Cosmotropia de Xam—Interview from February 2021

Cosmotropia de Xam is a film director and musician whom I have already mentioned many times in my blog.

Keeping certain traditions of the European 70’s exploitation films and synthesizing them into a new and very authentic form of art, he is one of the most extraordinary modern independent film directors. And one of the most influential cult figures in Witch House music who brought into it perhaps the most important stylistic elements with which this genre, including its visual representation, is normally associated.

From this interview you will learn about:

• What Cosmotropia de Xam is working on currently.
  
• Cosmotropia’s vision of Witch House music now, after a decade since the birth of the genre, after its decline, and transformation.
• A few interesting biographical facts and his background as a cinephile, collector, and graphic designer.
• The process of creating his films and memories from some of the filmings.
  

Now, let’s get down to business.

Interview with Cosmotropia de Xam

Could you tell me about the film you are currently working on? What’s interesting about it?

I'm just in the final editing phase of an upcoming movie called The Inferno Index which is planned to be released in spring 2021.

It's filmed and edited in 4K with additional camera work by Lapis Exilis. We filmed it from lockdown to lockdown around summer of 2020 in the Netherlands and Germany. The filming process during the pandemic situation was a little bit tougher in planning. But finally we finished filming the material around Halloween 2020, before the second lockdown was into action.

This is a project that took us five months to film. Normally, I do movies in one week or two, focused. But in the present situation, it's all super weird. Here we are now allowed to meet at maximum five people from two flats. It's very surreal.

Will you let me use a screenshot to represent the new film in the interview?

I guess I want to present the new movie very fresh when it's released since it's not finished and I want to bundle the energy for the final editing which can make it a completely different movie.

Which of your films have been the most popular with your audience?

Within the ten years there are like different eras, and every era has its most popular movie.

From the more experimental movies, I guess, Hollywood Necronomicon — a movie we filmed at special locations in Los Angeles and San Francisco (Mulholland Drive, Cielo Drive where the old Polanski villa was and the Manson murders happened, later to become the NIN Trent Reznor's studio).

Then, with the era of more narrative films, — Diabolique (filmed at the original locations of Zulawski's Possession), since this was underlicenced in Switzerland via the former Hardbox label Elektrocity, and Malacreanza starring Shivabel Coeurnoir.

Delirium and Schwarze Messe des Gehirns for the less vintage looking ones.

For the newer era — Phantasmagoria and Phantasmagoria 2: Labyrinths of Blood were very famous as a return to the vintage more analog look and the spirit of the original filming locations we were visiting. For Phantasmagoria 1, it was Lodz, Poland, where David Lynch had filmed Inland Empire. And for Phantasmagoria 2 — original filming locations of Jess Franco's She Killed in Ecstasy, Bloody Moon, and Vamypros Lesbos. People really love those.

I’m curious about this symbol that you frequently use in your art, notably on foreheads of models. What does it mean and how did you create it?

It's a magical ritual trademark which was there from the beginning.

Would you tell me which magical tradition it comes from? Or you prefer to keep it a mystery?

To keep it a mystery — a lot of people asked about that, but the magical processes shouldn't be explained to anyone.

What does your name — Cosmotropia de Xam — mean?

"De Xam" is a reference to a comic book in which Jean Rollin was involved — Saga de Xam.

I've heard about Saga de Xam, and I know what this part of your name means. But I couldn't find anything about the word "Cosmotropia". I guess you invented it yourself?

This is just a name.

Meaning "cosmic human" if I'm not mistaken.

It's definitely based on cosmic.

In your film Diabolique there is this milk-like parasitic substance called Esmakra. I like this word, it sounds mysterious. In fact, after watching this film, I started to call milk Esmakra in my everyday life, for fun, when talking to myself sometimes. Can you, please, tell me more about it?

Diabolique was the first vampire-themed movie I made, and as a surrealist, I wanted to exchange the overuse of vampires as bloodsuckers. So the vampires in Diabolique are addicts. Addicts to a drug called Esmakra.

