Maciek Stępniewski – Interview About his Album, "Somewhere Along"

Maciek Stępniewski (Haunting)¹ contacted me about his recently released album "Somewhere Along" some days ago. After listening to it, it became crystal clear to me that I needed to know more about his art. The ten pieces on "Somewhere Along" mix dreamy ambient experiments and some catchy beats. The Warsaw-based musician also asked about my veganism, so I also asked about this topic's role in his life. Here is my interview.

Anne: Hi Maciek! Thanks for reaching out and for sharing your music with me! It is beautiful! Are you happy with the outcome of your work?

"'Somewhere Along' is an album for fans of electronic music"

Maciek: Thank you! I think I'm usually content with the work I release. I wouldn't otherwise, but I will admit that I'm especially happy and proud of how "Somewhere Along" came out. It's a great album, and if someone is into electronic music, they should totally check it out.

Anne: You told me a trip around Portugal inspired you to write these ten precious tracks. Do you want to tell me about this journey?

Maciek: Correct, this is a complete post-portugal work. The trip was wonderful, I went there in June with a friend, and we had a great time discovering the south of Portugal and bonding; honestly, it was just one of my best days in recent years. I do believe, though, that happy music is rather boring, so the album is not any kind of a diary, but rather a fantasy focusing on raw or mysterious aspects of what we've seen there because obviously there is a lot under a pretty surface.

Anne: Your music is quite thought-provoking. When listening to it, you can quickly enter some sort of dreamy state and build your own story around it. Was it your intention for your listeners to feel that way?

"My songs are conversations with myself"

Maciek: To be honest, I don't think much about the listener when doing my artistic projects. It's more of a conversation with myself. It's open, though, and when somebody is interested or has some cool impressions, that's always a great feeling, but it's out of my control, so I don't worry about it much. If anything, might I intend to make my music a bit disquieting? I think that if somebody is very content with themselves, they might just need some anxiety, and on the other hand, if someone is uneasy, I hope it brings some comfort. Also, I have a friend who always calls my music introspective, which is fantastic. So I like that it comes this way, but it's not necessarily by design. I guess it's just an extension of who I am and what I like myself.

Anne: What was the most inspiring moment on your journey through Portugal?

Maciek: Life-like, that's impossible to answer because every day was filled with great and varied experiences. It had everything from fancy galleries through dinosaur trails and seagull attacks to ending up at Olivia Rodrigo's show. As far as the album goes, there was one exciting moment. We were in the little town of Baleal, and it was already getting dark and also raining, but we still went onto the cliffs there. While we were walking, I slipped on the rock and basically looked down into the waves ten meters below or so. I don't think it was really dangerous, but I got scared, and later I thought I might have been another story about a stupid kid who went to the cliffs after dark and rain. I believe the split-second moment I looked down and got shaken up was when the album started to form. So, to sum up with an example: in reality, the trip was us sitting on the porch of a bungalow watching the sunset and enjoying some wine, but we would also see a storm forming up on the horizon and a single light of some ship and talk about how it must feel to be there instead of where we are. And, while in life, I want to have these pleasant experiences, in art, I couldn't care less about being nice; I want to focus on what's hidden beneath that.

Anne: Do you have a favourite track on the album?

"'Erase Myself' best expresses the mood of the album"

Maciek: I wouldn't say so. I like it as a whole. If anything, I think that "erase myself" greatly conveys its atmosphere, which is not a surprise because I made it literally hours after returning home. I also have a sentiment about the title of "the new king of hell", it comes from a small piece of graffiti we've found in a park in Lisbon, which said to smile because you'll die soon anyway and become the new king of hell and it stayed with us and became an inside joke. To be fair, though, I'm a person with a lot of existential dread, and while I don't hold any magical beliefs about the afterlife or so, I could settle for going to hell to rule it.

Anne: How long did it take you to write and record "Somewhere Along"?

