Vision Éternel Mentioned In Vision Lunar Interview For OccultBlackMetal Zine

Vision Éternel was briefly mentioned in an interview with Alexandre Julien regarding Vision Lunar. The interview was conducted for OccultBlackMetal Zine between October 22nd and 24th of 2015. The full interview can be read on OccultBlackMetal Zine.

For archival purposes, the snippets of the interview which mention Vision Éternel are now presented here:

-This is the first recording to be released in eight years, can you tell us a little bit more about what happened during that time?

The final Vision Lunar recording session took place in November of 2007. I then spent a little over a year trying to find band members to expand the solo project into a full band. But that didn’t work out. So in early 2009 I announced that Vision Lunar was dead.

Between 2009 and 2015 I played in a couple of metal bands (Lanterns Awake, Murder on Redpath) but mostly focused on my ambient projects. I released quite a few EPs and LPs from those projects, including Echoes From Forgotten Hearts and The Last Great Torch Song by Vision Éternel and Memories of a City, Bonjour Tristesse and Adieu Tristesse by Soufferance. My ambient band, Citadel Swamp, has also released a few singles. I also collaborated on a song with Éphémère, which I believe is one of the best song I have ever done. Apart from my own music, I dedicated a lot of my time to my company, Abridged Pause Recordings.

-Can you tell us a little bit about Abridged Pause Recordings?

Abridged Pause Recordings is my record label. It was founded in February of 2008, while I was still operating Mortification Records (since 2006). In the beginning Mortification Records was to be the netlabel division, releasing black metal demos and my own music, while Abridged Pause Recordings was to release vinyls and CDs from indie, post-rock, sludge and post-metal bands. The first four bands to be signed to Abridged Pause Recordings in late 2008 were Black Autumn, Dreams of the Drowned, Ethereal Beauty and my solo project Vision Éternel (because I was planning a split 7″ with Ethereal Beauty).

The first Abridged Pause Recordings release was Diluvian Temperals, a compilation featuring exclusive songs from Black Autumn, Black Sand And Starless Nights, Dying Sun, Feos, Kailash, Last Minute to Jaffna, Omega Centauri, Parabstruse, Pet Slimmers Of The Year, Semiosis, Smohalla, Somnam and Tower. After that I also worked with Beyond the Dune Sea, Kailash, Phlegma and Stagnant Waters on individual releases.
I closed down Mortification Records in 2010 (after the release of Vision Lunar’s Phase One (2006-2009) compilation) and shifted the focus of Abridged Pause Recordings to release mostly my own music. I also established imprints under Abridged Pause Enterprises’ umbrella; Abridged Pause Publishing, a publishing company that protects the copyrights to all the music released on Abridged Pause Recordings on top of securing my own music’s catalog; Abridged Pause Apparel, the merchandising division, which thus far has only produced a few t-shirts; and Abridged Pause Blog, which is where my profession comes in. I’m a music biographer and archivist and I publish all my retrospectives and documentaries on that blog.

I am currently putting together a second various artists compilation, to be released through Abridged Pause Recordings, that should be out in early 2016. Some of the confirmed bands include Black Autumn, Black Sand And Starless Nights, Brainscan, Citadel Swamp, Éphémère, In Cauda Venenum, Pet Slimmers Of The Year and Spectrale. I plan to settle with thirteen to seventeen bands, so more artists will be announced soon. There is also a Vision Éternel boxed set in the works and two Soufferance boxed sets in the distant future.

-Are you currently involved with any other bands or musical projects these days?

I usually always have multiple musical projects active during the same period, but I never compose or record for more than one at a time. I will focus on a single album, finish it, then move on to the next band with another idea.

For example, in the fall of 2014 I composed and recorded the Vision Éternel EP Echoes From Forgotten Hearts. It was released in February of 2015, by which time I was already demoing new Soufferance material. During this Soufferance session I accidentally composed two atmospheric black metal songs, which eventually became the new Vision Lunar material that sparked the creation of Luna Subortus. But since I was focusing on Soufferance at the time, I put those songs away and forgot about them. I eventually finished the Soufferance session and in the spring I started recording a couple of new Citadel Swamp songs. But when I hit a writers block, I stumbled on the two atmospheric black metal demos again and jumped on a new Vision Lunar session instead. I know that this probably makes it seem like I am constantly composing, but I can sometimes go six months without picking up my guitar, before falling into a creative phase.

As of right now, in the autumn of 2015, I would say that Citadel Swamp is taking up most of my time. Citadel Swamp is an ambient band that I formed in January of 2011 with Valerio Orlandini (from Symbiosis and Norv). Over the years we’ve had a few other band members join, but we’ve remained the longest-lasting members. Some of those other members include Bruno Duarte (from Immundus) who joined in March of 2011, but was kicked out after collaborating on only one song, and Marc Hoyland (from Hoyland, Plaguewielder, Thornland, Ethereal Forest, Heathen Deity, Nefarious Dusk, Wither and 13 Candles) who had a brief and fruitless collaboration in February of 2014. The newest addition to the band is Lucas Martin (aka Unsilent, from Almofar, The Descent Of The Sun and Levrij), who I will be composing new material with.

Vision Éternel is still active but I’m not working on any new material. I plan to release a boxed set entitled An Anthology Of Past Misfortunes in 2016. The box will contain all the previously released EPs, each featuring a bonus disc with the b-sides and alternate takes from the recording sessions. The box will have extra room for the future EPs to easily fit in. Soufferance on the other hand is on an unofficial hiatus and I don’t know what the future holds for it. There will be at least two more boxed sets, one entitled Tristesse, another entitled Memories, which will (together with the already released Travels boxed set) encompass everything ever recorded by that project.