As modern vampires who are living in the old future vision of abandoned brutalism, their plan is to infect and absorb humanity with this drug. So like Jean Rollin-ish vampires from Bahnhof Zoo. Parts of the movie are filmed in old Berlin.

The drug Esmakra, as well as the drug E769 (as featured in Metamorfosia, 2014 film), are drugs of the universe of Cosmotropia de Xam, since every universe needs its own drugs to escape from reality. Film is a drug too.

Aura enjoying Esmakra in Diabolique (2013), a film by Cosmotropia de Xam.

 

For the Esmakra addicts, I created this T-shirt design. Download it for free (as well as my 50 other b-movie shirt prints) and order a shirt from any print-on-demand service you like.

This question has already been asked in your interview with Black Magazin, but it was Rachel Audrey who answered it, mostly regarding herself. Now I want to hear your answer too. You constantly use imagery, symbols from the area of the supernatural, esoterism, particularly satanism, throughout your music videos, films, and other artistic and marketing materials. Is it part of your beliefs? Do you actually do any spiritual practices or is this just for entertaining your audience?

The creative process is sometimes close to a ritual where you, as the creator, act like a medium channeling forms of energy, so like a modern form of witchcraft. Symbols are part of the channeling process.

What is going on in witch house music today? Are there still any interesting bands that appear or at least are still active? Whom can you suggest to keep an eye on?

In late 2009 - 2010, the whole Witch House scene was a quite exciting thing. As part of that, I was involved in the very early beginning where everything was tabula rasa and built up due to the freshness of early social networking. A social network was like a ritual web connection point where everyone was sharing more or less their nostalgia from the decades of the 1950’s (Stockhausen), 1960’s (early electronics, psychedelic), 1970’s (post punk, industrial, kraut, cosmic), 1980’s (synth, goth, hip hop, acid house, new beat) and so on. Same with movies.

The Internet was like a collective brain. People were not used to share ideas that directly at that point and were excited about it. Early Witch House was not formular but more of a melting pot of musicians having certain dark aesthetics and a special atmospheric sound you couldn't file under existing genres. So they were recognized under the term Witch House.

I watched and supported the scene by releasing a lot of important projects from all over the years [albums by other witch house artists through Cosmotropia de Xam’s label Phantasma Disques and curated sounds. Cosmotropia also created cover art for these releases himself.]

There was also a sound change to more aggressive, more rave-ish, when Witch House had a huge hype in Russia around 2013. If you look at Phantasma Disques releases, you will see that there is a certain continuation till 2017. And then it's getting less and less — that's how I perceived things being of interest (from the point of view of someone who’s been there from the beginning): most of what people sent me after sounded instant, formular, not original.

With Mater Suspiria Vision, I would consider only 20% maximum of all our releases as Witch House, and mostly in the early days or only as an element later. This is if not thinking as a purist formular-thinking pioneer — purists would have a problem with even considering it Witch House from today's point of view.

[Below is a song from the latest Mater Suspiria Vision’s album — Crack Witch 3 — as an example of Cosmotropia’s current style.]

Can you, please, explain the last phrase? I’m not sure I understand what you mean.

Over the years, Witch House has changed. While in 2009-2011 it was mainly about the sound and music atmosphere, where you filed things mainly under the term 'Witch House', perception of Witch House went more technical and formular from around 2011 onwards: people wanted to be filed under the term for being part of the movement and part of the hype.

So you had the overuse of the technical formula of hip hop and especially trap beats and a saw synth, very instant. I only had focus on this during the early days, but built up more elements into it such as Kosmische Musik, Early Industrial, Musique Concrete, Experimental — especially the Inverted Triangle trilogy opened up the space for not only having Witch House elements. Something I formerly used in my older project — Madame O und ihre Kopffilm Bande (established in 2001 as Kopffilm — meaning 'headmovie' in German) — that created trippy audio collage mixtapes for chill out rooms in clubs.

