage. I wrote 
about a lot of issues of my life. I wrote the lyrics for me and not really 
for anyone else. For example, Mary Morgana is about my fucked up half-sister 
and our lack of relationship. Of course at the end, I do hope that people 
can pull some relevance from the lyrics and apply it to their daily lifes.

P: You are writing a new book, tell us about that…

R: I wouldn't sell my book. I offer a escape plan to get out of this 
space-time prison. And I’m not being poetic here. I’m literal. As most of 
you may know, I have spent the last few years developing a radical system to 
recover the autarchic interpretation of reality. 
(check www.ningunismo.org.ar for more) 
The book is about that, it will be called The Icarus Legacy and for me 
represents the finalization of a learning process about the meaning of loss 
and failure, and how to create Real Change.
When I talk about real CHANGE, no-one else knows its shape, 
so I have to use the Insurrection metaphor. New models are needed to map 
this landscape, so I'm using mental-triggeríng action to unlock the sleepy 
brain.

P: Why did you came up with a book?

R: Why not? I read a lot, I enjoy good books. This is not my first 
publication, and after all it’s a culture donation to society.
Every year, I read more and more news articles about the decline of reading 
in Latin America, or about the consolidation of the publishing 
industry- independents going out of business, major newspapers and magazines
giving less and less space to book reviews, and similar bad news… 
but as everyone seems to be putting aside the old friendly book for the 
computer screen, it’s a much more interesting scenery for me.
My ideas will reach only those who dare to defy the trends limitations. 
As a professor I have to daily witness the oppressive climate of illiteracy 
around. Books are doors to new paradigms. Those forgotten and those yet to 
be created.
If youth doesn’t use libraries, they better make the internet evolve soon.

P: Tell us about the authoring experience... does it come natural for you? 
Or is it hard? Do you dread sitting down to write everyday?

Well I don't think any book should be tough to write. You have to be 
inspired enough by the material to find the experience exciting. 
When I'm not feeling that way, then I simply take a break. I suppose it 
comes naturally, but I do have to force myself to do it sometimes. 
The cliché is true. It takes a lot of self-discipline. But I can tell you 
that the worst part, the boring one (investigation) is finally over.

P: How did you manage to do all this research?

It began almost 10 years ago, because it has taken me from my first to my 
last experience in the occult underground to understand the problem, and 
find this solution.
I started writing it shortly after I'd finished my carreer studies, but 
by then I was working again, and my spare time was none existent.

P: In the book, some delicate subjects as magic, archetypes, occultism, 
show up... how did you think it will be received?

R:  I make a clear delineation between wanting to be right and wanting to 
know the truth. Those are the two camps of people. I've been wrong about a 
million things, but I was smart enough to realize about it. 
I had been a megalomaniac, a witch doctor, a really fucked up influence… 
but I have also wore diapers and got over it!. The Icarus Legacy is a lot 
about the radical exposure of every clandestine influence that I know is 
operating in this civilization. Our real discoveries come from chaos, 
from going to the place that looks wrong and stupid and foolish. Others 
writers also new, but so many of them are afraid to speak the truth for fear 
that it would hurt their careers, or even its pretty faces. 
You asked me if people will love or hate my ideas… if I had to guess based 
in my actual fan clubs, I would dare to tell you that, probably, I would 
have a lot of problems. I'm speculating that many of my lovely followers 
opposed to me so rabidly because of my disgusting tendency to question it all.
But the real stuff its happening. 
The reality maps I present in this book, each one of them worked for me. 
The whole idea worked in others too. That’s why I choose to expand it a 
little bit, fuck the consequences.

P: It's an idea I've had myself sometimes too... about saving society. 
In general, how passionately do you really feel about this? Do you feel 
there's still hope?
 