Maciek: It actually went very fast because we came back at the end of June, and it was out by the end of September, so I made it in about two months and sent it to distribution. And let me tell you that I enjoy making music fast, I've had albums that I mulled over for two years, and it's not great; I lose sight of what I wanted to do, and I lose excitement about the tracks. When working really fast, the material stays fresh, and the release gives me satisfaction instead of just relief.

Anne: Is there anything you would particularly recommend to my readers when travelling through Portugal? You said something about Lisbon having the most yummy vegan restaurants you've ever visited.

"Lisbon has amazing vegan restaurants"

Maciek: Yeah, the restaurants in Lisbon were terrific, and I have no shame in advertising them. We visited The Food Temple, Plant Base and My Mother's Daughters, and the food and venues were among the best I've known. There is also a great place in Baleal called Mundano, but to be fair, they also have fish dishes, which I dislike, but if you can live with that then apart from that fact, it's a gem; you get vegan fine dining in a small town of maybe fifty houses at the edge of the world. I would also like to mention one thing that quite some people miss, there is the world's oldest bookstore in Lisbon, so if you're a bookworm like me you might enjoy treating yourself there.

Anne: How would you describe the music scene in Warsaw right now?

Maciek: I would say that it's very vibrant, there is a lot of music coming out, a lot of shows and definitely Warsaw and Poland, in general, has a lot of great bands and artists, so if you're travelling here, you could really find an exciting concert nearly every day. Honestly, though, I felt more connected to it when I was younger; while I still find albums I enjoy, it also seems that the younger people who now enter the so-called scene just have a different aesthetic than me, and it doesn't touch base. They might also have more critical opinions about it if they're trying to make a living out of their music because that's probably hard. We do have some great showcase events, though, and they help me stay more or less up-to-date with what's happening.

Anne: You got your BA and MA in animation at the Polish-Japanese Of Information Technology, graphic/new art media department and then moved to work in the CGI industry. You got your animated short films at some of the big festivals, and your exhibitions are quite successful. That sounds very exciting! Would you say that your education and career in this sector also affect the development of your musical style?

Maciek: That's interesting; my education was when I formed a lot as an artist, but as for my musical choices, I think they come more from just what I like myself. I've been very much into what I call author's electronica, as opposed to just genre-like stuff, so obviously, for most of us, it started with Burial, but also people like Holy Other or Forest Swords or Baths and so on. And I guess I just wanted to be like that and find my own style and just went with it by practice. I certainly didn't become well-known because of it, but as far as artistic satisfaction, I'm pretty happy about where I ended up, with "Somewhere Along" being the latest example. For sure, there are connections between my aesthetic choices in both sound and visuals, but I guess I just don't analyze it that much.

Anne: You said you liked the intersection of veganism and music I provide with Sounds Vegan. I assume you are also a vegan?

Maciek: To not be a hypocrite, I will say I eat vegan 95 per cent of the time and vegetarian five per cent. I'm not proud of it, and I'm not gonna defend it, but I also don't want to flog myself about it. For example, I just came back from Venice, and despite only good intentions, it's tough to get a vegan dish in a restaurant there. In this kind of situation, I sporadically settle for a vegetarian one. I also don't have much against eating eggs, if you can verify that they are from a local free-range place. So I think of myself as vegan, but I have to be honest, I'm not 100 per cent there yet (but close).

Anne: Why and when did you decide to go vegan?

"My vegan journey started seven or eight years ago"

Maciek: Hmm, it must have been about seven or eight years ago, but I remember having doubts about the whole thing for much longer. I think it was an accumulative process of being exposed to information about how this business looks and its consequences. And it's a bit funny because there are so many sources of information that should really shake a person up, for example, that film "Dominion"? But the last brick in the wall came from the book "Sapiens" by Yuval Noah Harari. I generally prefer more academic books rather than popular science ones, but I think this one is ok. There was a chapter about industrial farming and a photograph of small chickens being thrown away to get smashed in some machine, and I remember sitting in my chair and reading it, and that accumulative process ended there; it flipped a switch in my brain, and a voice said enough. I have a strong need to see myself as a decent person, but I'm also not great at ignoring reality, so to be able to respect myself, I could no longer support that machine, which is just some absurd horror nightmare. And I think anyone who's acquired a basic ethical reflection capacity will do the same.