For a purist this could have already contained too few Witch House elements to consider it Witch House. But I didn't care since I saw it as a natural progress and moved on with the sound that was already very recognizable on its own with no need for a genre.

I like what Witch House was in the early days. I actually embraced the term from the beginning, but considering today's Witch House scene, I'm not following it that much anymore, unlike before. As for me, there are still singular interesting releases, but they are rare as people come from a different background and different generation.

The change for me started with Nu Metal being a background for Witch House — that's something I hated in the late 90’s - early 00’s. I loved shoegaze in the 90’s, drone in the 00’s, female heavenly voices, psychedelic, experimental electronics, horror soundtracks. I don't find these elements used together in an attractive way in modern Witch House. The modern Witch House I like is actually based on the original 2009-2010 Witch House like White Ring, Salem etc.

While most genres find their spring in particular countries/cities, Witch House is one of the first genres that had their spring within the Internet. Local scenes existed during the first wave such as in Los Angeles, Berlin, London, but they were very small and underground-ish while the community was much more presented on the web.

So you ask me for recommendations, and I will answer the way we saw recommendations in 2009-2010... go listen to Tangerine Dream, Brainticket, Throbbing Gristle, Psychic TV, Slowdive, Goblin... and reinvent the listening experience you have when you listen first to Sisters of Mercy, then to a Mike Oldfield’s track followed by Throbbing Gristle and Britney Spears — brainwash your mind from stereotypes and formulas.

I see you are nostalgic about that time. You often repost on Facebook old posts to remember the days when Witch House was on the rise.

Nah, it's a bit more complicated. At the time, Witch House was a collection of nostalgic moments that went into the new collective consciousness of early social networks. Since I'm a person who is focused on the atmosphere rather than on technical progress and skills, this might appear as nostalgic. But actually it's just recognizing the core time when things were original and not consuming products.

And especially this Zeitgeist was only realizable at this certain time — it wouldn't happen like this in 2020 nor five years earlier since the core elements were based in the 60’s to 90’s as memorabilia and were put in a new context by certain people with certain background triggered by social media posts and a new way of communication.

After my interview with Nigel Wingrove, he asked me if Witch House diverged into something new and different. Did it? Or did it just fade away?

Actually, you can see it in so many things, even in mainstream now — trap music, neo industrial, even goth changed after Witch House. The visual aesthetics has changed a lot too since then.

The interesting thing is that there has never been a huge physical local scene. In London and LA maybe it was the largest. It was mostly connected by means of the Internet. While the early Witch House was more experimental, like early industrial — Throbbing Gristle, Psychic TV etc, it went more and more accessible soundwise and more a producer's thing.

I think you could write a book on Witch House. Its birth and growth, subtrends, the golden years, decline, transformation and current state. I bet it would attract enough interest.

There is a book in the making... where I am involved as one of the time-witnesses. I wouldn‘t have the time and interest to do a whole book on my own since I’ve lost interest in this as a genre with all this boring uninspired stuff over the last several years. Even Mater Suspiria Vision was Witch House-related only in the early years and then went more and more into its own thing.

But I get that the book thing will be more and more important now. The further time passes away, the more people will tend to change the history in their minds. I mean the months January till March 2010 alone feel like a year nowadays since so much happened back then.

I’m also planning on a guide to the universe of Mater Suspiria Vision explaining who is who in Mater Suspiria Vision for years. Since it got very complex as a collective over the years with at least fifty persons involved.

When did you sign up a band or a solo musician to your label, Phantasma Disques, last time?

I never signed bands or artists — all the releases were more or less non-exclusive with artists keeping their rights for future releases. So what I had started as a CDR series with PD-XXX had its end in late 2019 with PD-200 — Mater Suspiria Vision feat. Shazzula ‎– Second Coming, Live at BUT Filmfestival.

I also like to keep it that way as a ritual-ish thing, since it was the live performance of Second Coming which was the first album, — all CDRs afterwards were either unnumbered or part of an ongoing NCS (New Clock Settings) series which started during the pandemic situation in 2020 where logistics were blocked in spring which made it hard for physical releases. So Voodoo Crystals and Madrelarva are the most recent non-MSV releases right now.