R: Yes, I think there's still hope. For instance, what does it say about 
our culture when Maradona is called a god? In my book, I'm just suggesting: 
"WHAT IF the things on the radio station were smart and thoughtful and 
even productive? What if our TV shows and movies relied less on cleavage 
and butts and more on enlightening dialogue? I think that sadly nowadays, 
entertainment IS culture. So if we want culture to improve, 
why not stopping exalting the Britneys, Rickys, Ken and Barbies of the 
planet? Hell, why not give some real authors and artists some TV time?! 
Meanwhile, in the real world, far away from the “what ifs” we are hidden as 
vagabonds terrorist.
I’m not seeking fame or fans, I share my music, words and ideas, that’s all. 
For example, just like the infamous Thesis 222, my music is in a permanent 
state of flow. The CDs are just snapshots of my work at a particular moment 
in time. They are not a important thing for me. 
Only about 2-3% of the music being produced gets any exposure other than 
the few people who make it and their circle of friends. And there is, 
of course, the nest of true mad philosophical/ mystical/ insurrect music. 
Out there, in here, in the underground... holy, wholly, unholy, empty, 
gracious, egregious, cursed or blessed sounds.
 
P: Could you talk about what was the motivation to develop a music style 
that fused mediaeval and Illbient elements?

R: I've been studying and working on medieval music and literature for many 
years. Back in the 90`s, I was part of the gothic scene in Argentina, and 
since then I have been in love with medieval music, because it was so 
unusual and it gave me a lot of opportunities to improvise, 
to learn to use old languages, and so on. In the beginning, 
I planned it to be only a studio project, and for the first few months, 
I worked. So I choose the best musicians I could found. Some of them where 
in the Chicago Demo Scene, others, in Australia, and the rest, 
in my country, Argentina.
The advent of computers and consequently the software developed for them, 
enabled me to create in ways that would have been laborious a short time 
prior to their creation. Internet has completely changed the way you can 
create music. As an “unsigned” artist it (technology) has allowed me to 
create awareness of my projects that I could not have dreamed of having.   

P: Can you define yourself as a gothic artist? Is your public from that 
scene?


R: As an artist, I wish to make my music as accessible as possible. 
I write music for the dance floor as well as for meditation but not for the 
mental masturbation or the self-indulgent glorification of lame serial 
killers or vampires wannabes. My songs have some limits: no vampires, 
no bad poetry, no make-up tips, and so on. 
So if you wish to call Venoma, or any other of my projects a goth band, 
you must think of it as goth without the typical goth cheesiness. 
I think the music we're doing now is completely original, and that's what 
I'm most proud of. We probably hit it off so well with the gothic audience 
in particular because they're more open to artistic, passionate music. 
They're into stuff as diverse as Dead Can Dance and Type O Negative. 
We're in no way gothic, in the sense of following all the trappings of 
the present day goth bands. We're far too Illbient and industrial. 
But I can see why the gothic audience would follow us.
Unfortunately, a lot of people missed the symbolism of what I’m trying to 
convey, and simply assumed that I will become some innocuous death-rock 
reference. To the contrary, my music is about giving life, not sucking it... 
Its sad that the post-modern youth needs to categorize bands and have been 
struggling to define me from new age to gothic to classical IDM, 
or whatever. 
But my projects don't fit in any classification and that comes from the 
constant evolution of its sound. 
What we are doing is so different from most contemporary groups, 
that people flock to it in order to get stimulated in an entirely different 
way. 
We affect a region of the brain others bands don't. People who would 
ordinarily never listen to this kind of sounds, listen to us. It's a great 
opportunity to expose them to something new...

P: In 2006 you will release a new LP with some material of the first demos 
you spawned as KhalibahN... 

R: I wanted to re-do some old songs because there is still too much to 
express about that first sounds. 
I’m not sure, but I suspect that every musical project in which I’ve been 
involved, has always been only one project, divided mostly in time and space.
I choose to remix some tracks that were in the same line of music of what I'm
willing to do in the future. 
Basically it's the first 100% Latin American Illbient project, 
home-based in Buenos Aires, and the result is definitely way, way different 
than anything I have ever recorded before. Lots of really cool surprises. 
I think people is going to be very excited with this new versions.


P: After the new publications... The train is leaving the station. 
What happens then?


R: What's my stop? I can't remember, but somehow I know it's better to forget.
Forget the future, forget the past and forget what I know; there is nothing 
beyond the here and now. The passenger next to me is sweating because he 
knows not where the train is headed. "We're off to the slaughterhouse" - 
I tell him - "yes - off to slaughter". He looks worried like he's about to 
cry. "Cry not mi amigo, for there is nothing to fear..."