ARDENITE - Upgraded
Words and graphics by: Tom Wilson @thetomwilsonexperiment - Sense Music Media | Monday 17th October 2022
Press shots by: Radka Klein
Austrian Cyber-Pop-Rock Duo Boot Up Their Live Debut
The press shots don’t lie. While she didn’t arrive for our Zoom interview wielding an MP-7, ARDENITE’s Wana White is every bit as fluorescent and bright as the banner image would suggest. Going into the COVID cocoon as a rock band and metamorphosing into a cyber-pop-rock duo, Wana and Sebo are set to make their mark in 2023, debuting their live show in Vienna. She spoke to SENSE from Austria…
I don’t think I’ve interviewed somebody from Austria yet. First of all, what kind of misconceptions do you think people have about Vienna? I’m Australian, so people assume that we ride kangaroos to work and all this kind of stuff. What’s the Vienna equivalent?
[Laughs] Okay, well, first of all, what came to my mind is that a lot of people confuse Austria for Australia. [Laughs] Just because it’s similar sounding, right? So it’s not the same, but it’s similar, so there are so many t-shirts here … you will like this. There are so many t-shirts here with kangaroos, with text that says, “There are no kangaroos in Austria.” [Laughs] Based on these t-shirts, I would say that’s a pretty common misconception!
The city is known as “the city of music”. In what ways do you think it lives up to that name? What kind of genres are really popular over there?
Well actually, I would say it’s more the classical genres. There really is so much culture going on here. I live, at the moment, a bit further away from the centre. Vienna has about two million people living in here, and I’m a bit on the outskirts right now, but if you go a bit closer to the centre, there’s culture at every corner. You can go here to the opera, here to the theatre, and then there’s different operas, and a lot of theatres, and classical concert halls. There’s really so much of that aspect. Also, there’s many musicals. I don’t know about you, but I didn’t know musicals before I came to Vienna. I come from Romania originally … musicals were not a thing. [Laughs] Here, there’s a lot of those too. You know, people singing classically and dancing around. It was quite an experience the first time I saw it.
You’ve got that cyber-pop thing going on. Do you perform more to a mosh pit kind of crowd, or a dance kind of crowd? Am I more likely to find ARDENITE in a rock club or a nightclub?
Very interesting question. I can tell you from my gut feeling, but actually, I need to tell you, we didn’t perform live in two years. So all over this corona time, we didn’t play any shows, and we also changed the composition of the band a lot. We lost a couple of members, and now we are a duo, and actually, since we are a duo, we established this style – this cyber-pop/rock style. So we kind of figured out what we actually wanted to do. Before that, it was just an exploration phase. [Laughs] So that means we didn’t play any live shows in this genre yet. We are planning our upcoming live show at the moment. It’s going to be in Vienna in the beginning of 2023, and it’s scheduled for a rock club – you know, a typical rock show venue – but we will see! I can tell you more about this question in a couple of months, hopefully! [Laughs]
How did you guys fall into the cyber aesthetic? Is this something that you’ve always been interested in? Is this something that you set out to do? Or did it happen more organically?
We started off in 2018 as a typical rock band, right? I was just planning to start the band. I was searching for people on Facebook groups. [Laughs] Then, you know, you get a couple of instrumentalists, and you’re like, “Okay, what are we going to be? A rock band? Sure!” Start practicing in the garage or something, pretty usual … I learned so much about what is important to start a musical group, right? In the beginning, I only thought, “Well, you need nice people who have enough time to practice, and who can master their instrument … the skill.” But then I noticed, so many other things are so important, like the work ethic – how serious do you take it? How big are your goals? Are the goals aligned? And are you read to do what it takes to reach these goals? A couple of us weren’t. And also, they [have to have] similar musical interests. One of them left because he said this is too hard for him – he wanted to do softer stuff, in the pop direction. Then another guy was a bit older, just a bit – five to ten years older – and he liked a totally different type of rock. In the end, we were, the two of us, Sebo and I, and we thought … About cyber, there’s two aspects: first, the aesthetic, and the sound. I can tell you [about] the sound, because it’s faster and easier. [Laughs] So Sebo is also super interested in experimenting with different types of sounds. He's sometimes a DJ in his free time, so he has a big inclination in this electronic part, and we never used it before, right? Up until that point we were doing normal rock. [Laughs] And then, one time we said, “Oh my god, this is one of his strengths, right? Why don’t we use it? Why don’t we blend it into our music so he feels more happy, because he’s doing the things he’s interested in?” … Experimenting with modern sounds, and also, it sounds more unique, right? So it was kind of like a win-win. And, of course, I like everything that he produces, so for me, everything was fine … So that was a win-win-win with the sound. And then, of course, we were brainstorming a lot about the image, because from the beginning we were pretty sure we didn’t want to look like a typical band. Like, you know, the colours black and white (and maybe red). [Laughs] I’m also not like that. If you know me, I’m a very cheerful, colourful person, so I also didn’t want to hide my colours – not for a rock band … We said, “Let’s just use the strengths of everybody to create this thing.” And then the colours came in … With electronic music, we thought, “Okay, we cannot look like twenty years ago. We also have to look the part to fit the music.” Then, at the time, actually, Sebo was playing the Cyberpunk game, and he had this amazing idea … He showed me, and I was like, “This is freaking awesome, man. Let’s start going in that direction.” [Laughs]
If you could collaborate with any artist on the planet, who would you most want to do it with, and why?
Ah! [Laughs] Such an exciting question! I have to answer a bit intuitively, because we thought about it from a perspective of “who would you tour with?” So that means, we thought about similar-sounding bands that we could go on tour with. But now, if you ask me just to collaborate, so I don’t have to tour necessarily, I would love to collaborate with SKRILLEX. [Laughs] I would love to collaborate with Billie Eilish. She is a big singer-songwriter influence for me as well. And then I would love to collaborate with CELLDWELLER. [Laughs] … Of course, we’d love to collaborate with some good screamers, right? For example, INFECTED RAIN. Somebody who brings more brutal screams into our music. That would also be super, super interesting, I think.
Your vocals would do really well on a RAMMSTEIN track.
I think RAMMSTEIN is an amazing idea, because we both love them, also. Especially Sebo – he’s such a big RAMMSTEIN fan. He can sing all of the songs by heart.