Anne: Would you use your music as a vehicle for vegan activism?

Maciek: I'll admit I'm not much of an activist; I support some organizations or rescued animals financially, but I never got into direct activism. I wanted to make a film about this cause, but I never could get my head around how I could do anything more substantial than an actual recording from a slaughterhouse. So, if I got an opportunity or an excellent idea of how to do it, I definitely would; it just hasn't come to it yet. Maybe it's because even though I know that inspiring people works better than attacking them, I'm still in that stage of anger. So I think that's still in front of me.

Anne: Why do you think are so many people scared of veganism? I mean, it's literally the absence of cruelty!

"Veganism challenges our beliefs"

Maciek: That would probably be better said by a social scientist, but I think that veganism challenges some very strong core beliefs that the society holds, that we are special, that our being alive is somehow magically always valuable and good. I guess it's rare to have the ability or courage to confront yourself like that, to check whether these narratives that we are being told all our lives are actually authentic and make sense, because if they don't, then you have to take it into your own hands and try to find value in a challenging and chaotic existence. So I'm not surprised that people react with fear and anger when they see that somebody else is actually able to hold higher standards with integrity, but don't get me wrong, I have no respect or excuses for doing so. It's 2024, the knowledge is available, and if you consider yourself a conscious being and yet support cruelty towards animals - go to hell (which I'm supposed to rule, by the way).

Anne: What do veganism and ambient music have in common?

Maciek: That's interesting; I don't think I thought about that, maybe because to me, veganism as not-a-norm is about resistance, while ambient is more about acceptance. Perhaps somebody with a more hippie attitude could say something about celebration and being one with nature, but unfortunately, I'm not that person. The only scenes that made a real connection are obviously hardcore punk and all the straight-edge environments, which are really close to my heart. Still, it's always great to learn that a cool musician follows those values and is also kinda repulsive if they obnoxiously don't. And it's an excellent question; even though I don't have a smart answer now, I know it will stay with me, and I will wonder whether there might be some.

Anne: If there was one thing in the world you could change. What would it be and why?

Maciek: Wow, so many things are wrong with this civilization. If I had some magical wish power, I would probably abuse it and end up a villain, so I'll give you an over-the-line answer: let's make all human males infertile and never tell anyone for how long. Imagine, the population cannot grow, the economic growth paradigm, which is the core of many, many issues, has to go as well and humanity has to find out whether it's possible to live sustainably, to give it some real meaning, not just hoarding more stuff. But back to reality: animal cruelty and all the industrialism around it is, in my opinion, the number one problem we have. Fixing it would mean healing ourselves, and if societies started to hold some existential values, other issues like wars or organized religions would also stop making sense. I honestly don't have hope for that, though. I think we will more or less continue in the terrible direction we are going in, and it's scary because our reality will change a lot into something more violent. I feel very sorry for people being born today. I can't imagine doing that to somebody.

Anne: Your album has been released and is available on all streaming platforms. What are your next steps?

Maciek: Well, if any kind of opportunities for promoting it appear, I will gladly take them, but generally, publishing something is the end of the cycle for me, and I move to other things. I will finish my new film by the end of the year, which I hope will come out nice and make some noise. Musically, I have the last album of my project, Haunting, in the drawer, but I am unsure how to release it. I'm also getting back into guitar and probably won't be able to stay away from making beats for long. So there will be things for sure. I'm just not sure which yet, but that is also a nice feeling to hold.

Anne: Thanks so much for answering my questions! It's been a pleasure talking with you!

Maciek: Thank you, Anne! I enjoyed it a lot.

Maciek Stępniewski – "Somewhere Along"