Hi, ELITEFITREA. "Lethe" released on November. You must be excited?
Yes. I hope it does well. But I've always got my eye on the next thing, too.
First of all, we would like to know about the formation of the band. When and how was it formed? Do you think the band name ‘ELITEFITREA’ perfectly describes your music and philosophy?
When I got out of prison in 2015, I started working on song ideas based on advice from a friend, which was to try writing a 5-song EP. The project quickly grew larger than an EP and spun off side-projects, one of which was Lethe. At first the band was just me. I was living in a halfway house stacked 6 or 12 to a room. I was there just over a year. Inmates weren't allowed to use computers in the halfway house building, I think because someone was caught remotely running a meth lab, so of course they banned computers for everyone. So I would tinker with music ideas on my work computer when no one was watching. I was also taking community college classes. I learned classical piano and used the student loans to supplement my income.
A year and a half later I had moved back into my old house on an ankle monitor. I could only leave for 12 hours a day. I was still technically serving my prison sentence and was not "on parole" yet. I was experimenting with how I might sing over the music I was creating. I had never really fronted a band before, only sung on a few songs in prison bands. Shortly after that, a friend of mine from prison -- he had been in the same band program as me at the medium facility -- was released 10 years early due to his innocence and his case finally working up the court system. He had been locked up for 10 years already by that point. I asked him if he would like to help me perform the music I was writing. It was a sketchy time because a lot of the laws around parolees and halfway-house residents, etc. were in flux. Parolees were not supposed to hang out with each other and you could get sent back to prison if your parole officer found out you were even talking to other former-inmates. And I wasn't even a true parolee yet. I was what's called an "inmate-parolee." But we were both obsessed with music and we're both former military. So in other words, at least two levels of insane beyond a normal person. Speaking of, our bassist is actually pretty nice and normal. He is a friend of my wife's. They knew each other from college. She asked him if he'd like to play bass for my crazy band, I taught him the songs, and it's been great.
The name is something I've always had in mind for a music project. Fitria is an Arabic-derived, Indonesian girl's name. The word 'elite' is a reference to a track on the Deftones White Pony album. It came out when I was a teenager and was a turning point in how I write music. They have a track called feiticeira and it was my favorite track back then. I wanted a band name that sounded like that word. I like the name. It has meant different things to me over time.
Okay now tell us something about "Lethe", what are the ideas you wanted to put across?
Well, Lethe is this heady mythological concept, where the souls of Hades drink from water that causes them to forget their memories. It's a really freaky idea. Before I settled on the name I had been working on some soundscapes that depicted a subterranean feel, and some of them had lyrics. I was working on these tracks around the same time I was creating on a setlist to perform around Denver. When the first concert was announced this weird activist dude came out of nowhere and tried to get me blacklisted all over town. He's one of those guys that likes to say "fuck the cops" and all that. So here's my band of former prison inmates, and in particular I had done a lot of work to come back from a severe mental illness, with a particular insight into preventing crimes like mine from happening in the future. And what does he do? Acts like a cop, basically. Go figure.
But he's a symptom of a larger phenomenon. I mean, I understand what's happening. But it altered my focus with the soundscapes. My working title at the time was 'under earth,' based on an image series I had found. One day I was doing some research on subterranean themes and found Lethe. The idea fit really well with what I had observed. It's about society forgetting its past and creating an underworld.
Where and when did you record "Lethe"? Are you satisfied with it?
A lot of Lethe was written/recorded in my home-studio in 2017. I have an old playlist of the raw soundscapes here: https://www.youtube.com/
I didn't have the money to develop them in earnest until late 2018. I spent early 2019 recording guitars and synths in Tennessee, and we recorded the vocals in Denver. I'm 99.99 percent satisfied. I often think of things to add. I sometimes think of rearranging the songs. Sometimes I wish the mix was different, that my vocals were slightly quieter or the guitars slightly louder, or that I had a real drummer in the mix, or whatever. But I think it's a fantastic album.
Are you going to release some official band merch?
Oh yeah - there's lots of official stuff on elitefitrea.com/merch. I actually screen-print the shirts myself and you can buy gear with my signature on it for a markup.
