Justin:  It originally was a solo project. I adopted the name Nøkken from the Norwegian myth of a shapeshifting water-horse spirit who played violin. I started wearing a plastic horse mask on stage, and it quickly became my alter-ego. I was thinking that this old, dark creature had stepped out of the cracks of time, brought about by the strife and struggle of people to find meaning and spirituality in this day and age. It evolved organically from there when I asked Stephen and Karli to play. They adopted personas too. To me, it was as if, now that the doorway was open, other spirits were free to come through.
Karoline:  We all went to music school together in Cincinnati around 2009, I was doing graduate school at the time. So, I guess we all have been working together for quite a while… we all played in ensembles with each other back then.
Stephen:  It was difficult at first to even know how to combine our instruments and playing styles into a cohesive group. There was lots of discussions, differences of opinion, and frustrating moments. When we first started working on "Treason to Our Nature", Justin and I disagreed on what directions to take the sound, and ultimately that conflict allowed us to explore new, exciting territory.
Justin:  As a group this is the first major release we’ve had. Each of us has collaborated on different projects in the past, but mostly local stuff to Austin. There are some improvised works floating around on our YouTube and Soundcloud pages, and I’ve done this crazy-ass violin piece Stephen wrote called “Overhead Freeway” which is available as a single on our Bandcamp.
Stephen:  Yeah, I'm sooooo sorry for how hard that piece is to play, but you did ask for a crazy, ridiculously amazing solo piece, so what could I do!? 
Stephen:  It was tricky for sure…when we play live, we play with prerecorded electronics on some songs. For those, we isolated our acoustic sound and then re-incorporated it into more studio electronics, then edited it, mixed it and so on. Others songs are completely improvised, so those were much easier, just simple mixing.
Justin:  The hardest thing was balance and blending so that the the live and studio elements didn't feel out of place. We also have a fantastic audio engineer here in Austin, Evan Kleinecke of 5th Street Studios, who did the mastering. He's a sonic magician!
Karoline:  I mean, I honestly didn’t grow up listening to classical, I was basically raised on metal and folk music by my parents. I also like to force other people to listen to my music, so it kind of follows that it would leak into whatever we’re doing…we all listen to a wide variety of music and come from a variety of musical backgrounds. For me at least, it’s not necessarily a conscious decision.
Stephen:  For me it was just fun to smash genres up and see what happens. Especially on "Blue Ritual," I started with an electro/rock beat and added funky Jazz chords and scales just to see what kind of sounds and affects we could get out of it.
Justin:  It’s all about seeing music from this primal, animal mindset. I try to experience and play without imposing my own preconceptions. After all, we play creatures that are very nonhuman, so they wouldn’t care for or even maybe understand how human music and genres work. To them, music might be another thing entirely. For me personally, I enter into a sort of deep trance where I feel not human when I am performing on stage.

Justin:  The story spans the recorded history of humans. At the beginning, people occupy this animistic world of nature and spirits. But as time progresses, humans start to move away from that and seek to control their environment. They hunt and kill the spirits of the old world, especially in “Be Forsaken, Shapechanger,” which was inspired by historic executions of witches, shaman and individuals who practiced shapeshifting rituals in Europe. But gradually humanity’s machinations start to gain a life of their own, consuming living things. Even the very ground becomes synthetic. Some humans and spirits of the old world rise up with Mother Nature against the machines, while other humans seek to become cyborgs and choose to integrate themselves with synthetics. All-out war breaks out at the end, resulting in a cataclysmic event. After that? Who knows? What survives?
Stephen & Karoline:  What he said. 
Justin:  Nøkken is a shapeshifter who was feared in Norwegian folklore. He was known to lure human beings to drown in the river either as a musician or as a horse. As human technology starts to consume the land, however, he becomes sympathetic and tries to gather other spirits to stop it. This culminates in initiating a ritual which fails. A human hunter who fears and loathes the creatures attacks and interrupts the ritual.
Stephen:  I'm Peryton, and I used to be the White Stag of Hungarian myth. Pollution turned my white fur black, which left me angry and vengeful. I grew black feathers to fly above the ever-growing smog, but it always climbed higher. I decided to infiltrate human technology and sow seeds of discontent among its users. You can hear my frustrated cries within the synthesized electronic sounds we use.
Karoline:  Ajatar is a Finnish myth, the mother of nature spirits. She kind of represents the spirit of the Earth herself as well as forbidden knowledge. She works from the background trying to nurture peace, but if you piss her off she can transform into a draconic type creature, hence the horns. So with what is going on in the world currently, you can imagine she's pretty pissed off.
Stephen:  Blue Ritual…I mean, that beat though.
Karoline:  For me I’d say Lament on Synthetic Ground… I definitely wouldn’t say it could be called a single, but I just really enjoy that one.
Justin:  I really like “Be Forsaken, Shapechanger.” Stephen ran his clarinet through the laptop at the show and produced this insane sound like a cross between a clarinet and a cyborg throat singer.
Justin:  Yeah, we have couple shows around Austin this month and an EP we’re putting the finishing touches on. We hope to release it in the next few months. For the rest of 2018, we're really focusing on producing a lot of music.
Stephen:  We've already starting writing new material! Our natural state is experimentation, so we've been trying out a new songwriting process.
Stephen:  Thanks, this was fun!
Karoline:  Thanks for talking with us!
Justin:  It’s been awesome, dude!