Do you like any modern filmmakers or production houses?  Whom could you recommend?

I mainly prefer the golden years of exploitation, arthouse, horror. So from modern movies and filmmakers I like (in no certain order):

• Panos Cosmatos — Mandy and Beyond the Black Rainbow — actually based on nostalgia, but we will see these retro-style movies from the 2010’s with a different eye years later.
• Gaspar Noé (especially Enter the Void).
• David Lynch — his modern take on Twin Peaks series as an 18-hour movie. And the 2006 Inland Empire as a spring of modern digital filmmaking with no material limits and creating a movie based on strong ideas and the magic happening in certain locations with certain people. It was like an indirect dogma for me once I noticed that my movies were created in a similar way. That's also one of the reasons why I filmed Phantasmagoria 1 in the footsteps of David Lynch at the exact same locations, same hotel.
• Black Mirror as a zeitgeistish Netflix thing.
• Brandon Cronenberg (Antiviral, Possessor).
• 2018 Suspiria deconstruction by Luca Guadagnino. I didn't like it at the cinema, but now, after having watched it five times, I really like the take on the Suspiria story.
• A Cure for Wellness by Gore Verbinski.

These are a few coming to my mind.

Perhaps the most prominent feature of your label is your beautiful and extraordinary visual design style. Nigel Wingrove himself, who is a professional graphic designer and creator of one of the most outstanding brand identities — Redemption Films,  admitted in our interview that he was impressed by Phantasma Disques designs.

He said: “I immediately liked the presentation, the overall packaging style…”. Could you tell me about your design background and how you got into it?

There are two different directions that brought me into it:

1. The collecting background since the middle of the 90’s — collecting records and movies from all over the world. So that's the “living the thing” background.
2. The professional graphic design background as I worked for nearly a decade at an advertising agency as an art director. This one is for the technical design skills — the learning and experience background.
   

Both combined is what you see in the design of Phantasma Disques / Mater Suspiria Vision / Cosmotropia de Xam releases.

[Below are a few examples of Cosmotropia de Xam's designs.]

How did you discover the world of exploitation cinema? Do you remember the very first film (or anything else) that impressed you so much that you started digging deeper in this direction?

As far as I remember, it was in 1994 via the soundtrack and VHS reissue of Vampyros Lesbos, the Immoral Tales (a book by Pete Tombs that featured Jesús Franco, José Larraz, Alain Robbe-Grillet, Jean Rollin, Walerian Borowczyk and Jose Benazeraf), and my first trip to London where I found some Redemption VHS at HMV which featured exactly the movies shown in the book.

From today's point of view, you can consider the early - mid 90’s as some sort of renaissance of Exploitation movies. From then on, I started to do some more research on all the movies from the book. You could get most of them only as a third generation copy, some were only in rental stores.

I started collecting pre-cert VHS also around that time — we drove from video rental store to video rental store in hope to find some holy grails they would sell.

I also started to go to VHS and Laserdisc Fairs (now they all are mostly called ‘movie conventions’ but back in the 90’s they were all very small and the program the dealers had varied a lot while today most have the same blu-rays).

Via collecting, I found a lot of bizarre and weird movies. Especially Jean Rollin’s movies were very difficult to get besides the ones Redemption released — movies like Phantasmes aka The Seduction of Amy (1975) or his mostly X-rated films under his pseudonym Michel Gentil were impossible to find. Also, a lot of Jess Franco stuff was impossible to find since they released it in Switzerland on a label called Movie and Heeres which later should have become a very expensive collectors label like Go Video in the UK, Wizard Video in the USA or Sony Exciting! and Clarion in Japan.

Examples of rare releases (not in Cosmotropia’s collection). Cosmotropia de Xam: “Only a handful of copies exist in collectors circles. Some of them are worth 1000+ Euros.” More examples mentioned by Cosmotropia: releases by the labels Movie and Heeres.