What are ELITEFITREA’s musical and non-musical influences?
Well, NIN is probably my biggest influence, but I like Radiohead, Boards of Canada, stuff like that. I don't listen to them that much these days. I wish I could write guitar riffs like Dime did on The Great Southern Trendkill, and I like a lot of the production on AntiChrist Superstar...this stuff is so old now...The Social Network and Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, as well as How To Destroy Angels were almost all I listened to for 2 years after prison.
As for non-musical... I often reflect on things I read in prison. You don't have much of a choice for what you read. Just whatever's available, and what other inmates have ordered and donated. But I gravitated towards mythology. Not established mythology, more like that Melchezidek book about the flower of life, or a book I read called The Inner Reaches of Outer Space. I liked all of Carlos Castaneda's books. Or the one about Edgar Cayce. There was this one by this guy who was doing out of body stuff and he met a spirit he called AA who was searching for another spirit called BB that had incarnated on earth. I gravitate towards this stuff because my psychotic episode had experiences that overlapped with everything these authors are talking about.
But to contrast with all of that, I also like philosophy, objectivism, and reason. Form, philosophy and ethics helped me get my life back together in a big way. Prison itself was a big help in a way, too. The crazy stuff has value, but without form you couldn't do anything with it in the material world.
Could you please express your personal views on religion and god?
Not really, haha. I think religion is technology. And we're seeing now that you can take the human out of the religion, but you can't take the religion out of the human. For instance, we're seeing atheists engaged in holy expansionism. It doesn't get any more ridiculous than that. I was raised in a Christian family and I became a Buddhist in prison. Both religions have "smart" and "dumb" interpretations of their philosophies. When you get really abstract with it, they actually have more in common than you might think. For instance, Buddhists are obsessed with enlightenment and escaping from "suffering." Suffering is based in desire, they say. But desiring to escape desire is an enacted contradiction. You can actually bypass it all by ceasing to desire enlightenment in the first place. In other words, you choose suffering and cease to suffer. In Christianity, God also chose suffering. In fact, God chose death. I think God really did choose death. This is why there are no obvious manifestations of God on earth. Why would God kill himself? So humans could have free will. Most people are atheists because they hate God for not intervening in the suffering of the world. But to intervene would be to diminish free will. In order to choose God you must be free not to choose God. And that's only possible in a world without the influence of God. I haven't decided if I've "chosen" God or not. But I have not chosen death either. I believe in reincarnation. I was an atheist for over a decade. But now, atheists are so contemptibly boring, and so blaringly hypocritical, that it would be more fun to join a Christian fundamentalist church out of spite. But why bother. I'm a musician. And my purpose is to make the music that I want to make.
Shall we expect some gigs across USA or Europe near time?
We finished a small tour this year in the US a few months ago. We were on the road for about a month across 11 cities. But with covid, things were pretty limited. We didn't do big indoor shows. We played outdoor, free concerts to people who were already there. We might expand on that in 2021. Outdoor concerts in out-of-the-way areas. Depends on how things shake out. Europe would be more tricky because our band consists of felons. The EU isn't friendly to felons and most EU countries forbid American felons from entering. They are quick to criticize the United States and its prison system, yet work hand-in-glove to put down the same people, as usual. Just like activists who decry prison yet step over prisoners' faces. It's just public posturing for power. That said, there are a handful of countries that do allow felons in, so we'll see.
When shall fans to expect something new from you? Videoclip, single, documentary etc?
I released a mini-doc about making Lethe on our YouTube channel. It's low-budget DIY but lots of people that have seen it have really liked it. I'm also working on a remix EP of some of the Lethe songs. And I'm still working on an album called sever|us which is monstrously epic compared to what I've done so far. I have some music videos in the works, as well. Perhaps a livestream video. But sever|us is the next big thing for elitefitrea.
Thanks a lot for the interview. Speak out to your fans, supporters, critics and our readers before we wrap up!
Hi everyone - thanks for reading! I'm grateful to my many global listeners and I hope you'll check out Lethe. This album is just the beginning and if only you knew the humble beginnings of it all. Take care.