The Beauty of Gemina Retrospective I: The Goth Years
Ahead of their 10th studio album, «Songs of Homecoming», we explore The Beauty of Gemina’s history, development, and sound in a three-part retrospective.
The Beauty of Gemina. It is the band I have seen the most on stage. And I have interviewed their creative nucleus, Michael Sele, eight times in the past 16 years. Ever since I heard their song Shadow Dancer on a compilation CD bought in 2008, they have remained a source of fascination.
In recent years, this platonic relationship between The Beauty of Gemina and myself cooled off slightly. As the band is about to release their new album, Songs of Homecoming, I decided to listen to all of their albums again as unbiasedly as possible, revise firmly held opinions—and stroll down memory lane and share past experiences with the band.
For this series, I went through old backup drives and folders and recovered some material that is no longer available online or has never been published.
I was writing short artist biographies for Cornelius Fischer, then a concert photographer, who captured many bands in the goth subculture. One day in Spring 2009, he asked me if I would like to interview Michael Sele and The Beauty of Gemina’s new bass player, David Vetsch, for an online magazine called «imScheinwerfer».
At the «Kammgarn» in Schaffhausen, Switzerland, I met the band for the first time, having never conducted an interview before. And suddenly, this fabled world opened up. I was granted access to the exclusive—and, as I soon realised—very boring—backstage area. But for the time being, everything was new and exciting—like the first day at school. Even the soggy pasta for dinner tasted great.
The interview is no longer online, but I found it printed out and stored in a folder.