In the 90’s you were just wondering if they were released, in the early 00’s you saw some on eBay during the early steps of globalism and the DVD market going to explode, and during the 10’s the worldwide collectors exchanged pics of their collections via social media. So the image widened from that point a lot, meeting the nostalgia of the old days.

I have about sixty or seventy Redemption VHS cassettes still here. I started to collect them when they were cheap.

Cosmotropia de Xam: “Normally you know the one on the right. It's super rare — I  just saw it one time and bought it.”

Apart from Witch House, we also have Retrowave / Synthwave. It’s similar to witch house in the sense of using imagery from the 80’s adjusted to modern day technology and vision. Exploiting nostalgic feelings. For younger people, like me, it's a funny kind of false nostalgia for the times they didn’t even exist yet. Or maybe real nostalgia for the early childhood in the early 90’s when TV shows and music from the 80’s were still frequent on TV. What do you think about retrowave?

Retrowave, as it's often presented, is too high gloss for me, mostly. I like how around 2008-2011 people really experimented with the sound of the past. We had hypnagogic pop around 2008-2009 coming from the new weird America movement where people like Oneohtrix Point Never looped weird parts and created a feeling like you’re caged in a microwave of nostalgia nightmare.

Early Witch House, including my other project — Pwin Teaks, followed this path and came up with adding different tempo to that, like pitching it down etc. The first actual video of Mater Suspiria Vision — Afterlife (Remix) — used a similar technique.

Or this Pwin Teaks track — I Will Always Love You.

It was mainly about creating hypnagogic dreams to feed the Internet and social media rather than producing music. The hypnagogic movement was part of Witch House, and later this thing split into Witch House / Trap and Vaporwave / Synthwave.

We saw the peaking point of Synthwave a few years ago with "Stranger Things" — the composer had a project called S U R V I V E which was part of what was seen back in 2010 as the first cassette compilation — Dark as Night — with Witch House tracks including oOoOO and SLEEP ∞ OVER.

Concerning specific terms, I actually prefer ‘vintage’ to ‘retro’ (which is a so trashy word actually). So I prefer the trippy hypnagogic experience to hi-energy synthwave.

Watchlist:

Oneohtrix Point Never — Angel (Memory Vague 02/11)

THE VIDEODROME REALITY — Phase 9 (THE VIDEODROME REALITY is another Mater Suspiria Vision's side project)

Cosmotropia de Xam’s Chromatic Dream Box — Nuncloner |Ecstasy Edit| (2012) 

Games — Strawberry Skies 

Hype Williams — The Throning (Music Video) 

Heavy metal was also an important part of the 80’s and 90’s, and even rich in underground movements. Mainstream British heavy metal bands, American thrash metal, Florida death metal, then black metal... Much nostalgic material to use in witch house music. Witch house itself, with its distorted synthesizers and dark mood, often sounds similar to heavy metal. However I don’t see heavy metal imagery exploited in witch house music. Do you know of any interesting witch house projects that do use heavy metal imagery or maybe even incorporate heavy metal sound in their music?

I was never much into metal, at least not the metal of the 80's and 90's. I do like some black metal (after a lot of people asked me about my black metal background as they saw parallels between MSV harshness and atmosphere, I was listening to some).

When it comes to drums, I think it's what I don't like as an influence from metal to witch house in a technical way. I definitely hear when people have their metal background and even nu metal late 90’s / early 00’s background which is more horrible, at least for me — I cannot stand it.

With metal, you won't find the experts in Nigel [Wingrove] and me. 😉

Tell me about the filming process. How does it happen? 

When we make a film, I mostly don't plan nor write a script. I collect (visual) ideas that I want to realize and let the magic happen at certain places with certain actors. Most of it is pure improvisation in play with the magic of the places. Mostly, these are former filming locations such as from:

• Zulawski's Possession in Berlin (featured in Diabolique, Surrealistica Uniferno 2, and Amacabra)
• Lynch's Mulholland Drive (Los Angeles in Hollywood Necronomicon)
• Kubrick's Clockwork Orange (London, UK — the underpass featured in Metamorfosia)
• Jess Franco's films Vampyros Lesbos, Eugenie, She Killed in Ecstasy, Bloody Moon (various Spanish filming locations in Phantasmagoria 2)
• David Lynch's Inland Empire (Lodz, Poland in Phantasmagoria 1)

and the kaleidoscope of filming locations in Acid Babylon, such as:

• Argento's Phenomena (Switzerland)
• Jean Rollin's Les Démoniaques (Belgium)
• Werner Herzog's Nosferatu (Netherlands)
• Harry Kümel's Daughters of Darkness (Belgium)
• Kenneth Anger's Lucifer Rising (Germany) also featured in Hollywood Necronomicon.

Coming to these important historical places is something special. It's like a ritual for a new awakening coming to film — due to the use of unlimited digital material you can film, you are able to collect puzzle pieces from magic moments or visual ideas and put them together to what appears as a performatic film. So the viewing experience is close to performance art but with the dress of a film.

I’m happy that we realized the Franco locations in Phantasmagoria 2 — many of them were already in decay. The Franco place was more like a real playground. We were totally overwhelmed.

Many places around which you could invent a story?

This place, where Franco had filmed, had a real magic that grabs you — the labyrinth place [Muralla Roja] was actually our hotel. When we woke up, we could see the Xanadu Building outside of the window.

[Below are examples from Jeremy Richey's magazine Soledad, issue #4 (more detail about it in Jeremy's Amazon listing) where he demonstrates the same locations in Cosmotropia de Xam's and Jess Franco's films.]

Sometimes improvisations can be a real magic creator. All of it is improvised. Even the Diane Cooper part in Phantasmagoria 1. That's why there are also logical glitches. Like flying to Poland while she is already in Poland 😉.

This all is very connected in Spain — all by one architect. We went to a bar to eat something and it looked like in the 70’s. We asked then to film the tarot scene there. And this guy, the owner, was British, and he told us that this was the first place the architect had built.

Or the sea scene with Rachel and the bloody eyes. It was very much in your face with all tourists, and the flood was coming.

Did the tourists around look at you like at weirdos when filming that scene with bloody eyes?

Of course, but you don't have to care about it, just do.

Or the stairs with the spikes — we just found them and filmed. But this gives the movie a very natural character.

For the fans of the Phantasmagoria movies, I also created these T-shirt designs. Download them for free (as well as my 50 other b-movie shirt prints) and order a shirt from any print-on-demand service you like.

In your films, there is also a strong focus on music. How do you create your soundtracks?

Soundtracks to my films are mostly created during the editing process and mostly by one of my music projects to have a 100% dense atmosphere. As most of the movies I made over the years have more of a surreal or surreal / narrative structure, the atmosphere is what is of the highest importance for me — much more important than telling a story or having the perfect technical shot.

Do you think you will film something with an elaborated plot one day?

I don't think so. We did an elaborated project from lockdown to lockdown [quarantine lockdowns caused by the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020]. But you come to your limits.

[Here, Cosmotropia refers to the film The Inferno Index mentioned in the first question of this interview].

I like more to illustrate than to tell a story. With Phantasmagoria it was fun to go a bit off that narrative path.

What projects do you have in plans for the future?

I don't plan — things are happening and I react and improvise.

Resources to Learn More About Cosmotropia de Xam

•  My analysis of Cosmotropia's films Phantasmagoria and Phantasmagoria 2: Labyrinths of Blood.
• My review of Cosmotropia's film Diabolique.
  
• Interview with Cosmotropia de Xam and Rachel Audrey for Black Magazin (in German, but it reads very well in automatic translation too).
• Watch Cosmotropia de Xam’s films online on PhantasmaTV.com.
• Buy physical copies of Cosmotropia de Xam’s films and all music released by Phantasma Disques from his Bigcartel store.
• Mater Suspiria Vision’s Bandcamp.

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